Family Trees

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FAMILY TREES

You boast about your ancient line,
But listen, stranger, unto mine:

You trace your lineage afar,
Back to the heroes of the war
Fought that a country might be free;
Yea, farther — to a stormy sea
Where winter’s angry billows tossed,
O’er which your Pilgrim Fathers crossed.
Nay, more — through yellow, dusty tomes
You trace your name to English homes
Before the distant, unknown West
Lay open to a world’s behest;
Yea, back to days of those Crusades
When Turk and Christian crossed their blades,
You point with pride to ancient names,
To powdered sires and painted dames;
You boast of this — your family tree;
Now listen, stranger, unto me:

When armored knights and gallant squires,
Your own beloved, honored sires,
Were in their infants’ blankets rolled,
My fathers’ youngest sons were old;
When they broke forth in infant tears
My fathers’ heads were crowned with years,
Yea, ere the mighty Saxon host
Of which you sing had touched the coast,
Looked back as far as you look now.
Yea, when the Druids trod the wood,
My venerable fathers stood
And gazed through misty centuries
As far as even Memory sees.
When Britain’s eldest first beheld
The light, my fathers then were eld.
You of the splendid ancestry,
Who boast about your family tree,

Consider, stranger, this of mine —
Bethink the lineage of a Pine.

DOUGLAS MALLOCH

***
Title: The Melody of Earth: An Anthology of Garden and Nature Poems From Present-day Poets
Selected and Arranged By: Mrs. Waldo Richards
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1918

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My Mother’s Bible

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My Mother’s Bible.

BY GEORGE P. MORRIS.

This book is all that’s left me now!
Tears will unbidden start;
With faltering lip and throbbing brow,
I press it to my heart.
For many generations past,
Here is our family tree;
My Mother’s hands this Bible clasped;
She, dying, gave it me.

Ah! well do I remember those
Whose names these records bear;
Who round the hearthstone used to close
After the evening prayer;
And speak of what these pages said,
In tones my heart would thrill!
Though they are living with the dead,
Here are they living still!

My Father read this Holy Book
To brothers, sisters dear;
How calm was my poor mother’s look,
Who lov’d God’s word to hear;
Her angel face — I see it yet!
What thronging memories come!
Again that little group is met
Within the halls of home!

Thou truest friend man ever knew,
Thy constancy I’ve tried;
Where all were false I found thee true,
My counsellor and guide.
The mines of earth no treasures give
That could this volume buy;
In teaching me the way to live,
It taught me how to die.

Ohio Repository, The (Canton, Ohio) 12 Jun 1845

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