Poems by Henry Wadsworth LongfellowThis is the place.Stand still, my steed,
Let me review the scene,
And summon from the shadowy Past
Tell me not in mournful numbers,
Life is but an empty dream!
For the soul is dead that slumbers,
When the summer fields are mown,
When the birds are fledged and flown,
And the dry leaves strew the path;
The day is ending,
The night is descending;
The marsh is frozen,
The river dead.
Through clouds like ashes
The red sun flashes
When the warm sun, that brings
Seed-time and harvest, has returned again,
'T is sweet to visit the still wood, where springs
I shot an arrow into the air,
It fell to earth, I knew not where;
For, so swiftly it flew, the sight
This is the Arsenal.From floor to ceiling,
Like a huge organ, rise the burnished arms;
Thou comest, Autumn, heralded by the rain,
With banners, by great gales incessant fanned,
It is autumn; not without
But within me is the cold.
Youth and spring are all about;
It is I that have grown old.
I have read, in some old, marvellous tale,
Some legend strange and vague,
That a midnight host of spectres pale
In the market-place of Bruges stands the belfry old and brown;
Thrice consumed and thrice rebuilded, still it watches o'er the
I am poor and old and blind;
The sun burns me, and the wind
Blows through the city gate
And covers me with dust
Black shadows fall
From the lindens tall,
That lift aloft their massive wall
Against the southern sky;
And from the realms
Sing, O Song of Hiawatha,
Of the happy days that followed,
In the land of the Ojibways,
In the pleasant land and peaceful!
Blind Bartimeus at the gates
Of Jericho in darkness waits;
He hears the crowd;--he hears a breath
I stood on the bridge at midnight,
As the clocks were striking the hour,
And the moon rose o'er the city,
On sunny slope and beechen swell,
The shadowed light of evening fell;
And, where the maple's leaf was brown,
In the ancient town of Bruges,
In the quaint old Flemish city,
As the evening shades descended,
From the outskirts of the town,
Where of old the mile-stone stood,
Now a stranger, looking down
I behold the shadowy crown
An old man in a lodge within a park;
The chamber walls depicted all around
With portraitures of huntsman, hawk, and hound,
Come to me, O ye children!
For I hear you at your play,
And the questions that perplexed me
Have vanished quite away.
Between the dark and the daylight,
When the night is beginning to lower,
Comes a pause in the day's occupations,
"I heard the bells on Christmas Day
Their old familiar carols play,
And wild and sweet
The words repeat
I
MILES STANDISH
In the Old Colony days, in Plymouth the land of the Pilgrims
I.
Solemnly, mournfully,
Dealing its dole,
The Curfew Bell
Is beginning to toll.
Cover the embers,
And put out the light;
Tuscan, that wanderest through the realms of gloom,
With thoughtful pace, and sad, majestic eyes,
In broad daylight, and at noon,
Yesterday I saw the moon
Sailing high, but faint and white,
As a schoolboy's paper kite.
Far and wide among the nations
Spread the name and fame of Kwasind;
No man dared to strive with Kwasind,
I.Written March 29, 1864.1.
Oft have I seen at some cathedral door
.
A laborer, pausing in the dust and heat,
.
INSCRIPTION FOR AN ANTIQUE PITCHER,
Come, old friend! sit down and listen!
From the pitcher, placed between us,
The rising moon has hid the stars;
Her level rays, like golden bars,
Lie on the landscape green,
With shadows brown between.
This is the forest primeval.The murmuring pines and the hemlocks,
Lo! in the painted oriel of the West,
Whose panes the sunken sun incarnadines,
Like a fair lady at her casement, shines
The shades of night were falling fast,
As through an Alpine village passed
A youth, who bore, 'mid snow and ice,
Oh the long and dreary Winter!
Oh the cold and cruel Winter!
Ever thicker, thicker, thicker
Froze the ice on lake and river,
O sweet illusions of song
That tempt me everywhere,
In the lonely fields, and the throng
Of the crowded thoroughfare!
Spake full well, in language quaint and olden,
One who dwelleth by the castled Rhine,
When the hours of Day are numbered,
And the voices of the Night
Wake the better soul, that slumbered,
To a holy, calm delight;
"Honor be to Mudjekeewis!"
Cried the warriors, cried the old men,
When he came in triumph homeward
Never stoops the soaring vulture
On his quarry in the desert,
On the sick or wounded bison,
But another vulture, watching
Filled is Life's goblet to the brim;
And though my eyes with tears are dim,
I see its sparkling bubbles swim,
I like that ancient Saxon phrase, which calls
The burial-ground God's-Acre! It is just;
She dwells by Great Kenhawa's side,
In valleys green and cool;
And all her hope and all her pride
Are in the village school.
One day, Haroun Al Raschid read
A book wherein the poet said:--
"Where are the kings, and where the rest
What phantom is this that appears
Through the purple mist of the years,
Itself but a mist like these?
Out of childhood into manhood
Now had grown my Hiawatha,
Skilled in all the craft of hunters,
On the shores of Gitche Gumee,
Of the shining Big-Sea-Water,
Stood Nokomis, the old woman,
Pointing with her finger westward,
Downward through the evening twilight,
In the days that are forgotten,
In the unremembered ages,
By the shore of Gitche Gumee,
By the shining Big-Sea-Water,
At the doorway of his wigwam,
In the pleasant Summer morning,
You shall hear how Hiawatha
Prayed and fasted in the forest,
Not for greater skill in hunting,
Forth upon the Gitche Gumee,
On the shining Big-Sea-Water,
With his fishing-line of cedar,
Of the twisted bark of cedar,
Two good friends had Hiawatha,
Singled out from all the others,
Bound to him in closest union,
In those days the Evil Spirits,
All the Manitos of mischief,
Fearing Hiawatha's wisdom,
And his love for Chibiabos,
I heard the bells on Christmas day
Their old familiar carols play,
And wild and sweet the words repeat
Should you ask me,
whence these stories?
Whence these legends and traditions,
With the odors of the forest
No hay pajaros en los nidos de antano.
Spanish Proverb
The sun is bright,--the air is clear,
How cold are thy baths, Apollo!
Cried the African monarch, the splendid,
As down to his death in the hollow
The young Endymion sleeps Endymion's sleep;
The shepherd-boy whose tale was left half told!
Viswamitra the Magician,
By his spells and incantations,
Up to Indra's realms elysian
Raised Trisanku, king of nations.
Ye voices, that arose
After the Evening's close,
And whispered to my restless heart repose!
Go, breathe it in the ear
Saint Augustine! well hast thou said,
That of our vices we can frame
A ladder, if we will but tread
The night is come, but not too soon;
And sinking silently,
All silently, the little moon
Drops down behind the sky.
When I compare
What I have lost with what I have gained,
What I have missed with what attained,
Maiden! with the meek, brown eyes,
In whose orbs a shadow lies
Like the dusk in evening skies!
Oft I remember those I have known
In other days, to whom my heart was lead
As by a magnet, and who are not dead,
Half of my life is gone, and I have let
The years slip from me and have not fulfilled
The aspiration of my youth, to build
Yes, the Year is growing old,
And his eye is pale and bleared!
Death, with frosty hand and cold,
I pace the sounding sea-beach and behold
How the voluminous billows roll and run,
Upheaving and subsiding, while the sun
As a pale phantom with a lamp
Ascends some ruin's haunted stair,
So glides the moon along the damp
Tempora labuntur, tacitisque senescimus annis,
Et fugiunt freno non remorante dies.
Ovid, Fastorum, Lib. vi.
Often I think of the beautiful town
That is seated by the sea;
Often in thought go up and down
As a fond mother, when the day is o'er,
Leads by the hand her little child to bed,
Half willing, half reluctant to be led,
et plus profonde, ou l'interet et l'avarice parlent moins haut
que la raison, dans les instants de chagrin domestique, de
In the valley of the Pegnitz, where across broad meadow-lands
Rise the blue Franconian mountains, Nuremberg, the ancient,
Thou, too, sail on, O Ship of State!
Sail on, O Union, strong and great!
Humanity with all its fears,
I saw, as in a dream sublime,
The balance in the hand of Time.
O'er East and West its beam impended;
L'eternite est une pendule, dont le balancier dit et redit sans
cesse ces deux mots seulement dans le silence des tombeaux:
What an image of peace and rest
Is this little church among its graves!
All is so quiet; the troubled breast,
You shall hear how Pau-Puk-Keewis,
He, the handsome Yenadizze,
Whom the people called the Storm-Fool,
Listen, my children, and you shall hear
Of the midnight ride of Paul Revere,
On the eighteenth of April, in 'Seventy-five;
On the Mountains of the Prairie,
On the great Red Pipe-stone Quarry,
Gitche Manito, the mighty,
In those days said Hiawatha,
"Lo! how all things fade and perish!
From the memory of the old men
The Slaver in the broad lagoon
Lay moored with idle sail;
He waited for the rising moon,
And for the evening gale.
How beautiful is the rain!
After the dust and heat,
In the broad and fiery street,
In the narrow lane,
The day is cold, and dark, and dreary;
It rains, and the wind is never weary;
The vine still clings to the moldering wall,
There is a Reaper, whose name is Death,
And, with his sickle keen,
He reaps the bearded grain at a breath,
Thou, too, sail on, O Ship of State!
Sail on, O Union, strong and great!
Humanity with all its fears,
When descends on the Atlantic
The gigantic
Storm-wind of the equinox,
Landword in his wrath he scourges
The toiling surges,
A vision as of crowded city streets,
With human life in endless overflow;
Thunder of thoroughfares; trumpets that blow
Southward with fleet of ice
Sailed the corsair Death;
Wild and gast blew the blast,
And the east-wind was his breath.
"Speak! speak I thou fearful guest
Who, with thy hollow breast
Still in rude armor drest,
Comest to daunt me!
In dark fens of the Dismal Swamp
The hunted Negro lay;
He saw the fire of the midnight camp,
And heard at times a horse's tramp
Loud he sang the psalm of David!
He, a Negro and enslaved,
Sang of Israel's victory,
Sang of Zion, bright and free.
Beside the ungathered rice he lay,
His sickle in his hand;
His breast was bare, his matted hair
Was buried in the sand.
Out of the bosom of the Air,
Out of the cloud-folds of her garments shaken,
Over the woodlands brown and bare
Labor with what zeal we will,
Something still remains undone,
Something uncompleted still
Waits the rising of the sun.
Can it be the sun descending
O'er the level plain of water?
Or the Red Swan floating, flying,
Wounded by the magic arrow,
Heard a voice, that cried,
"Balder the Beautiful
Is dead, is dead!"
And through the misty air
Passed like the mournful cry
Short of stature, large of limb,
Burly face and russet beard,
All the women stared at him,
When in Iceland he appeared.
I shot an arrow into the air,
It fell to earth, I knew not where;
For, so swiftly it flew, the sight
This is the Arsenal. From floor to ceiling,
Like a huge organ, rise the burnished arms;
In the market-place of Bruges stands the belfrey old and brown;
I stood on the bridge at midnight,
As the clocks were striking the hour,
And the moon rose o'er the city,
"Build me straight, O worthy Master!
Stanch and strong, a goodly vessel,
That shall laugh at all disaster,
I am the God Thor,
I am the War God,
I am the Thunderer!
Here in my Northland,
My fastness and fortress,
Reign I forever!
Between the dark and the daylight,
When the night is beginning to lower,
Comes a pause in the day's occupation,
I
MILES STANDISH
In the Old Colony days, in Plymouth the land of the Pilgrims
With favoring winds, o'er sunlit seas,
We sailed for the Hesperides,
The land where golden apples grow;
Under a spreading chestnut tree
The village smithy stands;
The Smith, a mighty man is he,
With large and sinewy hands;
PRELUDE.
Pleasant it was, when woods were green,
And winds were soft and low,
To lie amid some sylvan scene,
Vogelweid the Minnesinger,
When he left this world of ours,
Laid his body in the cloister,
Under Wurtzburg's minster towers.
To Alfred Tennyson
Poet! I come to touch thy lance with mine;
Not as a knight, who on the listed field
Beware!The Israelite of old, who tore
The lion in his path,--when, poor and blind,
In his lodge beside a river,
Close beside a frozen river,
Sat an old man, sad and lonely.
White his hair was as a snow-drift;
In Ocean's wide domains,
Half buried in the sands,
Lie skeletons in chains,
With shackled feet and hands.
When winter winds are piercing chill,
And through the hawthorn blows the gale,
With solemn feet I tread the hill,
It was the schooner Hesperus,
That sailed the wintry sea;
And the skipper had taken his little daughter,
To bear him company.
