"And now low bends my wretched head,
And those I lov'd are gone;
My friends, my family, all are fled,
And I am left alone."

A verse from Part III, Night Scenes of Other Times, Joanna Baillie, from Poems, 1790. A poet whose work is sadly neglected.

http://www.english.upenn.edu/~mgamer/Etexts/baillie.poem

Cohen undoubtedly knows Foster's "Old Black Joe" but I don't know if it was one of the inspirations for his new song.

Barbara, my brain is inactive today- what is the melody that is interspersed in Cohen's rendition? I should know it.