The poem interested me, young as I was, not less than the strange figure of the old poet who lived unknown in the backwoods, and who died, I dare say, with many a finer song in his heart.  I remember how he stood in the firelight and chanted the words in a sing-song tone.  He gave us that rude copy of the poem, and here it is: 

  The robin’s wedding

  Young robin red breast hed a beautiful nest an’ he says to his love says he: 
  It’s ready now on a rocking bough
  In the top of a maple tree. 
  I’ve lined it with down an’ the velvet brown on the waist of a bumble-bee.

  They were married next day, in the land o’ the hay, the lady bird an’ he. 
  The bobolink came an’ the wife o’ the same
  An’ the lark an’ the fiddle de dee. 
  An’ the crow came down in a minister gown — there was nothing
    that he didn’t see.

  He fluttered his wing as they ast him to sing an’ he tried fer t’ clear
      out his throat;
  He hemmed an’ he hawed an’ be hawked an’ he cawed
  But he couldn’t deliver a note. 
  The swallow was there an’ he ushered each pair with his linsey an’
      claw hammer coat.

  The bobolink tried fer t’ flirt with the bride in a way thet was sassy
      an’ bold. 
  An’ the notes that he took as he shivered an’ shook
  Hed a sound like the jingle of gold. 
  He sat on a briar an’ laughed at the choir an’ said thet the music was old.

  The sexton he came — Mr Spider by name — a citizen hairy and grey. 
  His rope in a steeple, he called the good people
  That live in the land o’ the hay. 
  The ants an’ the squgs an’ the crickets an’ bugs — came out in a
      mighty array.

  Some came down from Barleytown an’ the neighbouring city o’ Rye. 
  An’ the little black people they climbed every steeple
  An’ sat looking up at the sky. 
  They came fer t’ see what a wedding might be an’ they
     furnished the cake an’ the pie.

I remember he turned to me when he had finished and took one of my small hands and held it in his hard palm and looked at it and then into my face.

‘Ah, boy!’ he said, ’your way shall lead you far from here, and you shall get learning and wealth and win — victories.’

‘What nonsense are you talking, Jed Ferry?’ said Uncle Eb.

‘O, you all think I’m a fool an’ a humbug, ’cos I look it.  Why, Eben Holden, if you was what ye looked, ye’d be in the presidential chair.  Folks here ‘n the valley think o’ nuthin’ but hard work — most uv ’em, an’ I tell ye now this boy ain’t a goin’ t’ be wuth putty on a farm.  Look a’ them slender hands.

‘There was a man come to me the other day an’ wanted t’ hev a poem ‘bout his wife that hed jes’ died.  I ast him t’ tell me all ’bout her.

‘"Wall,” said he, after he had scratched his head an’ thought a minute, “she was a dretful good woman t’ work.”