dots-menu
×

Home  »  Poems of Places An Anthology in 31 Volumes  »  At Hawthorne’s Grave

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

New England: Concord (Musketaquid), Mass.

At Hawthorne’s Grave

By Charlotte Fiske Bates (1838–1916)

The place is marked by the one word “Hawthorne.”

CAN any famous marble whose broad shaft

Is lettered full with words of life and death,

Whose base and cap assert the sculptor’s craft

In some device that reins the rapid breath;

Can any meet the eye with such a power

As just this fragrant word of simple place?

Had ever small, white stone so rich a dower?

Ever such sovereignty, so little space

As this? Yet best befitted in a word;

Naught would one add for majesty of Fame,

Yet standing here the fancy in me stirred

To hedge his rest with that which bears his name,

That Nature might in his memorial share,

Divulging, with her blossoms, who lies there.