The poem that our last guest referred to as "this poem" was evidently SWEET MAIDEN OF PASSAMAQUODDY, (a.k.a. SWEET MAIDEN OF QUODDY) posted by Charley Noble back on 07 Apr 2005.

It was indeed written by James De Mille (1833-1880), as I found at http://davidcadogan.ca/2010/08/30/sweet-maiden-of-quoddy-2/.

By the way, have you ever wondered why GUESTS so frequently say things like "this poem" or "this song" and are apparently oblivious to the fact that several songs have been mentioned in the thread they are posting to? Or that they ask questions that have already been answered, or answer questions that have already been answered, or post additional, needless, and even inferior copies of lyrics that have already been posted?

It's because they literally have only seen one message, not the whole thread.

My guess is, our guest, a newcomer to Mudcat, was using a search engine like Google to search for lyrics, and happened to land here:

http://www.mudcat.org/Detail.CFM?messages__Message_ID=1454343.

Then without even being aware that there were any other messages related to this one, he clicked on "Post to this Thread" at the bottom of the page.

I think this happens a lot.