From "John Brown's Body", Bk 5:


Love came by from the riversmoke
When the leaves were fresh on the tree,
But I cut my heart on the blackjack oak
Before they fell on me.

The leaves are green in the early Spring,
They are brown as linsey now,
I did not ask for a wedding-ring
From the wind in the bending bough.

Fall lightly, lightly, leaves of the wild,
Fall lightly on my care,
I am not the first to go with child
Because of the blowing air.

I am not the first nor yet the last
To watch a goosefeather sky,
And wonder what will come of the blast
And the name to call it by.

Snow down, snow down, you whitefeather bird,
Snow down, you winter storm,
Where the good girls sleep with a gospel word
To keep their honor warm.

The good girls sleep in their modesty,
The bad girls sleep in their shame,
But I must sleep in the hollow tree
Till my child can have a name.

I will not ask for the wheel and thread
To spin the labor plain,
Or the scissors hidden under the bed
To cut the bearing-pain.

I will not ask for the prayer in church
Or the preacher saying the prayer,
But I will ask the shivering birch
To hold its arms in the air.

Cold and cold and cold again,
Cold in the blackjack limb
The winds of the sky for his sponsor-men
And a bird to christen him.

Now listen to me, you Tennessee corn,
And listen to my word,
This is the first child ever born
That was christened by a bird.

He's going to act like a hound let loose
When he comes from the blackjack tree,
And he's going to walk in proud shoes
All over Tennessee.

I'll feed him milk out of my own breast
And call him Whistling Jack,
And his dad'll bring him a partridge nest,
As soon as his dad comes back.


The verses above bear no title, so "Melora's Song" will do as well as any. My ed. of the book is Rinehart and Company, Inc., New York and Toronto, 1954 (1st ed. 1927). Melora is pregnant by a Union soldier: they cut a heart on the blackjack oak before he left.