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Home  »  Poems of Places An Anthology in 31 Volumes  »  Parker Cleaveland

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

New England: Brunswick, Me.

Parker Cleaveland

By Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807–1882)

AMONG the many lives that I have known,

None I remember more serene and sweet,

More rounded in itself and more complete,

Than his, who lies beneath this funeral stone.

These pines, that murmur in low monotone,

These walks frequented by scholastic feet,

Were all his world; but in this calm retreat

For him the teacher’s chair became a throne.

With fond affection memory loves to dwell

On the old days, when his example made

A pastime of the toil of tongue and pen;

And now, amid the groves he loved so well

That naught could lure him from their grateful shade,

He sleeps, but wakes elsewhere, for God hath said, Amen!