God's-Acre by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
The speaker welcomes the Saxon name for a burial ground as a blessing on graves and a comfort to mourners. Comparing the buried dead to seeds, the speaker affirms faith in resurrection, imagines the good flowering immortally after the final harvest, and calls on Death to prepare the furrows.
By Henry Wadsworth Longfellow · Genre: Religious Poetry, Meditative Poetry · 237 words
First lines
I like that ancient Saxon phrase, which calls / The burial-ground God's-Acre! It is just; / It consecrates each grave within its walls, / And breathes a benison o'er the sleeping dust.
God's-Acre! Yes, that blessed name imparts / Comfort to those, who in the grave have sown / The seed that they had garnered in their hearts, / Their bread of life, alas! no more their own.
Into its furrows shall we all be cast, / In the sure faith, that we shall rise again / At the great harvest, when the archangel's blast / Shall winnow, like a fan, the chaff and grain.
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God's-Acre is listed on Textopian as a poem by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, dated Date unknown.
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- Work type: Poem
- Author: Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
- Date: Date unknown
- Language: English
- Genres: Religious Poetry, Meditative Poetry
- Length: 237 words
- Structure: 1 section, 5 paragraphs
- Reading fit: Easy (6th Grade)
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- Work identity for God's-Acre by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
- Canonical title URL and first readable passage URL
- Genre and topic classification from the Textopian catalog
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Genres
- Religious Poetry — The rhymed stanzas affirm resurrection and envision an archangel's harvest followed by immortal life for the good.
- Meditative Poetry — The speaker reflects on a name for burial grounds, developing its implications through images of sowing, harvest, and flowering.
Tags
burial grounds · resurrection · grief · Christian faith · agricultural metaphor