The Jewish Cemetery at Newport
Jewish graves beside a busy seaport prompt a speaker to ask what Christian persecution brought their occupants across the sea. The speaker contrasts a closed synagogue with tended graves, recalls Jewish exile, endurance, and ancestral traditions, and concludes that dead nations cannot rise again.
By Henry Wadsworth Longfellow · Genre: Elegiac Poetry, Meditative Poetry · 665 words
First lines
How strange it seems! These Hebrews in their graves, / Close by the street of this fair seaport town, / Silent beside the never-silent waves, / At rest in all this moving up and down!
The trees are white with dust, that o'er their sleep / Wave their broad curtains in the south-wind's breath, / While underneath such leafy tents they keep / The long, mysterious Exodus of Death.
Genres
- Elegiac Poetry — The speaker reflects on Jewish burial stones, the departed community, and the remembrance preserved through care of its graves.
- Meditative Poetry — Observations of the cemetery lead to questions about persecution and migration, then to a concluding assertion about the death of nations.
Tags
Jewish cemeteries · religious persecution · exile · remembrance · mortality · Jewish faith
What this Textopian page supports
The Jewish Cemetery at Newport is listed on Textopian as a poem by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, dated Date unknown.
This source record anchors work identity, reading entry points, and catalog context for checking claims about the work.
- Work type: Poem
- Author: Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
- Date: Date unknown
- Language: English
- Genres: Elegiac Poetry, Meditative Poetry
- Length: 665 words
- Structure: 1 section, 15 paragraphs
- Reading fit: Fairly Easy (7th Grade)
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- Work identity for The Jewish Cemetery at Newport by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
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