Join the army—go to Texas! Never come back here to vex us,
Take your gaze from off my victuals—take your carcase from my door”—
Quoth the nigger—“Nevermore.”
And the nigger, never working, still is shirking—still is shirking
Every kind of honest labour, in the house or out of door,
And his eye has all the seeming of a vulture’s starved and dreaming,
And my bacon, gently steaming tempts him still to cross my floor.
But I’ll gamble with that poker that I hurled at him before,
That I’ll maul his very lights out, if he dares to pass that door,
He shall work or—eat no more!