Lemuel P. Grant: The Gift of Green

Lyrics

[Intro]
Lemuel.
A name from Frankfort, Maine, born in 1812.
You came south and learned to speak a new language.
The language of steel on steel.
Of coal smoke and schedules.

[Verse 1]
You drew the lines that made a city.
Heard the clang of the hammer on the spike.
The Georgia Railroad, the Macon and Western.
Terminus, rising from the red clay on a timetable you designed.
Your mind was full of angles, grades, and iron.
A world measured and laid straight.
But your heart, it seems, remembered curves.
The gentle slope of a hill, the bend of a creek.

[Chorus]
And then, one day, you gave a piece away.
Not the iron, but the earth it rested on.
Not the schedule, but the slow turn of the seasons.
One hundred acres of quiet.
A gift of green from a man of steel.

[Verse 2]
Eighteen eighty-three.
Seventy-one years had settled in your hands.
And you signed the deed that gave away your woods.
Your personal land.
They say you wanted to call it 'Atlanta Park.'
A modest man's request, quietly denied.
They gave it your name instead.
As if the gift needed a signature for all time.

[Chorus]
And so you gave a piece away.
Not the iron, but the earth it rested on.
Not the schedule, but the slow turn of the seasons.
One hundred acres of quiet.
A gift of green from a man of steel.

[Bridge]
And we walk here now, Lemuel.
We walk on the ground you gave.
The sound is different here.
Not the train's lonesome whistle, but a child's laugh.
Not the engine's hiss, but the sound of wind in the magnolias.

[Outro]
The rails you laid still run through this town.
But this is your true legacy.
This breathing space.
Your straightest line was the one you drew around this park.
Thank you.