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Michigan OAKLAND COUNTY
Here were love and hate, joy and sorrow, struggle that brought victory. It may be indolence which came near defeat. Here prattled the infant, heedless of the future, and here tottered old age with thoughts bent on the past. Some of these homes went to ruin when their occupants " moved out of the old house into the new," many when they were taken to their last resting place. Of the long list which we have read, how many once lived where these memorial stones guard the ashes of the past? They lie in yonder churchyard, in the outlying cemeteries of the town, and elsewhere throughout the land. It is as true of them as it was of those over whom Gray wrote his immortal elegy:
For them no more the blazing fire shall burn,
Or busy housewife ply the evening care ; No children run to lisp their sire's return,
Or climb his knee the envied kiss to share.
458
Pioneer Society of Michigan.
Oft did the harvest to their sickle yield,
Their furrow oft the stubborn glebe has spoke;
How jocund did they drive their team a-field;
How bow'd the woods beneath their sturdy stroke!
Let not ambition mock their useful toil,
Their homely joys, and destiny obscure; •
Nor grandeur hear, with a disdainful smile, The short and simple annals of the poor.
Perhaps in this neglected spot is laid
Some heart once pregnant with celestial fire
Hands, that the rod of empire might have swayed, Or waked to ecstacy the living lyre.
Some village Hampden that with dauntless breast,
The little tyrant of his fields withstood; Some mute, inglorious Milton here may rest,
Some Cromwell guiltless of his country's blood.
Oakland Co. Michigan
Page 30
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