Re stinkage:
Soooo many songs from the mid-late 19th century are likewise clumsy and melodramatic. It was the accepted, expected style of the time.
So just folk process it some more.
BTW Something about the cadence, and definitely the last line, reminds me irresistibly of Casey at the Bat by Ernest Thayer. (The poem hails from the same time period, but isn't clumsy at all and the melodrama is intentional.)
-Glenn