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A Family Record

by Oliver Wendell Holmes

WOODSTOCK, CONN., JULY 4, 1877

Not to myself this breath of vesper song,

Not to these patient friends, this kindly throng,

Not to this hallowed morning, though it be

Our summer Christmas, Freedom's jubilee,

When every summit, topmast, steeple, tower,

That owns her empire spreads her starry flower,

Its blood-streaked leaves in heaven's benignant dew

Washed clean from every crimson stain they knew, -

No, not to these the passing thrills belong

That steal my breath to hush themselves with song.

These moments all are memory's; I have come

To speak with lips that rather should be dumb;

For what are words? At every step I tread

The dust that wore the footprints of the dead

But for whose life my life had never known

This faded vesture which it calls its own.

Here sleeps my father's sire, and they who gave

That earlier life here found their peaceful grave.

In days gone by I sought the hallowed ground;

Climbed yon long slope; the sacred spot I found

Where all unsullied lies the winter snow,

Where all ungathered spring's pale violets blow,

And tracked from stone to stone the Saxon name

That marks the blood I need not blush to claim,

Blood such as warmed the Pilgrim sons of toil,

Who held from God the charter of the soil.

I come an alien to your hills and plains,

Yet feel your birthright tingling in my veins;

Mine are this changing prospect's sun and shade,

In full-blown summer's bridal pomp arrayed;

Mine these fair hillsides and the vales between;

Mine the sweet streams that lend their brightening green;

I breathed your air - the sunlit landscape smiled;

I touch your soil - it knows its children's child;

Throned in my heart your heritage is mine;

I claim it all by memory's right divine

Waking, I dream. Before my vacant eyes

In long procession shadowy forms arise;

Far through the vista of the silent years

I see a venturous band; the pioneers,

Who let the sunlight through the forest's gloom,

Who bade the harvest wave, the garden bloom.

Hark! loud resounds the bare-armed settler's axe,

See where the stealthy panther left his tracks!

As fierce, as stealthy creeps the skulking foe

With stone-tipped shaft and sinew-corded bow;

Soon shall he vanish from his ancient reign,

Leave his last cornfield to the coming train,

Quit the green margin of the wave he drinks,

For haunts that hide the wild-cat and the lynx.

But who the Youth his glistening axe that swings

To smite the pine that shows a hundred rings?

His features? - something in his look I find

That calls the semblance of my race to mind.

His name? - my own; and that which goes before

The same that once the loved disciple bore.

Young, brave, discreet, the father of a line

Whose voiceless lives have found a voice in mine;

Thinned by unnumbered currents though they be,

Thanks for the ruddy drops I claim from thee!

The seasons pass; the roses come and go;

Snows fall and melt; the waters freeze and flow;

The boys are men; the girls, grown tall and fair,

Have found their mates; a gravestone here and there

Tells where the fathers lie; the silvered hair

Of some bent patriarch yet recalls the time

That saw his feet the northern hillside climb,

A pilgrim from the pilgrims far away,

The godly men, the dwellers by the bay.

On many a hearthstone burns the cheerful fire;

The schoolhouse porch, the heavenward pointing spire

Proclaim in letters every eye can read,

Knowledge and Faith, the new world's simple creed.

Hush! 't is the Sabbath's silence-stricken morn

No feet must wander through the tasselled corn;

No merry children laugh around the door,

No idle playthings strew the sanded floor;

The law of Moses lays its awful ban

On all that stirs; here comes the tithing-man

At last the solemn hour of worship calls;

Slowly they gather in the sacred walls;

Man in his strength and age with knotted staff,

And boyhood aching for its week-day laugh,

The toil-worn mother with the child she leads,

The maiden, lovely in her golden beads, -

The popish symbols round her neck she wears,

But on them counts her lovers, not her prayers, -

Those youths in homespun suits and ribboned queues,

Whose hearts are beating in the high-backed pews.

The pastor rises; looks along the seats

With searching eye; each wonted face he meets;

Asks heavenly guidance; finds the chapter's place

That tells some tale of Israel's stubborn race;

Gives out the sacred song; all voices join,

For no quartette extorts their scanty coin;

Then while both hands their black-gloved palms display,

Lifts his gray head, and murmurs, "Let us pray!"

And pray he does! as one that never fears

To plead unanswered by the God that hears;

What if he dwells on many a fact as though

Some things Heaven knew not which it ought to know, -

Thanks God for all his favors past, and yet,

Tells Him there's something He must not forget;

Such are the prayers his people love to hear, -

See how the Deacon slants his listening ear!

What! look once more! Nay, surely there I trace

The hinted outlines of a well-known face!

Not those the lips for laughter to beguile,

Yet round their corners lurks an embryo smile,

The same on other lips my childhood knew

That scarce the Sabbath's mastery could subdue.

Him too my lineage gives me leave to claim, -

The good, grave man that bears the Psalmist's name.

And still in ceaseless round the seasons passed;

Spring piped her carol; Autumn blew his blast;

Babes waxed to manhood; manhood shrunk to age;

Life's worn-out players tottered off the stage;

The few are many; boys have grown to men

Since Putnam dragged the wolf from Pomfret's den;

Our new-old Woodstock is a thriving town;

Brave are her children; faithful to the crown;

Her soldiers' steel the savage redskin knows;

Their blood has crimsoned his Canadian snows.

And now once more along the quiet vale

Rings the dread call that turns the mothers pale;

Full well they know the valorous heat that runs

In every pulse-beat of their loyal sons;

Who would not bleed in good King George's cause

When England's lion shows his teeth and claws?

With glittering firelocks on the village green

In proud array a martial band is seen;

You know what names those ancient rosters hold, -

Whose belts were buckled when the drum-beat rolled, -

But mark their Captain! tell us, who is he?

On his brown face that same old look I see

Yes! from the homestead's still retreat he came,

Whose peaceful owner bore the Psalmist's name;

The same his own. Well, Israel's glorious king

Who struck the harp could also whirl the sling, -

Breathe in his song a penitential sigh

And smite the sons of Amalek hip and thigh:

These shared their task; one deaconed out the psalm,

One slashed the scalping hell-hounds of calm;

The praying father's pious work is done,

Now sword in hand steps forth the fighting son.

On many a field he fought in wilds afar;

See on his swarthy cheek the bullet's scar!

There hangs a murderous tomahawk; beneath,

Without its blade, a knife's embroidered sheath;

Save for the stroke his trusty weapon dealt

His scalp had dangled at their owner's belt;

But not for him such fate; he lived to see

The bloodier strife that made our nation free,

To serve with willing toil, with skilful hand,

The war-worn saviors of the bleeding land.

His wasting life to others' needs he gave, -

Sought rest in home and found it in the grave.

See where the stones life's brief memorials keep,

The tablet telling where he "fell on sleep," -

Watched by a winged cherub's rayless eye, -

A scroll above that says we all must die, -

Those saddening lines beneath, the "Night-Thoughts" lent:

So stands the Soldier's, Surgeon's monument.

Ah! at a glance my filial eye divines

The scholar son in those remembered lines.

The Scholar Son. His hand my footsteps led.

No more the dim unreal past I tread.

O thou whose breathing form was once so dear,

Whose cheering voice was music to my ear,

Art thou not with me as my feet pursue

The village paths so well thy boyhood knew,

Along the tangled margin of the stream

Whose murmurs blended with thine infant dream,

Or climb the hill, or thread the wooded vale,

Or seek the wave where gleams yon distant sail,

Or the old homestead's narrowed bounds explore,

Where sloped the roof that sheds the rains no more,

Where one last relic still remains to tell

Here stood thy home, - the memory-haunted well,

Whose waters quench a deeper thirst than thine,

Changed at my lips to sacramental wine, -

Art thou not with me, as I fondly trace

The scanty records of thine honored race,

Call up the forms that earlier years have known,

And spell the legend of each slanted stone?

With thoughts of thee my loving verse began,

Not for the critic's curious eye to scan,

Not for the many listeners, but the few

Whose fathers trod the paths my fathers knew;

Still in my heart thy loved remembrance burns;

Still to my lips thy cherished name returns;

Could I but feel thy gracious presence near

Amid the groves that once to thee were dear

Could but my trembling lips with mortal speech

Thy listening ear for one brief moment reach!

How vain the dream! The pallid voyager's track

No sign betrays; he sends no message back.

No word from thee since evening's shadow fell

On thy cold forehead with my long farewell, -

Now from the margin of the silent sea,

Take my last offering ere I cross to thee!