For many families divided over national politics, Thanksgiving 2016 will be a painful one. But perhaps there’s some comfort to be found in an American poet’s vision of a beautiful Thanksgiving holiday, a reminder of the timeless dream of the capacity for love, family, and friendship to bridge difference and cherish unity.

While the poet’s name is not widely known today, her legacy lives on through the children’s poem she wrote for Thanksgiving, which has been passed down for generations in the lyrics of a classic holiday song. Lydia Maria Child (1802-1880) wrote more than children’s literature. She was a social activist who protested slavery and fought for the rights of women and Native Americans. She was also a popular and prolific author and founder of the nation’s first children’s magazine, The Juvenile Miscellany.

But in 1833, Child sacrificed her popularity when she published a radical anti-slavery tract which made an argument that was unthinkable to most Americans: she called for the abolition of slavery and the full enfranchisement and inclusion of freed slaves into American society. As a result – a result she fully expected in writing an uncompromising critique of slavery and white supremacy – her literary reputation suffered and subscriptions to her children’s magazine plummeted.

How did Child respond to her new branding as a dangerous radical? She threw herself even more fervently into the anti-slavery movement. In order to make her message more palatable to middle-class white American readers, she began to write romantic, family-based stories that exposed the horrors of slavery, stories that built a growing audience of Americans sympathetic to the plight of slaves and paved the way for the phenomenal success of Harriet Beecher Stowe’s conservative abolitionist novel, Uncle Tom’s Cabin.

While she contributed prolifically to abolitionism and other social reform movements, Child kept writing stories and poems for children, too. Some say she did so to support herself financially. That may be true; social activism has never been lucrative. But also, as she witnessed the increasing divisions, violence, and turmoil of her beloved nation as it teetered toward a civil war, Child filled the imaginations of American children with hope, beauty, and joy, and wistful promises of security, family, and unity.

I’ve often lamented the fact that this once-famous woman writer is unknown today with the exception of the single poem of hers that has nestled into the American consciousness through a Christmas song. But also, it’s fitting that her legacy lingers in the joyful image of a child’s blissful journey to his grandparents’ house in celebration of a holiday about gratitude. Hearth, home, family, an exhilarating gallop through the crisp elements of wind and wild: Child’s hopeful vision for a future prosperity and security that would be shared by all American children.

The New-England Boy’s Song About Thanksgiving Day

By Lydia Maria Child, 1844

Over the river, and through the wood,

to Grandfather’s house we go;

the horse knows the way to carry the sleigh

through the white and drifted snow.

Over the river, and through the wood,

to Grandfather’s house away!

We would not stop for doll or top,

for ’tis Thanksgiving Day.

Over the river, and through the wood —

oh, how the wind does blow!

It stings the toes and bites the nose,

as over the ground we go.

Over the river, and through the wood.

with a clear blue winter sky,

The dogs do bark and the children hark,

as we go jingling by.

Over the river, and through the wood,

to have a first-rate play.

Hear the bells ring, “Ting a ling ding!”

Hurray for Thanksgiving Day!

Over the river, and through the wood —

no matter for winds that blow;

Or if we get the sleigh upset

into a bank of snow.

Over the river, and through the wood,

to see little John and Ann;

We will kiss them all, and play snowball

and stay as long as we can.

Over the river, and through the wood,

trot fast my dapple gray!

Spring over the ground like a hunting-hound!

For ’tis Thanksgiving Day.

Over the river, and through the wood

and straight through the barnyard gate.

We seem to go extremely slow —

it is so hard to wait!

Over the river, and through the wood —

Old Jowler hears our bells;

He shakes his paw with a loud bow-wow,

and thus the news he tells.

Over the river, and through the wood —

when Grandmother sees us come,

She will say, “O, dear, the children are here,

bring pie for everyone.”

Over the river, and through the wood —

now Grandmothers cap I spy!

Hurrah for the fun! Is the pudding done?

Hurrah for the pumpkin pie!

Emily VanDette is an associate professor of English at the State University of New York at Fredonia. Her views do not represent those of her employer.