Edgar Lee Masters - Shack Dye lyrics

THE white men played all sorts of jokes on me. They took big fish off my hook And put little ones on, while I was away Getting a stringer, and made me believe I hadn't seen aright the fish I had caught. When Burr Robbins, circus came to town They got the ring master to let a tame leopard Into the ring, and made me believe I was whipping a wild beast like Samson When I, for an offer of fifty dollars, Dragged him out to his cage. One time I entered my blacksmith shop And shook as I saw some horse-shoes crawling Across the floor, as if alive— Walter Simmons had put a magnet Under the barrel of water. Yet everyone of you, you white men, Was fooled about fish and about leopards too, And you didn't know any more than the horse-shoes did What moved you about Spoon River.