Chrysaor

Just above yon sandy bar,
    As the day grows fainter and dimmer,
Lonely and lovely, a single star
    Lights the air with a dusky glimmer

Into the ocean faint and far
    Falls the trail of its golden splendor,
And the gleam of that single star
    Is ever refulgent, soft, and tender.

Chrysaor, rising out of the sea,
    Showed thus glorious and thus emulous,
Leaving the arms of Callirrhoe,
    Forever tender, soft, and tremulous.

Thus o'er the ocean faint and far
    Trailed the gleam of his falchion brightly;
Is it a God, or is it a star
    That, entranced, I gaze on nightly!

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow was an American poet and educator. He wrote many lyric poems known for their musicality and often presenting stories of mythology and legend. Some of his famous works include "Paul Revere's Ride" and "The Song of Hiawatha." Longfellow was one of the most popular American poets of his time and remains a significant figure in the canon of American literature.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

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Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Simple Poetry

English

Suggested Poems

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Hesperus

Ah whither dost thou float, sweet silent star,
In yonder floods of evening's dying light?
Before the fanning wings of rising night,
Methinks thy silvery bark is driven far
To some lone isle or calmly havened shore,
Where the lorn eye of man can follow thee no more.

How many a one hath watched thee even as I,
And unto thee and thy receding ray
Poured forth his thoughts with many a treasured sigh
Too sweet and strange for the remorseless day;
But thou hast gone and left unto their sight
Too great a host of stars, and yet too black a night.

E'en as I gaze upon thee, thy bright form
Doth sail away among the cloudy isles
Around whose shores the sea of sunlight smiles.
On thee may break no black and boisterous storm
To turn the tenour of thy calm career....

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Endymion

The rising moon has hid the stars;
Her level rays, like golden bars,
    Lie on the landscape green,
    With shadows brown between.

And silver white the river gleams,
As if Diana, in her dreams,
    Had dropt her silver bow
    Upon the meadows low.

On such a tranquil night as this,
She woke Endymion with a kiss,
    When, sleeping in the grove,
    He dreamed not of her love.

Like Dian's kiss, unasked, unsought,
Love gives itself, but is not bought;
    Nor voice, nor sound betrays
    Its deep, impassioned gaze.

It comes,--the beautiful, the free,
The crown of all humanity,--
    In silence and alone
    To seek the elected one.

It lifts the boughs, whose shadows deep
Are Life's oblivion, the soul's sle...

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

The Evening Star

Lo! in the painted oriel of the West,
    Whose panes the sunken sun incarnadines,
    Like a fair lady at her casement, shines
    The evening star, the star of love and rest!
And then anon she doth herself divest
    Of all her radiant garments, and reclines
    Behind the sombre screen of yonder pines,
    With slumber and soft dreams of love oppressed.
O my beloved, my sweet Hesperus!
    My morning and my evening star of love!
    My best and gentlest lady! even thus,
As that fair planet in the sky above,
    Dost thou retire unto thy rest at night,
    And from thy darkened window fades the light.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Chimes

Sweet chimes! that in the loneliness of night
    Salute the passing hour, and in the dark
    And silent chambers of the household mark
    The movements of the myriad orbs of light!
Through my closed eyelids, by the inner sight,
    I see the constellations in the arc
    Of their great circles moving on, and hark!
    I almost hear them singing in their flight.
Better than sleep it is to lie awake
    O'er-canopied by the vast starry dome
    Of the immeasurable sky; to feel
The slumbering world sink under us, and make
    Hardly an eddy,--a mere rush of foam
    On the great sea beneath a sinking keel.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

In Mythic Seas.

'Neath saffron stars and satin skies, dark-blue,
Between dim sylvan isles, a happy two.
We sailed, and from the siren-haunted shore,
All mystic in its mist, the soft gale bore
The Siren's song, while on the ghostly steeps
Strange foliage grew, deeps folding upon deeps,
That hung and beamed with blossom and with bud,
Thick-powdered, pallid, or like urns of blood
Dripping, and blowing from wide mouths of blooms
On our bare brows cool gales of sweet perfumes.
While from the yellow stars that splashed the skies
O'er our light shallop dropped soft mysteries
Of calm and sleep, until the yellower moon
Rose full of fire above a dark lagoon;
And as she rose the nightingales on sprays
Of heavy, shadowy roses burst in praise
Of her wild loveliness, with boisterous pain

Madison Julius Cawein

Sea-Shore Musings.

How oft I've longed to gaze on thee,
    Thou proud and mighty deep!
Thy vast horizon, boundless, free,
    Thy coast so rude and steep;
And now entranced I breathless stand,
    Where earth and ocean meet,
Whilst billows wash the golden sand,
    And break around my feet.

Lovely thou art when dawn's red light
    Sheds o'er thee its soft hue,
Showing fair ships, a gallant sight,
    Upon thy waters blue;
And when the moonbeams softly pour
    Their light on wave or glen,
And diamond spray leaps on the shore,
    How lovely art thou then!

Still, as I look, faint shadows steal
    O'er thy calm heaving breast,
And there are times, I sadly feel,
    Thou art not thus at rest;
And I bethink me of past tales,
    Of ships that ...

Rosanna Eleanor Leprohon