Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, ed. Poems of Places: An Anthology in 31 Volumes.
America: Vols. XXV–XXIX. 1876–79.

New England: Pemaquid, Me.

God’s Acre at Old Pemaquid

By Anonymous

WHERE ocean breezes sweep across the restless deep

It stands, with headstones quaint with sculpture rude,

Its green turf thickly sown with dust of lives unknown,

Like withered leaves on autumn pathway strewed.

Willow nor cypress bough shadow the dead below,

Nor mournful yew, by summer’s soft breath stirred;

The dawn, and twilight’s fall, never made musical

By carol clear of some sweet-throated bird.

Not from the sunny earth, her tones of sylvan mirth,

Her flowery meads, and plains of waving corn,

But from the treacherous waves, their rocks and sparry caves,

Unto their rest were these sad sleepers borne.

Perchance they had their home far from the crested foam,

And blue seas rippling o’er the pink-lipped shells.

Some green vale far away, where sweet-voiced waters play,

And the bee murmurs in the wild-flower’s bells.

O churchyard drear and lone! haunted by voices gone

And silent feet, and lives like rose leaves shed,

Thy dust shall yet arise, when from our earthly skies

Mists fade away and seas give up their dead.