
“And there I sat, long long ago, waiting for the world to know me.”
Now and Then: Poems, 1978–1979 (1979)
“And there I sat, long long ago, waiting for the world to know me.”
“I know, that obscure as I am, my name is making a considerable deal of fuss in the world.”
Preface (1 February 1834)
A Narrative of the Life of David Crockett (1834)
Context: I know, that obscure as I am, my name is making a considerable deal of fuss in the world. I can't tell why it is, nor in what it is to end. Go where I will, everybody seems anxious to get a peep at me … There must therefore be something in me, or about me, that attracts attention, which is even mysterious to myself.
“The name of an iron man goes round the world.
It takes a long time to forget an iron man.”
"Washington Monument by Night" in Slabs of the Sunburnt West (1922)