Moonlight

As a pale phantom with a lamp
    Ascends some ruin's haunted stair,
So glides the moon along the damp
    Mysterious chambers of the air.

Now hidden in cloud, and now revealed,
    As if this phantom, full of pain,
Were by the crumbling walls concealed,
    And at the windows seen again.

Until at last, serene and proud
    In all the splendor of her light,
She walks the terraces of cloud,
    Supreme as Empress of the Night.

I look, but recognize no more
    Objects familiar to my view;
The very pathway to my door
    Is an enchanted avenue.

All things are changed.    One mass of shade,
    The elm-trees drop their curtains down;
By palace, park, and colonnade
    I walk as in a foreign town.

The very ground beneath my feet
    Is clothed with a diviner air;
White marble paves the silent street
    And glimmers in the empty square.

Illusion!    Underneath there lies
    The common life of every day;
Only the spirit glorifies
    With its own tints the sober gray.

In vain we look, in vain uplift
    Our eyes to heaven, if we are blind,
We see but what we have the gift
    Of seeing; what we bring we find.

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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The Haunted Chamber

Each heart has its haunted chamber,
    Where the silent moonlight falls!
On the floor are mysterious footsteps,
    There are whispers along the walls!

And mine at times is haunted
    By phantoms of the Past
As motionless as shadows
    By the silent moonlight cast.

A form sits by the window,
    That is not seen by day,
For as soon as the dawn approaches
    It vanishes away.

It sits there in the moonlight
    Itself as pale and still,
And points with its airy finger
    Across the window-sill.

Without before the window,
    There stands a gloomy pine,
Whose boughs wave upward and downward
    As wave these thoughts of mine.

And underneath its branches
    Is the grave of a little child,
Who died u...

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Hawthorne

MAY 23, 1864

How beautiful it was, that one bright day
    In the long week of rain!
Though all its splendor could not chase away
    The omnipresent pain.

The lovely town was white with apple-blooms,
    And the great elms o'erhead
Dark shadows wove on their aerial looms
    Shot through with golden thread.

Across the meadows, by the gray old manse,
    The historic river flowed:
I was as one who wanders in a trance,
    Unconscious of his road.

The faces of familiar friends seemed strange;
    Their voices I could hear,
And yet the words they uttered seemed to change
    Their meaning to my ear.

For the one face I looked for was not there,
    The one low voice was mute;
Only an unseen presence filled the air,

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

A Gleam Of Sunshine

This is the place.    Stand still, my steed,
    Let me review the scene,
And summon from the shadowy Past
    The forms that once have been.

The Past and Present here unite
    Beneath Time's flowing tide,
Like footprints hidden by a brook,
    But seen on either side.

Here runs the highway to the town;
    There the green lane descends,
Through which I walked to church with thee,
    O gentlest of my friends!

The shadow of the linden-trees
    Lay moving on the grass;
Between them and the moving boughs,
    A shadow, thou didst pass.

Thy dress was like the lilies,
    And thy heart as pure as they:
One of God's holy messengers
    Did walk with me that day.

I saw the branches of the trees
    Bend down t...

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

The Walk At Midnight

Soft, shadowy moon-beam! by the light
Sleeps the wide meer serenely pale:
How various are the sounds of night,
Borne on the scarely-rising gale!

The swell of distant brook is heard,
Whose far-off waters faintly roll;
And piping of the shrill small bird,
Arrested by the wandring owl.

Come hither! let us thread with care
The maze of this green path, which binds
The beauties of the broad parterre,
And thro yon fragrant alley winds.

Or on this old bench will we sit,
Round which the clustring woodine wreathes;
While birds of night around us flit;
And thro each lavish wood-walk breathes,

Unto my ravishd senses, brought
From yon thick-woven odorous bowers,
The still rich breeze, with incense fraught
Of glowing fruits and sp...

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Daylight And Moonlight

In broad daylight, and at noon,
Yesterday I saw the moon
Sailing high, but faint and white,
As a school-boy's paper kite.

In broad daylight, yesterday,
I read a Poet's mystic lay;
And it seemed to me at most
As a phantom, or a ghost.

But at length the feverish day
Like a passion died away,
And the night, serene and still,
Fell on village, vale, and hill.

Then the moon, in all her pride,
Like a spirit glorified,
Filled and overflowed the night
With revelations of her light.

And the Poet's song again
Passed like music through my brain;
Night interpreted to me
All its grace and mystery.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Night

Into the darkness and the hush of night
    Slowly the landscape sinks, and fades away,
    And with it fade the phantoms of the day,
    The ghosts of men and things, that haunt the light,
The crowd, the clamor, the pursuit, the flight,
    The unprofitable splendor and display,
    The agitations, and the cares that prey
    Upon our hearts, all vanish out of sight.
The better life begins; the world no more
    Molests us; all its records we erase
    From the dull common-place book of our lives,
That like a palimpsest is written o'er
    With trivial incidents of time and place,
    And lo! the ideal, hidden beneath, revives.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow