Contents -BIBLIOGRAPHIC RECORD

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

Middle States: Brooklyn, N. Y.

Going to Greenwood

By Henry Morford (1823–1881)

MARY and I were going together

Down to Greenwood’s City of Rest;—

Going down, in the summer weather,

Where slept the friends we had loved the best.

I had a sister, loved and cherished,

Waiting there my day of doom;—

Mary two babes that together perished

Like twin roses in their bloom.

Green, we knew, was the grass above them,

Bright the flowers, like Heaven’s tears,

Scattered by hands we had taught to love them,

Every sunny day for years.

Mary and I were going together,

Some bright day,—as dear friends come

With the cheerful smile of sunny weather,—

To visit our dead in their quiet home.

We would sit fair flowers wreathing

For the marble overhead;

Hearing the birds sing, as if breathing

Our own love for the early dead.

Mary and I, through all the seasons,

Set we times for our pilgrim day;

Hindered yet by a hundred reasons,

Till the summer had passed away.

Autumn is here with its voice of wailing,

Greenwood’s walks are bleak and bare;

Nature’s beauty is sinking, failing,

Mary has gone before me there.

The City of Rest has a fair new-comer;

O’er Mary’s grave the sad winds moan:

When the skies are bright, next summer,

I shall go to Greenwood alone.