Classic Poem

I am back in the court-house village;
The houses remain as before;
One or two old roofs may have perished,
But the neighbors have builded no more;
The river creeps under the drawbridge,
The wharves are a little more rotten,
The streets are as grassy and sandy,
And the college more lone and forgotten.

It is sad that the faces are stranger
When the place so familiar appears!
I came with my heart expectant—
It is only twenty years;
But the big boys stare at me queerly,
And the little boys flatter my tailor,
While the old men look suspicious
From the constable down to the jailer.

Only the innkeeper greets me
Like the long-expected one,
And makes me believe a little
In the tale of the prodigal son;
The fatted calf he slaughters,
The calf that is tough and arid,
Like the townsfolk's beauteous daughters,
Who have all “gone off and got married.”

There is Mary, with seven children,
And Marion, jilted and wan,
Saffronia gone to the shambles,
And Emma, gone under the lawn;
Proud Sally, an editor's conquest—
What a fate for an exquisite creature!
And Margie, whose husband is richest,
A note-shaving Methodist preacher.

Not so were the old-time preachers,
Who rode on this Eastern Shore;
I seek out the grim brick parsonage—
Two years 'twas my father's door;
I see blink northward the window,
In the gable so broad and bulky,
The lot of grass for the old gray mare,
And the stable for saddle and sulky.

There was his study lattice
Where often he wrote and prayed;
And there the garden wicket
Whence he came to promenade;
And bowed to white and to negro—
A pastor, no partisan—
The women said: “He is handsome!”
And the men said: “A gentleman!”

By starlight on Sunday morning
He kissed my mother adieu,
And threaded the Necks of the Chesapeake,
In the snow storm or the dew;
Old cross roads chapels grew temples
While he lit with his radiant face,
The truest and longest sermons
That ever brought sinners to grace.

No priest of the Roman conclave
Had tact or bonhommie more;
No brigand, armed to the gorget,
Felt safer the wild woods o'er;
Priest, friend, Franciscan and doctor,
At length his renown appears—
A spirit of civilization,
A statesman on man's frontiers!

And so, I shall quit the village,
Content my escutcheon to show;
Content that nothing is stirring,
But the worm that's at work below,
And the soul of the seed, hence wafted,
Which the Lord of the Harvest must seek,
In the little old-fashioned places,
That doze by the Chesapeake.