Held in high esteem was Wilson,
Many years he was a preacher,
Limping slowly to the service,
Where the people gathered weekly,
Eager for his righteous sermons
And the sight of Polly Wilson
With her dozen restless children,
Scrubbed and polished for the solemn
Sunday prayer and lengthy sermon
By their father in the pulpit,
In a meeting house in Colebrook,
Hemlock Meeting House in Colebrook.
Fallen now that house of worship,
Baptist Meeting House in Colebrook,
Built in five and eighteen hundred.
Gone the pulpit and the altar,
And the names of those who worshipped
Now are written on the tombstones
In the Hemlock Cemetery.
Buried, too, the Hemlock pastors,
Bellows, Talmage, Morse and Dory,
Atwell, Garvin, Wilson, Watrous.
All their toil and preaching ended;
All their sermons are forgotten,
But the good they did is living
On in present generations.
26. BUILT NEW CABINS IN THE FOREST.
The Tunxis, as it rolled along,
Saw new cabins on the hill-side,
And heard the children's twilight song,
Ere they closed their eyes in slumber.
Two of Molly Barber's children
Dug new cellars on the hill-side,
'Neath the pine trees ever sighing,
Built new cabins in the forest—
Tiger lilies grew beside them.
Fragrance from the purple lilacs
Floated through the air at spring-time.
Ever busy were the people,
On the hill-side in the cabins
And along the winding river.
Oft they hunted through the forest
For the rabbit and the squirrel.
Oft they labored by the river
Building swift canoes for sailing.
Often in the shallow water,
Spearing eels and trout and suckers,
Food for hungry, growing children,
In the cabins in the village—
Light House children, more descendants,
Children playing on the hill-side,
Children playing by the river,
Children swimming in the river,
In the pleasant days of summer.
Children playing by the cabins,
"Bar-wa-see" they said at sunset,
To the sun beyond the hill-top,
Western hill across the river.
To the moon, "Nu-garti-an-a"
As it rose o'er Ragged Mountain.
Thus they spoke in Indian accents.
Oft the children sang at twilight,
Sang in accents soft and plaintive,
Ere they closed their eyes in slumber,
Sang a prayer that Molly taught them,
Sang it softly in the twilight—
"Evil spirits are around us,
Keep us, Lord, all through the darkness.
By the stream a loon is calling,
Keep us, Lord, all through the darkness.
On the hill a fox is barking,
Keep us, Lord, all through the darkness.
In the village while we're sleeping,
Keep us, Lord, all through the darkness.
Da-wa-hee-gen, da wa-hee-gen."