The song birds are the sweetest
In Kentucky;
The thoroughbreds are the fleetest
In Kentucky;
Mountains tower proudest,
Thunder peals the loudest,
The landscape is the grandest —
And politics — the damnedest
In Kentucky.

"In Kentucky", st. 7. Reprinted from The Lexington Herald (February 12, 1902) in John Wilson Townsend (ed.) Kentucky in American Letters, vol. 1 (Cedar Rapids, IA: The Torch Press, 1913) p. 351. Editor's note: "It has been parodied a thousand times, reproduced in almost every newspaper in English, illustrated, and at least one Kentuckian has heard it chanted by an Englishman in the shadow of the Pyramids in Egypt!"