Drank lonesome water

Lonesome Water
Roy Addison Helton, b. 1886

Drank lonesome water:
Weren't but a tad then
Up in a laurel thick
Digging for sang;
Came on a place where
The stones was holler;
Something below them
Tinkled and rang.

Dug where I heard it
Drippling below me:
Should a knowed better,
Should a been wise;
Leant down and drank it,
Clutching and gripping
The overhung cliv
With the ferns in my eyes.

Tweren't no tame water
I knowed in a minute;
Must a been laying there
Projecting round
Since winter went home;
Must a laid like a cushion,
Where the feet of the blossoms
Was tucked in the ground.

Tasted of heart leaf,
And that smells the sweetest,
Paw paw and spice bush
And wild briar Rose;
Must a been counting
The heels of the spruce pines
And neighboring round
Where angelica grows.

I'd drunk lonesome water,
I knowed in a minute
Never larnt nothing
From then till today;
Nothing worth larning,
Nothing worth knowing.
I'm bound to the hills
And I can't get away.

Mean sort of dried up old
Groundhoggy feller,
Laying cold out here
Watching the sky;
Pore as a hipporwill,
Bent like a grass blade;
Counting up stars
Till they count too high.

I know where the grey foxes
Uses up yander,
Know what'll cure ye
Of ptisic or chills,
But I never been way from here,
Never got going:
I've drunk lonesome water.
I'm bound to the hills.