dots-menu
×

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

New England: Cambridge, Mass.

Mount Auburn

By William Winter (1836–1917)

(Excerpt)

AUBURN! sweet Auburn! lovely and beloved!

Peace real, peace lasting, soul-enamoured peace,

The low soft-breathing dreaminess of death

Is in thee and around thee; yea, thou art

The type of that which only death can bring,

Quiet forgetfulness and long repose.

Sweetness is thine ineffable; the dead

Repose as if in palaces; their sleep

So beauteous seems, so chaste, so calm, so still,

That one might almost envy them the bliss

Of such pure slumber; freed, forever freed,

From all the bitter grief of this cold world,

Its void pretences, shallow sympathies,

And crumbling friendships comfortless and cold.

What love betrayed—how many a broken heart,

What misery—what degradation sleeps

Beneath thy beauteous bosom! now at rest,

Where pain can weary not, nor passion enter in.

*****