Lemuel P. Grant: The Gift of Green

Lyrics

[Intro]
Lemuel. 
Did you feel the breeze that day?
October, eighteen eighty-three.
The rustle of the legal parchment in your hands.

[Verse 1]
A man from Frankfort, Maine.
Cold salt air in your bones, I imagine.
You came south for the iron, for the measure of the line.
Surveying cuts through Georgia clay.
You drew the future on a map, Lemuel.
And this patch, this rise of land southeast of the city...
This was your farm.
Your home, Grant Park Place.
All those years of lines and ties and engines...
Did you know this would be your final survey?

[Chorus]
One hundred acres.
A signature on a deed of gift.
And the words, quiet as prayer...
For the purpose of a public park...
And a pleasure ground.
Just like that.
The gift of green.

[Verse 2]
You drew lines of defense for the war.
Dug the earth for protection, not for planting.
I wonder if you thought of that, giving this land away.
This ground that heard the cannons' echo.
You, the engineer of conflict,
now drafting a charter for peace.
Giving away the view from your own front door.
So that anyone could see it.
For nothing.

[Chorus]
One hundred acres.
A signature on a deed of gift.
And the words, now a promise...
For the purpose of a public park...
And a pleasure ground.
Just like that.
The gift of green.

[Bridge]
Six years later, the gates opened.
Eighty-nine.
Did you hear the children? 
Did you see the families walking where your fences used to be?
Your name isn't just on a history page, Lemuel.
It's on the sign where the kids meet for swings.
It's whispered by the wind in the old oaks.

[Outro]
The parchment turned to dust long ago.
But the pleasure ground remains.
The pleasure ground...