title: Song (Frontier Song)
author: Henry Livingston Jr.
date: before Feb 1791
source: Henry Livingston's manuscript poetry book (Thomas Collection; scans and transcription on henrylivingston.com); printed anonymously in New-York Magazine; or, Literary Repository, Feb 1791, and in the Poughkeepsie Journal, 5 Mar 1791, signed R. URL: https://www.henrylivingston.com/writing/poetry/frontiersong.htm (fetched via https://web.archive.org/web/20250522014146/https://www.henrylivingston.com/writing/poetry/frontiersong.htm)
form: iambic 4/3 (common meter; song)
lines: 16
attribution: certain
notes: Light song of a frontiersman. MS refrain "My puppy squaw & gun"; the printed NYM text (archive.org OCR, Feb 1791) reads "My wife, my dog, and gun". Site heading/headnote: Song MS scan: https://www.henrylivingston.com/writing/poetry/doublepages/doublepage54-55.htm

Let statesmen tread their giddy round
Undoing and undone,
I hug my cell where still is found
My puppy squaw and gun.

Let the gay Beau and tinsel'd Belle
In pleasure's circle run,
My happiness their joys excel
My puppy squaw & gun.

When forests nod, and lakes expand
And foaming cat'racts stun
I've fix'd my home: on either hand
My puppy squaw & gun.

Ambitions's path, the miser's road
The legal maze I shun;
But cling to my belov'd abode
My puppy squaw & gun.