Venice

White swan of cities, slumbering in thy nest
    So wonderfully built among the reeds
    Of the lagoon, that fences thee and feeds,
    As sayeth thy old historian and thy guest!
White water-lily, cradled and caressed
    By ocean streams, and from the silt and weeds
    Lifting thy golden filaments and seeds,
    Thy sun-illumined spires, thy crown and crest!
White phantom city, whose untrodden streets
    Are rivers, and whose pavements are the shifting
    Shadows of palaces and strips of sky;
I wait to see thee vanish like the fleets
    Seen in mirage, or towers of cloud uplifting
    In air their unsubstantial masonry.

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

Fata Morgana

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Simple Poetry

The Phantom Ship

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Simple Poetry

Hymn Of The Moravian Nuns Of Bethlehem At The Consecration Of Pulaski's Banner.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Simple Poetry

Endymion

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.

Amalfi

Sweet the memory is to me
Of a land beyond the sea,
Where the waves and mountains meet,
Where, amid her mulberry-trees
Sits Amalfi in the heat,
Bathing ever her white feet
In the tideless summer seas.

In the middle of the town,
From its fountains in the hills,
Tumbling through the narrow gorge,
The Canneto rushes down,
Turns the great wheels of the mills,
Lifts the hammers of the forge.

'T is a stairway, not a street,
That ascends the deep ravine,
Where the torrent leaps between
Rocky walls that almost meet.
Toiling up from stair to stair
Peasant girls their burdens bear;
Sunburnt daughters of the soil,
Stately figures tall and straight,
What inexorable fate
Dooms them to this life of toil?

Lord of vineyards...

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Castles In Spain

How much of my young heart, O Spain,
    Went out to thee in days of yore!
What dreams romantic filled my brain,
And summoned back to life again
The Paladins of Charlemagne
The Cid Campeador!

And shapes more shadowy than these,
    In the dim twilight half revealed;
Phoenician galleys on the seas,
The Roman camps like hives of bees,
The Goth uplifting from his knees
    Pelayo on his shield.

It was these memories perchance,
    From annals of remotest eld,
That lent the colors of romance
To every trivial circumstance,
And changed the form and countenance
    Of all that I beheld.

Old towns, whose history lies hid
    In monkish chronicle or rhyme,
Burgos, the birthplace of the Cid,
Zamora and Valladolid,
Toledo, ...

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Cadenabbia - Lake Of Como

No sound of wheels or hoof-beat breaks
    The silence of the summer day,
As by the loveliest of all lakes
    I while the idle hours away.

I pace the leafy colonnade
    Where level branches of the plane
Above me weave a roof of shade
    Impervious to the sun and rain.

At times a sudden rush of air
    Flutters the lazy leaves o'erhead,
And gleams of sunshine toss and flare
    Like torches down the path I tread.

By Somariva's garden gate
    I make the marble stairs my seat,
And hear the water, as I wait,
    Lapping the steps beneath my feet.

The undulation sinks and swells
    Along the stony parapets,
And far away the floating bells
    Tinkle upon the fisher's nets.

Silent and slow, by tower and town

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Venice.

Night in her dark array
    Steals o'er the ocean,
And with departed day
    Hushed seems its motion.
Slowly o'er yon blue coast
    Onward she's treading,
'Till its dark line is lost,
    'Neath her veil spreading.
The bark on the rippling deep
    Hath found a pillow,
And the pale moonbeams sleep
    On the green billow.
Bound by her emerald zone
    Venice is lying,
And round her marble crown
    Night winds are sighing.
From the high lattice now
    Bright eyes are gleaming,
That seem on night's dark brow
    Brighter stars beaming.
Now o'er the bright lagune
    Light barks are dancing,
And 'neath the silver moon
    Swift oars are glancing.
Strains from the mandolin
    Steal o'er the water,
Echo replies ...

Frances Anne Kemble

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 b...

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Elegiac

Dark is the morning with mist; in the narrow mouth of the harbor
    Motionless lies the sea, under its curtain of cloud;
Dreamily glimmer the sails of ships on the distant horizon,
    Like to the towers of a town, built on the verge of the sea.

Slowly and stately and still, they sail forth into the ocean;
    With them sail my thoughts over the limitless deep,
Farther and farther away, borne on by unsatisfied longings,
    Unto Hesperian isles, unto Ausonian shores.

Now they have vanished away, have disappeared in the ocean;
    Sunk are the towers of the town into the depths of the sea!
AU have vanished but those that, moored in the neighboring roadstead,
    Sailless at anchor ride, looming so large in the mist.

Vanished, too, are the thoughts, the dim, unsa...

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow