"Cheer up! my girl, here Brother Riggs our circuit knows 'twill please.
He raised three hundred dollars there, besides the marriage fees.
What! tears from us who preached the word these thirty years or so?
Two years on barren Chincoteague, and two in Tuckahoe?
"The schools are good, the brethren say, and our Church holds the wheel;
The Presbyterians lost their house; the Baptists lost their zeal.
The parsonage is clean and dry; the town has friendly folk,—
Not half so dull as Murderkill, nor proud like Pocomoke.
"Oh! Thy just will, our Lord, be done, though these eight seasons more,
We see our ague-crippled boys pine on the Eastern Shore,
While we, Thy stewards, journey out our dedicated years
Midst foresters of Nanticoke, or heathen of Tangiers!
"Yea! some must serve on God's frontiers, and I shall fail, perforce,
To sow upon some better ground my most select discourse;
At Sassafras, or Smyrna, preach my argument on 'Drink,'
My series on the Pentateuch, at Appoquinimink.
"Gray am I, brethren, in the work, though tough to bear my part;
It is these drooping little ones that sometimes wring my heart,
And cheat me with the vain conceit the cleverness is mine
To fill the churches of the Elk, and pass the Brandywine.
"These hairs were brown, when, full of hope, ent'ring these holy lists,
Proud of my Order as a knight—the shouting Methodists—
I made the pine woods ring with hymns, with prayer the night-winds shook,
And preached from Assawaman Light far north as Bombay Hook.
"My nag was gray, my gig was new; fast went the sandy miles;
The eldest Trustees gave me praise, the fairest sisters smiles;
Still I recall how Elder Smith of Worten Heights averred.
My Apostolic Parallels the best he ever heard.
"All winter long I rode the snows, rejoicing on my way;
At midnight our revival hymns rolled o'er the sobbing bay;
Three Sabbath sermons, every week, should tire a man of brass—
And still our fervent membership must have their extra class!
"Aggressive with the zeal of youth, in many a warm requite
I terrified Immersionists, and scourged the Millerite;
But larger, tenderer charities such vain debates supplant,
When the dear wife, saved by my zeal, loved the Itinerant.
"No cooing dove of storms afeard, she shared my life's distress,
A singing Miriam, alway, in God's poor wilderness;
The wretched at her footstep smiled, the frivolous were still;
A bright path marked her pilgrimage, from Blackbird to Snowhill.