Evelyn Sampson’s Pilgrim Fathers

Evelyn Sampson

Happy Thanksgiving to my American readers, and to everyone else.

Today, I am honoured to present a poem written by my beautiful mother-in-law, Evelyn Sampson, who died in 1974, long before I met her son. Her gentle and loving spirit has been with us always. She was a poet as a young adolescent, and many of her poems were published in Chicago newspapers. Recently, when I was reading her poetry, I came across one about the pilgrims, which gave me chills considering that her only child was to be born on American Thanksgiving, and that her grandson would be a Mayflower descendant.

Pilgrim Fathers

They came for peace and happiness,

The sisters, sons, and mothers.

For freedom in a far-away land

They came, those Pilgrim fathers!

Much they suffered and endured

For liberty’s dear sake.

And many loved ones were laid to rest

From a sleep they would never wake.

But in them was a spirit true,

And tho the bitter cold made them numb,

They determined in, stay and pave a way

For the generations to come.

Ah, gone are they now - gone forever -

‘Neath the cool green grass for many a day.

Yet the spirit so true that has sprung from them

Shall never fade away.

                                          

                                By Evelyn Sampson