The Burial of the Poet
The Burial of the Poet - meaning Summary
Mortality and Poetic Legacy
Longfellow’s poem describes a poet’s burial in his native churchyard, using winter imagery—falling snow, moonlight, and cruciform shadows—to frame death as both peaceful rest and public honor. The gathered dead seem to acknowledge his worth, and the speaker reads the snow and shadows as mysterious, triumphant signs that transform ordinary grief into a larger meditation on mortality, remembrance, and poetic legacy.
Read Complete AnalysesIn the old churchyard of his native town, And in the ancestral tomb beside the wall, We laid him in the sleep that comes to all, And left him to his rest and his renown. The snow was falling, as if Heaven dropped down White flowers of Paradise to strew his pall;-- The dead around him seemed to wake, and call His name, as worthy of so white a crown. And now the moon is shining on the scene, And the broad sheet of snow is written o'er With shadows cruciform of leafless trees, As once the winding-sheet of Saladin With chapters of the Koran; but, ah! more Mysterious and triumphant signs are these.
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