YouLyric
Sign in
Sign up for free
Ballad Of Hard Luck Henry
Share
Hank Snow
What's this song about?
Generate meaning
1
Now wouldn't you expect to find a man an awful crank
2
That's staked out nigh three hundred claims and every one a blank
3
That's followed every fool stampede and seen the rise and fall
4
Of camps where men got gold in chunks and he got none at all
5
That's prospected a bit of ground and sold it for a song
6
To see it yield a fortune to some fool that came along
7
That's sunk a dozen bed-rock holes and not a speck in sight
8
Yet sees them take a million from the claims to left and right
9
Now aren't things like that enough to drive a man to booze
10
But Hard-Luck Smith was hoodoo-proof he knew the way to lose
11
Twas in the fall of nineteen four leap-year I've heard them say
12
When Hard-Luck came to Hunker Creek and took a hillside lay
13
And lo! as if to make amends for all the futile past
14
Late in the year he struck it rich the real pay-streak at last
15
The riffles of his sluicing-box were choked with speckled earth
16
And night and day he worked that lay for all that he was worth
17
And when in chill December's gloom his lucky lease expired
18
He found that he had made a stake as big as he desired
19
One day while meditating on the waywardness of fate
20
He felt the ache of lonely man to find a fitting mate
21
A petticoated pard to cheer his solitary life
22
A woman with soft soothing ways a confidant a wife
23
And while he cooked his supper on his little Yukon stove
24
He wished that he had staked a claim in Love's rich treasure-trove
25
When suddenly he paused and held aloft a Yukon egg
26
For there in pencilled letters was the magic name of Peg
27
You know these Yukon eggs of ours some pink some green some blue
28
A dollar per assorted tints assorted flavors too
29
The supercilious cheechako might designate them high
30
But one acquires a taste for them and likes them by and by
31
Well Hard-Luck Henry took this egg and held it to the light
32
And there was more faint pencilling that sorely taxed his sight
33
At last he made it out and then the legend ran like this
34
Will Klondike miner write to Peg Plumhollow Squashville Wis
35
That night he got to thinking of this far-off unknown fair
36
It seemed so sort of opportune an answer to his prayer
37
She flitted sweetly through his dreams she haunted him by day
38
She smiled through clouds of nicotine she cheered his weary way
39
At last he yielded to the spell his course of love he set
40
Wisconsin his objective point his object Margaret
41
With every mile of sea and land his longing grew and grew
42
He practised all his pretty words and these I fear were few
43
At last one frosty evening with a cold chill down his spine
44
He found himself before her house the threshold of the shrine
45
His courage flickered to a spark then glowed with sudden flame
46
He knocked he heard a welcome word she came his goddess came
47
Oh she was fair as any flower and huskily he spoke
48
I'm all the way from Klondike with a mighty heavy poke
49
I'm looking for a lassie one whose Christian name is Peg
50
Who sought a Klondike miner and who wrote it on an egg
51
The lassie gazed at him a space her cheeks grew rosy red
52
She gazed at him with tear-bright eyes then tenderly she said
53
Yes lonely Klondike miner it is true my name is Peg
54
It's also true I longed for you and wrote it on an egg
55
My heart went out to someone in that land of night and cold
56
But oh I fear that Yukon egg must have been mighty old
57
I waited long I hoped and feared you should have come before
58
I've been a wedded woman now for eighteen months or more
59
I'm sorry since you've come so far you ain't the one that wins
60
But won't you take a step inside I'll let you see the twins
Hank Snow - Nobody's Child
104 views
0 meanings
Go Pro
Unlimited meanings ยท Priority generation
Upgrade
