Ancestors of Forrest Gene PLUMSTEAD Sr
MY ANCESTORS
MY ANCESTORS
I do not know their pedigree,
Their breeding or their worth,
But this I know, they gave to me
The love of common earth,
The smell of furrows brown and wet,
The love of sun and rain,
Their gardens, sweet with mignonette,
Will live in me again.
And someone nurtured by the sea,
Who loved her wind and spray,
Passed down across the years to me
The joy that's mine today.
For I can smell the salty breath
When quiet tides are low
Because some person living there
Had loved it long ago.
Because some unremembered soul
Was glad of firelight
I am content with little rooms
That shut me from the night.
And when I hear the dawn come up,
All stormy from the sea,
A thankful fisherman at down
Is glad again in me.
For songs that beat against my heart,
From some dim fountain fed,
Among the quiet dead.
And crops that ripen in the sun
Their golden gracious yields
Are some dim father's of the race
Who tended little fields
And so this soul and blood of me
Are just a living link
That's welded in the race of men
Who live and move and think.
And all that's fine and good and clean.
The substance and the sum
A part of all who went before
The seem of all to come.
Special thanks to Vernon Cook
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