An excerpt from his poem after the house was struck by lightning in Sept 1878
“The lightning came leaping down, the bricks and mortars were strewn around
With a mighty tremor like a crash, it shook the house, window pane and sash.
Up the farmer jumped out of bed, and ran upstairs to see if the men were dead.
His wife was in the greatest alarm, for fear that anybody had suffered harm.
But the old,old story of death is reversed, and all her fears are quickly dispersed.
For nothing is dead but the cat, in dining room, stretched on the mat.
Now mourning is breaking he swears by yonder sun, to build me a new house, is all that is to be done.”