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.

February 27, 1807

March 24, 1882

English

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Belisarius

I am poor and old and blind;
The sun burns me, and the wind
    Blows through the city gate
And covers me with dust
From the wheels of the august
    Justinian the Great.

It was for him I chased
The Persians o'er wild and waste,
    As General of the East;
Night after night I lay
In their camps of yesterday;
    Their forage was my feast.

For him, with sails of red,
And torches at mast-head,
    Piloting the great fleet,
I swept the Afric coasts
And scattered the Vandal hosts,
    Like dust in a windy street.

For him I won again
The Ausonian realm and reign,
    Rome and Parthenope;
And all the land was mine
From the summits of Apennine
    To the shores of either sea.

For him, in my feeble age,

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Birds Of Passage.

FLIGHT THE FIRST

. . come i gru van cantando lor lai,
Facendo in aer di se lunga riga. -- DANTE


BIRDS OF PASSAGE

Black shadows fall
From the lindens tall,
That lift aloft their massive wall
    Against the southern sky;

And from the realms
Of the shadowy elms
A tide-like darkness overwhelms
    The fields that round us lie.

But the night is fair,
And everywhere
A warm, soft vapor fills the air,
    And distant sounds seem near,

And above, in the light
Of the star-lit night,
Swift birds of passage wing their flight
    Through the dewy atmosphere.

I hear the beat
Of their pinions fleet,
As from the land of snow and sleet
    They seek a southern lea.

I hear the cry

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Blind Bartimeus

Blind Bartimeus at the gates
Of Jericho in darkness waits;
He hears the crowd;--he hears a breath
Say, "It is Christ of Nazareth!"
And calls, in tones of agony,
[Greek here]

The thronging multitudes increase;
Blind Bartimeus, hold thy peace!
But still, above the noisy crowd,
The beggar's cry is shrill and loud;
Until they say, "He calleth thee!"
[Greek here]

Then saith the Christ, as silent stands
The crowd, "What wilt thou at my hands?"
And he replies, "O give me light!
Rabbi, restore the blind man's sight.
And Jesus answers, '

 '

[Greek here]!



Ye that have eyes, yet cannot see,

In darkness and in misery,

Recall those mighty Voices Three,

[Greek here]!

[Greek here]!

[Greek here]!

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Boston

St. Bototlph's Town!    Hither across the plains
    And fens of Lincolnshire, in garb austere,
    There came a Saxon monk, and founded here
    A Priory, pillaged by marauding Danes,
So that thereof no vestige now remains;
    Only a name, that, spoken loud and clear,
    And echoed in another hemisphere,
    Survives the sculptured walls and painted panes.
St. Botolph's Town!    Far over leagues of land
    And leagues of sea looks forth its noble tower,
    And far around the chiming bells are heard;
So may that sacred name forever stand
    A landmark, and a symbol of the power,
    That lies concentred in a single word.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Burial Of The Minnisink

On sunny slope and beechen swell,
The shadowed light of evening fell;
And, where the maple's leaf was brown,
With soft and silent lapse came down,
The glory, that the wood receives,
At sunset, in its golden leaves.

Far upward in the mellow light
Rose the blue hills.    One cloud of white,
Around a far uplifted cone,
In the warm blush of evening shone;
An image of the silver lakes,
By which the Indian's soul awakes.

But soon a funeral hymn was heard
Where the soft breath of evening stirred
The tall, gray forest; and a band
Of stern in heart, and strong in hand,
Came winding down beside the wave,
To lay the red chief in his grave.

They sang, that by his native bowers
He stood, in the last moon of flowers,
And thirty snows ha...

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

By The Fireside

RESIGNATION

There is no flock, however watched and tended,
    But one dead lamb is there!
There is no fireside, howsoe'er defended,
    But has one vacant chair!

The air is full of farewells to the dying,
    And mournings for the dead;
The heart of Rachel, for her children crying,
    Will not be comforted!

Let us be patient!    These severe afflictions
    Not from the ground arise,
But oftentimes celestial benedictions
    Assume this dark disguise.

We see but dimly through the mists and vapors;
    Amid these earthly damps
What seem to us but sad, funereal tapers
    May be heaven's distant lamps.

There is no Death!    What seems so is transition;
    This life of mortal breath
Is but a suburb of the life elysi...

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

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

Catawba Wine

This song of mine
    Is a Song of the Vine,
To be sung by the glowing embers
    Of wayside inns,
    When the rain begins
To darken the drear Novembers.

    It is not a song
    Of the Scuppernong,
From warm Carolinian valleys,
    Nor the Isabel
    And the Muscadel
That bask in our garden alleys.

    Nor the red Mustang,
    Whose clusters hang
O'er the waves of the Colorado,
    And the fiery flood
    Of whose purple blood
Has a dash of Spanish bravado.

    For richest and best
    Is the wine of the West,
That grows by the Beautiful River;
    Whose sweet perfume
    Fills all the room
With a benison on the giver.

    And as hollow trees
    Are the haunts of bees,
For ever going ...

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Changed

From the outskirts of the town
    Where of old the mile-stone stood.
Now a stranger, looking down
I behold the shadowy crown
    Of the dark and haunted wood.

Is it changed, or am I changed?
    Ah! the oaks are fresh and green,
But the friends with whom I ranged
Through their thickets are estranged
    By the years that intervene.

Bright as ever flows the sea,
    Bright as ever shines the sun,
But alas! they seem to me
Not the sun that used to be,
    Not the tides that used to run.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Charles Sumner

    Garlands upon his grave,
    And flowers upon his hearse,
And to the tender heart and brave
    The tribute of this verse.

    His was the troubled life,
    The conflict and the pain,
The grief, the bitterness of strife,
    The honor without stain.

    Like Winkelried, he took
    Into his manly breast
The sheaf of hostile spears, and broke
    A path for the oppressed.

    Then from the fatal field
    Upon a nation's heart
Borne like a warrior on his shield!--
    So should the brave depart.

    Death takes us by surprise,
    And stays our hurrying feet;
The great design unfinished lies,
    Our lives are incomplete.

    But in the dark unknown
    Perfect their circles seem,
Even as a bridge...

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Chaucer

An old man in a lodge within a park;
    The chamber walls depicted all around
    With portraitures of huntsman, hawk, and hound.
    And the hurt deer.    He listeneth to the lark,
Whose song comes with the sunshine through the dark
    Of painted glass in leaden lattice bound;
    He listeneth and he laugheth at the sound,
    Then writeth in a book like any clerk.
He is the poet of the dawn, who wrote
    The Canterbury Tales, and his old age
    Made beautiful with song; and as I read
I hear the crowing cock, I hear the note
    Of lark and linnet, and from every page
    Rise odors of ploughed field or flowery mead.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

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

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

Christmas Bells

I heard the bells on Christmas Day
Their old, familiar carols play,
    And wild and sweet
    The words repeat
Of peace on earth, good-will to men!

And thought how, as the day had come,
The belfries of all Christendom
    Had rolled along
    The unbroken song
Of peace on earth, good-will to men!

Till, ringing, singing on its way,
The world revolved from night to day,
    A voice, a chime,
    A chant sublime
Of peace on earth, good-will to men!

Then from each black, accursed mouth
The cannon thundered in the South,
    And with the sound
    The carols drowned
Of peace on earth, good-will to men!

It was as if an earthquake rent
The hearth-stones of a continent,
    And made forlorn
    The households...

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

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

Curfew

I.

Solemnly, mournfully,
    Dealing its dole,
The Curfew Bell
    Is beginning to toll.

Cover the embers,
    And put out the light;
Toil comes with the morning,
    And rest with the night.

Dark grow the windows,
    And quenched is the fire;
Sound fades into silence,--
    All footsteps retire.

No voice in the chambers,
    No sound in the hall!
Sleep and oblivion
    Reign over all!


II.

The book is completed,
    And closed, like the day;
And the hand that has written it
    Lays it away.

Dim grow its fancies;
    Forgotten they lie;
Like coals in the ashes,
    They darken and die.

Song sinks into silence,
    The story is told,
The windows ar...

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Dante

Tuscan, that wanderest through the realms of gloom,
    With thoughtful pace, and sad, majestic eyes,
    Stern thoughts and awful from thy soul arise,
    Like Farinata from his fiery tomb.
Thy sacred song is like the trump of doom;
    Yet in thy heart what human sympathies,
    What soft compassion glows, as in the skies
    The tender stars their clouded lamps relume!
Methinks I see thee stand, with pallid cheeks,
    By Fra Hilario in his diocese,
    As up the convent-walls, in golden streaks,
The ascending sunbeams mark the day's decrease;
    And, as he asks what there the stranger seeks,
    Thy voice along the cloister whispers, "Peace!"

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

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