Why should I be the first to fall / Of all the leaves on this old tree? / Though sadly soon I know that all / Will lose their hold and follow me. / While my birth-brothers bravely blow, / Why should I be first to go?

Carefree to be, as a bird that sings; / To go my own sweet way; / To reck not at all what may befall, / But to live and to love each day.

So feathered friend, until the end you may divide my den, / And make a mess, which (more or less) I clean up now and then. / But I prefer the doom to share of dead and gone compeers, / Than parrot be, and live to see ten times a hundred years.

A Poet of Profanity! / For I've been known with vulgar slang / To stoke the Sacred Fire, / And even used a word like 'hang', / Suggesting ire.

His crowded life of God's good giving / No man has relished more than I; / I've been so goldarned busy living / I've never had the time to die. / So busy fishing, hunting, roving, / Up on my toes and fighting fit; / So busy singing, laughing, loving, / I've never had the time to quit.

An no, I never, never swear; / Profanity don't pay; / To cuss won't get you anywhere

I do not swear because I am / A sweet and sober guy; / I cannot vent a single damn / However hard I try.

I love the cheery bustle / Of children round the house, / The tidy maids a-hustle, / The chatter of my spouse; / The laughter and the singing, / The joy on every face: / With frequent laughter ringing, / O, Home's a happy place!

Oh, it is good afar to roam, / And seek adventure in strange lands; / Yet oh, so good the coming home, / The velvet love of little hands.

So I'll go back to Tennessee, And they will ask: "How have you spent your Brief holiday in gay Paree?"