We all rode the circuit then, all had to,
Too many souls in the churchless desert
Begging for the consolation of the gospel
And someone to break the bread.
Many had never heard a sermon before,
Nor a prayer: knew only whisky and the ax.
Hiwassee, Jackson Purchase, Arkansaw,
The Sangamon country, I rode them all,
Carried bell and hobble for the horse,
Crackers and cheese and a tin cup for myself.
Some nights I came along a friendly cabin
Where I could lay my blanket on the floor;
At dawn the owner’d hunt breakfast
And we’d sit talking of the soil
And the Lord, a rabbit roasting.
Just as many nights I slept beneath
The firmament, saddle-bags for a pillow.
Later a boy rode with me, recited
His lessons as we rode: Latin, Greek,
Astronomy, natural and moral philosophy.
We needed no seminaries.
Man and woman, meek and proud,
Papist and infidel, to all I preached
The same truths of hell and perfidy,
Of eternity and Christ.
Come to the mourner’s bench and kneel,
I pled, come to the woods and pray,
Come drink, O brothers and sisters, the wine.
Don’t ye know that inward throbbing of heart?
Can’t ye feel the Lord tugging at your soul,
Like mud sucking at a mule’s hooves?
They’d get happy and shake,
Fall out like rotten trees; they wept.
One scoundrel, six-foot-one and too strong
For the gospel, hugged the pulpit, hollering,
“I’ll not fall out, I won’t!” till he did.
God has enough strength
And has no need for the strong.
The last war was a sermon most terrible.
Those boys could not help but see deeper
Inside men to the deepest bile.
Many a boy found, at last,
His Savior in his dying rasp.
The war was crueler to those who survived;
Victory curdled them, and somehow all
Found victory. They confuse the sin of Cain
For Armageddon and think millennium is come.
Revivals are no more in this country,
No more shouting of Bible truths.
The churches are chartered boards of popery
Erecting universities on credit. I am asked
To speak at ribbon-cutting ceremonies:
The last of the frontier preachers!
They understand not, mistake it all
For some vulgar buckskin jaunt.
I tell them what I told Anna when
Our eldest daughter died and I was
Many weeks away: I have given myself
To the Lord to serve in his vineyard
And am not at liberty, like other men,
To leave my Master’s work.
Harper’s Weekly, Oct. 12, 1867 (Internet Archive)
Note: This poem was inspired by B. W. McDonnold’s History of the Cumberland Presbyterian Church (Nashville, 1888), especially the description on page 89. The poem concludes with a near-verbatim quote from Robert Donnell, as recorded by David Lowry in his Life and Labors of the Late Rev. Robert Donnell, of Alabama, Minister of the Gospel in the Cumberland Presbyterian Church (Alton, IL, 1867), page 45.