Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, ed. Poems of Places: An Anthology in 31 Volumes.
Germany: Vols. XVII–XVIII. 1876–79. | | | | Heidelberg | | Olympia Morata | | Sir Henry Taylor (1800–1886) |
| | Written after Visiting Her Grave at Heidelberg
A TOMBSTONE in a foreign land cries out, | |
| O Italy! against thee: she whose death | |
| This stone commemorates with no common praise, | |
| By birth was thine; but, being vowed to Truth, | |
| The blood-stained hand that lurks beneath thine alb | 5 |
| Was raised to strike, and lest one crime the more | |
| Should stand in thine account to heaven, she fled. | |
| Then hither came she, young but erudite, | |
| With ardor flushed, but with old wisdom stored | |
| (Which spake no tongue she knew not), apt to learn | 10 |
| And eloquent to teach, and welcomed here | |
| Gave the brief beauty of her innocent life | |
| An alien race to illustrate, and here | |
| Dying in youth (the beauty of her death | |
| Sealing her life’s repute) her ashes gave | 15 |
| An honor to the land that honored her. | |
| |
| —Jerusalem! Jerusalem! which killest | |
| The prophets! if thy house be desolate, | |
| Those temples too are desolate, and that land, | |
| Where Truth’s pure votaries may not leave their dust. | 20 | | | |
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