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Home  »  A Library of American Literature  »  A Soldier’s Grave

Stedman and Hutchinson, comps. A Library of American Literature:
An Anthology in Eleven Volumes. 1891.
Vols. IX–XI: Literature of the Republic, Part IV., 1861–1889

A Soldier’s Grave

By John Albee (1833–1915)

[Born in Bellingham, Mass., 1833. Died in Washington, D.C., 1915. From Poems. 1888.]

(At Newcastle)

BREAK not his sweet repose—

Thou whom chance brings to this sequestered ground,

The sacred yard his ashes close,

But go thy way in silence; here no sound

Is ever heard but from the murmuring pines,

Answering the sea’s near murmur;

Nor ever here comes rumor

Of anxious world or war’s foregathering signs.

The bleaching flag, the faded wreath,

Mark the dead soldier’s dust beneath,

And show the death he chose;

Forgotten save by her who weeps alone,

And wrote his fameless name on this low stone:

Break not his sweet repose.