In 1938 a beloved Salisbury book shop owner and poet named W.C. Thurston served as editor of a book titled The Eastern Shore in Song and Story: A Tribute from its Loyal Sons and Daughters to a Pleasant Peninsula. It’s a compilation of essays about and samples from various writers and songwriters whose work sings the praises of our Eastern Shore.
I haven’t read the whole thing yet, just some snippets, but upon opening it I knew I would have to share parts of Mr. Thurston’s preface, as well as a poem he wrote as a dedication for the book. Here goes:
The Shore is poetically inclined—everybody writes verse. Bartenders, babies and business men, none are exempt. Little children dip their pens in purple ink and write of sunsets on the sea.
What can you do with a people like that, full of poetry and the joy of living?
The Eastern Shore is a most delightful land; the one best place, we think, in which to live and love and work. Many sweet singers have lifted up their voices in its praise, and poets have paid tribute to its loveliness in song and story.
It is the hope of the editors that in these pages you will catch some lilt of the melody, and view this garden of the gods from the poetical-romantic side; leaving its venerable and historic monuments to bask in the sun, where they have rested comfortably for so many years.
Dedication Poem
If I could write as a poet should,
I’d take the green of the hills;
The waving pines of the quiet wood,
And the music of rippling rills;
All these I’d weave in a verse sublime,
With colors of the morning’s glow,
‘Then dedicate that faltering rime
To the dear old Eastern Shore.
One more snippet, this from an introduction to the book written by Thomas H. Spence, who grew up in Snow Hill, Md. and went on to a notable career as a professor of languages and philosophy at the University of Maryland.
Were I to select a phase … which has distinguished my own people, from the Sassafras to the Pocomoke, it would be the stressing of home and neighbors, and the high tribute to the man
who has passed to the great beyond is “He was a good neighbor.”
The photo up top here shows a gaggle of skipjacks at Deal Island, Md. in 1938, the same year Mr. Thurston’s book was published. I came across it on a Facebook page titled Skipjack Heritage, Inc.
–posted by Jim Duffy for Secrets of the Eastern Shore/Whimbrel Creations LLC in May 2025. Thanks for spending a little time on this site!
