Eight Miles to Church

Lyrics

[Intro]
Before the sun, the axle groans.
Before the first light, the boot finds the frozen mud.
The Sabbath is not a day of rest.
Not yet.

[Verse 1]
Samuel Ward pulls his wool cloak tight against the dark.
His wife hushes the youngest child, wrapped in a blanket on the ox-cart floor.
It's a long way to be good.
A long way to hear a word you're commanded to hear.
The breath of the beast steams in the air.
Two hours, if the path is clear.
Three, if God has sent a storm.
All this, for a hard bench and a cold room.
All this, for a sermon eight miles away.

[Chorus]
Eight miles to the meetinghouse door.
Eight miles through the woods and the wet.
We live at a great distance from the place of Public Worship.
By reason whereof, our families are rendered incapable.
Incapable of attending on the same.
Eight miles is too far to keep a soul.

[Verse 2]
The path is what the glacier left and the Nipmuc walked.
A rut in the spring thaw, a ribbon of dust in the heat.
A sheet of ice in January.
The children fall asleep, jostled by the ruts.
The women's faces, numb with the wind.
We see the steeple of Marlborough rise over the trees, and we are already tired.
The Lord’s day is half spent, just in the coming and the going.
And the silence on the long ride home is a different kind of prayer.

[Chorus]
Eight miles to the meetinghouse door.
Eight miles through the woods and the wet.
We live at a great distance from the place of Public Worship.
By reason whereof, our families are rendered incapable.
Incapable of attending on the same.
Eight miles is too far to keep a covenant.

[Bridge]
So a quill scratches by a tallow lamp in Joseph Woods's cabin.
Dipping the ink, forming the letters of a formal complaint.
A petition.
A reason.
It says, we are your sons and your daughters.
It says, our souls are as worthy as those who live near the bell.
It says, a distance of miles is a distance from God.
Let us build our own house.
Let us gather closer to home.

[Outro]
And the General Court in Boston rustles its papers.
And a clerk reads the words aloud.
July sixth.
Seventeen hundred and twenty-seven.
An Act for Erecting the South Westerly part.
A separate and distinct precinct.
And the eight miles... became the common green.
The journey was finally over.