From Stockholm unto Lubeck bound,
One morn I stepped me down
Where Calmar's castle stood aloof
From Calmar's ancient town.
The sun in that high latitude
Stood high above the deep,
And all of Calmar's Swedish brood
Were past their midnight sleep.

And through the slumbering town I walked
Unhalted, o'er and o'er,
As Hamlet's ghostly father stalked
The leads of Elsinore;
By Calmar ran the Danish line
When Sweden shook her grip
And Swedish Calmar o'er the brine
Dispatched The Key, her ship.

The Key the new world's gates rolled back
And Swedish soldiers bare,
To settle next to Accomac
And claim the Delaware.
In that three hundred years but one
Came back his tryst to keep,
And found beneath the midnight sun
Old Calmar dead in sleep.

It's bells the hours unheeded struck,
No sound its hostels move,
The pilgrim to his birthright met
No witness to his love;
Ah! few awake to prove or see,
Or memories high to keep,
We touch the chord of history
And find the world asleep.