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Elizabeth Madox Roberts 349 John Jacob Niles Perhaps the best known of Kentucky’s composer-collector-poets is John Jacob Niles, who was born in Louisville in 1892 into a musical family. After serving in World War I as a pilot, he became a popular singer in nightclubs and on concert stages. His favorite songs were the ballads, folksongs, and Christmas carols of the southern mountains that he collected during his tours of the Appalachians. He arranged or composed more than one thousand ballads and folksongs, some of which were gathered in 1961 in his Ballad Book of John Jacob Niles. In 1980 he died at his Boot Hill Farm near Lexington. One of his most popular songs is “I Wonder As I Wander,” included below with two of his original poems. h “I Wonder As I Wander” I wonder as I wander out under the sky How Jesus our Saviour did come for to die, For poor orn’ry people like you and like I . . . I wonder as I wander out under the sky. When Mary birthed Jesus, ’twas in a cow’s stall, With wise men and farmers and shepherds and all, But high from God’s heaven a star’s light did fall, And the promise of ages it then did recall. If Jesus had wanted for any wee thing, A star in the sky or a bird on the wing, Or all of god’s angels in heaven for to sing, He surely could have had it, ’cause He was the King. I wonder as I wander out under the sky, How Jesus our Saviour did come for to die, For poor orn’ry people like you and like I, I wonder as I wander out under the sky. “The Locusts” The locusts have eaten nearly all of my years And left the husks and hulls of endless days. 349 350 The Kentucky Anthology And now I must discover how to live with the bitter Husks and the tattered fragile hulls Of days I shall never see again. So if you see me trying to piece the shards Of broken days and tiny fragmented moments together To brighten the dark night of my loneliness, Be kind, be gentle, be affectionate to an old man Who has given his years to the locusts: be kind. “My Love for You” My love for you, my very dearest dear, Is not a thing that I can put aside And say, I’ve many things to do, I fear. ’twould be as if some part of me had died. Ah, but to know the sweetness and the peace Of coming back to you for one brief rest, The gesture of your love when in release You cradle my tired body in a nest Of your dear arms. Ah, but to lie unwaking, Asleep and yet awake in love’s abyss, Close-locked within a world of lovers’ making, Dead to life but deathless to your kiss, For life and death are things we cannot stay, But you and I and love have had our way. ...

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