WEBVTT

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Now, I'm forced by my
hostess to go back and live

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my childhood again.

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And she asked me to read to you
one of the first poems I ever

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wrote.

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And I would be happy to do this,
because in a sense, especially

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for young writers in this
room, it will give you

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the key to my life and my work.

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Let me see.

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Where is it?

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Oh, that's going
to be something.

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I had it marked down.

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Oh, here it is.

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[INAUDIBLE] this up.

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I believe that this is the
second poem I ever wrote.

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And I was at that
time a freshman,

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I believe, at
Indiana University,

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where Stith Thompson was a
professor of the Old English

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ballad.

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I was too young
to study with him,

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but I dreamed then
that I would become

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an authority on the ballad--

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that I would go by
muleback through the Ozarks

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or through the Kentucky
and Tennessee mountains,

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collecting variants of
"Barbara Allen" and so forth.

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And this is my second poem,
I believe, that I ever wrote.

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And I will read it to
you, because it shows you

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at least how I have lived,
if not how I have written.

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Do you all hear me all right?

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Good.

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It's called "Ballad-Loving," and
I was about 17 when I wrote it.

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"She was a ballad-loving woman,
who lived until she died.

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With a hey-lillelu
and a how-lo-lan,

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her sorry tears were dried.

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She watched the East.

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She watched the West.

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She watched the
changing weather.

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With a hey-lillelu
and a how-lo-lan,

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she kept her heart together."

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"She knew that day
will follow night,

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that flowers bloom after snow.

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With a hey-lillelu
and a how-lo-lan,

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she knew what she could know.

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With a hey-lillelu
and a how-lo-lan,

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and a link-a-down-and-a-day,
with singing words from long

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ago, she knew that
life will stay.

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She was a ballad-loving woman,
who lived until she died.

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With a hey-lillelu
and a how-lo-lan,

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her sorry tears were dried."