"God's Acre" (A Poem)

First published in Democratic Review in 1841, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s “God’s Acre” draws heavily on Christian imagery for its rumination on death, the afterlife, and the role of the graveyard in both of these factors.[1] For the poet, the cemetery is a garden, where souls are planted and harvested for rebirth in Heaven.[2] What I’ve always found fascinating about Longfellow’s depiction is how Death is represented as a farmer who plants the souls and tills the ground. It’s a humbler portrayal of a figure often illustrated in a colder, darker light. Interestingly, Longfellow wrote to a friend, Samuel Ward, later that same year expressing how he would rather be cremated than buried.[3]

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.

Then shall the good stand in immortal bloom,
In the fair gardens of that second birth;
And each bright blossom mingle its perfume
With that of flowers, which never bloomed on earth.

With thy rude ploughshare, Death, turn up the sod,
And spread the furrow for the seed we sow;
This is the field and Acre of our God,
This is the place where human harvests grow.[4]

Works Referenced

Gale, Robert. A Henry Wadsworth Longfellow Companion. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 2003. 

Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth. “God’s Acre.” The Poems of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. Ed. Louis Untermeyer. Norwalk, CT: The Easton Press, 1980. 148. 

Palaez, Monica. “‘A Love of Heaven and Virtue:’ Why Longfellow Sentimentalizes Death.” Reconsidering Longfellow. Ed. Christoph Irmscher and Robert Arbour. Madison: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 2014. 53-70.
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[1] Gale, 95.
[2] Pelaez, 57-60.
[3] Gale, 95. 
[4] Longfellow, 148.