Page:The Recluse by W Paul Cook.djvu/11

 throughout the state. His songs were many of them improvisations, composed on the spur of the moment; and, while most of them lack elegance and finish, they were roughly rythmicalrhythmical [sic], trite and spicy—exactly suited to the spirit and culture of a pioneer people.

It is said of Rowley that he was a phenomenal extemporizer, being able and ready, at a moment’s notice, to compose a poem on any subject that might be proposed to him. This rare faculty added tremendously to his popularity; and we are not surprised, therefore, to find that his verse is generally marked by a spirit of camaraderie or bonhommiebonhomie [sic]. One of his most noted poems, beginning “Come All Ye Laboring Hands”, is an invitation to the evicted tenants of New York state to come make their homes in Vermont, where there would be no landlords to dispossesdispossess [sic] them of their hard-earned lands or homesteads. It had its effect in populating some of the fertile hillsides of south-western Vermont. Rowley’s poetry did much toward building up among our early settlers that spirit of local state pride and fealty which has since distinguished the sons and daughters of the “Green Mountain State.” He made his early readers feel that, first of all, they were Vermonters—members of a homogeneous and democratic community—that their interests were one, their aspirations mutually dependent. It was this spirit of loyalty to the little nation-state that finally preserved its political and social unity, achieved its independence, keeping it respected at home and abroad till it at last achieved an honored and distinct place in the Union in 1791. Rowley died at Cold Springs in West Haven, Vt., August, 1796. Six years later, 1802, some of his verse, “Selections and Miscellaneous Works of Thomas Rowley”, was published, (Pamphlet, 23 pp.) The following excerpts are typical of his genius:

If I withhold my hand
 * From what I am forbid,

Why then should I be damned
 * For what I never did?

If I let loose my hand
 * And say it was decreed,

You say I shall be damned
 * Because I don’t take heed.