Nature

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,
    And leave his broken playthings on the floor,
Still gazing at them through the open door,
    Nor wholly reassured and comforted
    By promises of others in their stead,
    Which, though more splendid, may not please him more;
So Nature deals with us, and takes away
    Our playthings one by one, and by the hand
    Leads us to rest so gently, that we go
Scarce knowing if we wish to go or stay,
    Being too full of sleep to understand
    How far the unknown transcends the what we know.

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

The Norman Baron

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Simple Poetry

A Fragment

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Simple Poetry

The Belfry Of Bruges

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Simple Poetry

The Three Silences Of Molinos

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Simple Poetry

English

Suggested Poems

Explore a curated selection of verses that share themes, styles, and emotional resonance with the poem you've just read.

Henry, Aged Eight Years.

Yellow leaves, how fast they flutter - woodland hollows thickly strewing,
    Where the wan October sunbeams scantly in the mid-day win,
While the dim gray clouds are drifting, and in saddened hues imbuing
        All without and all within!

All within! but winds of autumn, little Henry, round their dwelling
    Did not load your father's spirit with those deep and burdened sighs; -
Only echoed thoughts of sadness, in your mother's bosom swelling,
        Fast as tears that dim her eyes.

Life is fraught with many changes, checked with sorrow and mutation,
    But no grief it ever lightened such a truth before to know: -
I behold them - father, mother - as they seem to contemplation,
    Only three short weeks ago!

Saddened for the morrow's parting - up the stair...

Jean Ingelow

Voices Of The Night - Prelude.

[Greek poem here--Euripides.]



Pleasant it was, when woods were green,
    And winds were soft and low,
To lie amid some sylvan scene.
Where, the long drooping boughs between,
Shadows dark and sunlight sheen
    Alternate come and go;

Or where the denser grove receives
    No sunlight from above,
But the dark foliage interweaves
In one unbroken roof of leaves,
Underneath whose sloping eaves
    The shadows hardly move.

Beneath some patriarchal tree
    I lay upon the ground;
His hoary arms uplifted he,
And all the broad leaves over me
Clapped their little hands in glee,
    With one continuous sound;--

A slumberous sound, a sound that brings
    The feelings of a dream,
As of innumerable wings,
A...

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

Nature

Boon Nature yields each day a brag which we now first behold,
And trains us on to slight the new, as if it were the old:
But blest is he, who, playing deep, yet haply asks not why,
Too busied with the crowded hour to fear to live or die.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

The Mother's Return

A month, sweet Little-ones, is past
Since your dear Mother went away,,
And she tomorrow will return;
Tomorrow is the happy day.

O blessed tidings! thought of joy!
The eldest heard with steady glee;
Silent he stood; then laughed amain,,
And shouted, " Mother, come to me!"

Louder and louder did he shout,
With witless hope to bring her near;
"Nay, patience! patience, little boy!
Your tender mother cannot hear."

I told of hills, and far-off town,
And long, long vale to travel through;,
He listens, puzzled, sore perplexed,
But he submits; what can he do ?

No strife disturbs his sister's breast;
She wars not with the mystery
Of time and distance, night and day;
The bonds of our humanity.

Her joy is like an instinct, ...

William Wordsworth

Children

Come to me, O ye children!
    For I hear you at your play,
And the questions that perplexed me
    Have vanished quite away.

Ye open the eastern windows,
    That look towards the sun,
Where thoughts are singing swallows
    And the brooks of morning run.

In your hearts are the birds and the sunshine,
    In your thoughts the brooklet's flow,
But in mine is the wind of Autumn
    And the first fall of the snow.

Ah! what would the world be to us
    If the children were no more?
We should dread the desert behind us
    Worse than the dark before.

What the leaves are to the forest,
    With light and air for food,
Ere their sweet and tender juices
    Have been hardened into wood,--

That to the world are childre...

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow