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Home  »  Poems of Places An Anthology in 31 Volumes  »  The Grave at Badenweiler

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, ed. Poems of Places: An Anthology in 31 Volumes.
Germany: Vols. XVII–XVIII. 1876–79.

Badenweiler

The Grave at Badenweiler

By Anonymous

WHERE would impatient feet be turned to-day

If in the longed-for land beyond the sea?

To storied marbles, or to ruins gray,

Whose fame, since childhood, has been haunting me?

Nay, to a mound that waiteth for a stone

Would I be guided, there to weep alone

Over the relic that a spirit flown

Hath left at Badenweiler.

He can no longer take the birthday gift,

But were I near my offering he should wear:

I ’d drop him flowers until the odor-drift

Should seem to melt through earth and reach him there.

Though faint the strongest comfort I could get,

Would that these yearning eyes his grave had met;

’T would be my emerald, in sorrow set,

That grave at Badenweiler.

This the first birthday he has felt no kiss!

To-day, still heart, how sadly do I keep!

Thy life from mine so sorely do I miss,

Into thy rest sometimes I long to creep.

O, make me sure as though thy lips had told

That we draw closer for death’s bitter cold,—

That it hath drawn us nearer than of old,

That grave at Badenweiler.