Mtfcerstoe JLitfrature >erte0 
 
 THE CHILDREN S HOUR 
 AND OTHER POEMS 
 
 PAUL REVERE S RIDE 
 AND OTHER POEMS 
 
 BY 
 
 HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW 
 
 WITH A SKETCH OF LONGFELLOW 
 IN HOME LIFE, AND NOTES 
 
 HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY 
 
 BOSTON NEW YORK CHICAGO DALLAS 
 ATLANTA SAN FRANCISCO 
 
 SEije JXibcwtof $rcss Cambridge 
 
HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY is the only authorized publisher 
 of the works of LONGFELLOW, and this edition of the work, published by 
 Houghton Mifflin Company, is the only form of the work authorized 
 by the author, or his heirs, for school use and published with their 
 assent. 
 
 COPYRIGHT, 1872, 1873, 1875, 1878, AND iSSo, 
 BY HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW 
 
 COPYRIGHT, IpOO, 1901, 1903, 1906, 1908, 1914, 1915, 1917, AND 1920 
 
 BY ERNEST W. LONGFELLOW 
 
 COPYRIGHT, 1894, BY HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN * CO. 
 COPYRIGHT, 1922, BY ALICE M. LONGFELLOW 
 
 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED 
 
 Sntje JUbersffoc $re 
 
 CAMBRIDGE . MASSACHUSETTS 
 PRINTED IN THE U . S . A 
 
M/HAJ 
 
 CONTENTS. 
 
 PAOB 
 
 LONGFELLOW IN HOME LIFE . . . . .7 
 
 THE CHILDREN S HOUR . ..11 
 
 THE WINDMILL ....... . 13 
 
 MAIDEN AND WEATHERCOCK 14 
 
 DECORATION DAY . 15 
 
 HYMN OF THE MORAVIAN NUNS OF BETHLEHEM ... 10 
 
 THE PHA.NTOM SHIP 18 
 
 PEGASUS IN POUND 20 
 
 THE SERMON OF ST. FRANCIS 23 
 
 WALTER VON DER VOGELWEID 24 
 
 SIR HUMPHREY GILBERT . 2f> 
 
 VICTOR GALBRAITH 28 
 
 THE KOPEWALK . 3fJ 
 
 SANTA FILOMENA .. c ..... 33 
 
 THE THREE KINGS . a 35 
 
 THE CASTLE BY THE SEA 37 
 
 THE SKELETON IN ARMOR 39 
 
 THE FIFTIETH BIRTHDAY OF AGASSIZ 45 
 
 MAIDENHOOD .......... 46 
 
 EXCELSIOR ..... .... 48 
 
 THE VILLAGE BLACKSMITH 50 
 
 FROM MY ARM-CHAIR 52 
 
 SONG : " STAY, STAY AT HOME, MY HEART " . . .54 
 
 THE WRECK OF THE HESPERUS 55 
 
 THE BELLS OF LYNN . 58 
 
 THE TIDE RISES, THE TIDE FALLS .60 
 
 THE OPEN WINDOW v CO 
 
 RESIGNATION ...... ..... 61 
 
 A DAY OF SUNSHINE . 63 
 
 DAYLIGHT AND MOONLIGHT 84 
 
 TWILIGHT . 65 
 
 DAYBREAK ....., . . 60 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 THE CITY AND THE SEA 67 
 
 FOUK BY THE CLOCK 68 
 
 A PSALM OF LIFE 68 
 
 THE CASTLE-BUILDER fO 
 
 THE CHAMBER OVER THE GATE 70 
 
 THE REVENGE OF RAIN-IN-THE-FACE 72 
 
 PRELUDE ^ 4 
 
 THE BOY AND THE BROOK 75 
 
 THE SEA HATH ITS PEARLS 76 
 
 A SONG FROM THE PORTUGUESE 76 
 
 Loss AND GAIN ... 77 
 
 To THE AVON 77 
 
 THE ARROW AND THE SONQ ... 76 
 
 THE CHALLENGE ... 79 
 
 THE DAY is DONE 80 
 
 To AN OLD DANISH SONG BOOK .82 
 
 A.MALFI 85 
 
 THE DISCOVERER OF THE NORVH CAPB 
 
 CURFKW . . 92 
 
 THE POBT AND HIS SONGS -93 
 
JOje Jttoersfoe literature Aeries 
 
 THE CHILDREN S HOUR 
 AND OTHER POEMS 
 
LONGFELLOW IN HOME LIFE. 
 
 BY ALICE M. LONGFELLOW. 
 
 MANY people are full of poetry without, perhaps, recog 
 nizing it, because they have no power of expression. Some 
 have, unfortunately, full power of expression, with no depth 
 or richness of thought or character behind it. With Mr. 
 Longfellow, there was complete unity and harmony between 
 
 his life and character ",<* *h ft (flftward Tna.niffistAt.inn of this 
 
 in his poetry. It was not worked out from his brain, but 
 was the blossoming of his inward life. 
 
 His nature was thoroughly poetic and rhythmical, full of 
 delicate fancies and thoughts. Even the ordinary details 
 of existence were invested with charm and thoughtfulness. 
 There was really no line of demarcation between his life 
 and his poetry. One blended into the other, and his daily 
 life was poetry in its truest sense. The rhythmical quality 
 showed itself in an exact order and method, running through 
 very detail. This was not the precision of a martinet ; but 
 anything out of place distressed him, as did a faulty rhyme 
 or defective metre. 
 
 His library was carefully arranged by subjects, and, 
 although no catalogue was ever made, he was never at a 
 loss where to look for any needed volume. His books were 
 deeply beloved and tenderly handled. Beautiful bindings 
 were a great delight, and the leaves were cut with the 
 utmost care and neatness. Letters and bills were kept in 
 the same orderly manner. The latter were paid as soon as 
 rendered, and he always personally attended to those in the 
 neighborhood. An unpaid bill weighed on him like a night- 
 
8 HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW. 
 
 ; Letters were answered day by day, as they accumu 
 lated, although it became often a weary task. He never 
 failed, I think, to keep his account books accurately, and he 
 also used to keep the bank books of the servants in hit 
 employment, and to help them with their accounts. 
 
 Consideration and thoughtfulness for others were strong 
 characteristics with Mr. Longfellow. He, indeed, carried it 
 too far, and became almost a prey to those he used to call 
 the " total strangers," whose demands for time and help were 
 constant. Fortunately he was able to extract much interest 
 and entertainment from the different types of humanity that 
 were always coming on one pretext or another, and his 
 genuine sympathy and quick sense of humor saved the situ 
 ation from becoming too wearing. This constant drain was, 
 however, very great. His unselfishness and courtesy pre 
 vented him from showing the weariness of spirit he often 
 felt, and many valuable hours were taken out of his life by 
 those with no claim, and no appreciation of what they were 
 doing. 
 
 In addition to the " total strangers " was a long line of 
 applicants for aid of every kind. " His house was known 
 to all the vagrant train," and to all he was equally genial 
 and kind. There was no change of voice or manner in 
 talking with the humblest member of society ; and I am 
 inclined to think the friendly chat in Italian with the organ- 
 grinder and the little old woman peddler, or the discussions 
 with the old Irish gardener, were quite as full of pleasure as 
 more important conversations with travelers from Europe. 
 
 One habit Mr. Longfellow always kept up. Whenever 
 he saw in a newspaper any pleasant notice of friends or 
 acquaintances, a review of a book, or a subject in which 
 they were interested, he cut it out, and kept the scraps in 
 an envelope addressed to the person, and mailed them when 
 several had accumulated. 
 
 He was a great foe to procrastination, and believed in 
 attending to everything without delay. In connection with 
 
HOME LIFE. 
 
 this I may say, that when he accepted the invitation of his 
 classmates to deliver a poem at Bowdoin College on the 
 fiftieth anniversary of their graduation, he at once devoted 
 himself to the work, and the poem was finished several 
 months before the time. During these months he was ill 
 with severe neuralgia, and if it had not been for this habit 
 of early preparation the poem would probably never have 
 been written or delivered. 
 
 Society and hospitality meant something quite real to Mr. 
 Longfellow. I cannot remember that there were ever any 
 formal or obligatory occasions of entertainment. All who 
 came were made welcome without any special preparation, 
 and without any thought of personal inconvenience. 
 
 Mr. Longfellow s knowledge of foreign languages brought 
 to him travelers from every country, not only literary 
 men, but public men and women of every kind, and, during 
 the stormy days of European politics, great numbers of for 
 eign patriots exiled for their liberal opinions. As one Eng 
 lishman pleasantly remarked, " There are no ruins in your 
 country to see, Mr. Longfellow, and so we thought we would 
 come to see you." 
 
 Mr. Longfellow was a true lover of peace in every way, 
 And held war in absolute abhorrence, as well as the taking 
 of life in any form. He was strongly opposed to capital 
 punishment, and was filled with indignation at the idea of 
 men finding sport in hunting and killing dumb animals. 
 At the same time he was quickly stirred by any story of 
 wrong and oppression, and ready to give a full measure of 
 help and sympathy to any one struggling for freedom and 
 liberty of thought and action. 
 
 With political life, as such, Mr. Longfellow was not in 
 full sympathy, in spite of his life-long friendship with 
 Charles Sumner. That is to say, the principles involved 
 deeply interested him, but the methods displeased him. He 
 felt that the intense absorption in one line of thought pre 
 vented a full development, and was an enemy to many of 
 
10 HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW. 
 
 the most beautiful and important things in life. He consid- m 
 ered that his part was to cast his weight with what seemed |f 
 to him the best elements in public life, and he never omitted ^ 
 the duty of expressing his opinion by his vote. He always ( 
 went to the polls the first thing in the morning on election -| 
 day, and let nothing interfere with this. He used to say * 
 laughingly that he still belonged to the Federalists. 
 
 Mr. Longfellow came to Cambridge to live in 1837, when -,r 
 be was thirty years old. He was at that time professor | 
 of literature in Harvard College, and occupied two rooms 
 in the old house then owned by the widow Craigie, formerly 
 Washington s Headquarters. In this same old house he 
 passed the remainder of his life, being absent only one year tj& 
 in foreign travel. Home had great attractions for him. He ||< 
 cared more for the quiet and repose, the companionship of ^ 
 his friends and books, than for the fatigues and adventures y 
 of new scenes. Many of the friends of his youth were the ra 
 friends of old age, and to them his house was always open jf|[ 
 with a warm welcome. 
 
 Mr. Longfellow was always full of reserve, and never ^j 
 talked much about himself or his work, even to his family, |l 
 Sometimes a volume would appear in print, without his hav 
 ing mentioned its preparation. In spite of his general inter* 
 est in people, only a few came really close to his life. With 
 these he was always glad to go over the early days passed M 
 together, and to consult with them about literary work. 
 
 The lines descriptive of the Student in the Wayside Inn fa 
 might apply to Mr. Longfellow as well : 
 
 " A youth was there, of quiet ways, 
 A Student of old books and days, 
 To whom all tongues and lands were known, 
 And yet a lover of his own ; 
 With many a social virtue graced, 
 And yet a friend of solitude ; 
 A man of such a genial mood 
 The heart of all things he embraced, 
 And yet of such fastidious taste, 
 He never found the best too good." 
 
 I 
 
THE CHILDREN S HOUR. 
 
 BETWEEN the dark and the 
 
 When the night is beginning to lower f 
 Gomes a pause in the day s occupations, 
 
 That is known as the Children s Hour* 
 
 I hear in the chamber above me 
 
 The patter of little feet, 
 The sound of a door that is opened, 
 
 And voices soft and sweet. 
 
 From my study I see in the lamplight, 
 Descending the broad hall stair, 
 
 Grave Alice, and laughing Allegra, 
 And Edith with golden hair. 
 
 A whisper, and then a silence : 
 Yet I know by their merry eyes, 
 
 They are plotting and planning togethet 
 To take rne by surprise. 
 
 A sudden rush from the stairway, 
 A sudden raid from the hall ! 
 
 By three doors left unguarded, 
 They enter my castle wall I 
 
 They climb up into my turret, 
 
 O er the arms and back of my chair ; 
 
12 HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW. 
 
 If I try to escape, they surround me ; 
 They seem to be everywhere. 
 
 They almost devour me with kisses, 
 
 Their arms about me entwine, 
 Till I think of the Bishop of Bingen* 
 
 In his Mouse-Tower on the Rhine I 
 
 Do you think, O blue-eyed banditti, 2 
 Because you have scaled the wall, 
 
 Such an old moustache 3 as I am 
 Is not a match for you all ? 
 
 I have you fast in my fortress, 
 
 And will not let you depart, 
 But put you down into the dungeon 
 
 In the round-tower of my heart. 
 
 And there will I keep you forever, 
 
 Yes, forever and a day, 
 Till the walls shall crumble to ruin, 
 
 And moulder in dust away I 
 
 1 Near Bingen on the Rhine is a little square Mouse-Tower, 
 BO called from an old word meaning toll, since it was used as a 
 toll-house ; but there is an old tradition that a certain Bishop 
 liatto, who had been cruel to the people, was attacked in the 
 tower by a great army of rats and mice. See Southey s famous 
 poem, Bishop Hatto. 
 
 2 An Italian word for bands of robbers. 
 
 8 A translation of the French phrase vieille moustache, which Ml 
 used of a veteran soldier. 
 
THE WINDMILL. 
 
 THE WINDMILL. 
 
 BEHOLD ! a giant am 1 1 
 
 Aloft here in my tower, 
 
 With my granite jaws I devour 
 
 The maize, and the wheat, and the rye. 
 And grind them into flour. 
 
 I look down over the farms ; 
 In the fields of grain I see 
 The harvest that is to be, 
 
 And I fling to the air my arms, 
 For I know it is all for me. 
 
 I hear the sound of flails 
 
 Far off, from the threshing-floors 
 In barns, with their open doors, 
 
 And the wind, the wind in my sails, 
 Louder and louder roars. 
 
 I stand here in my place, 
 
 With my foot on the rock below, 
 And whichever way it may blow 
 
 I meet it face to face, 
 
 As a brave man meets his foe. 
 
 And while we wrestle and strive, 
 My master, the miller, stands 
 And feeds me with his hands 
 
 For he knows who makes him thrive, 
 Who makes him lord of lauds. 
 
 On Sundays I take my rest ; 
 Church-going bells begin 
 
14 HENRY WADSWQRTH LONGFELLOW. 
 
 Their low, melodious din ; 
 I cross my arms on my breast, 
 And all is peace within. 
 
 MAIDEN AND WEATHERCOCK. 
 
 MAIDEN. 
 
 WEATHERCOCK on the village spire, 
 With your golden feathers all on fire, 
 Tell me, what can you see from your perch 
 Above there over the tower of the church ? 
 
 WEATHERCOCK. 
 
 1 can see the roofs and the streets below, 
 And the people moving to and fro, 
 
 And beyond, without either roof or street, 
 The great salt sea, and the fisherman s fleet. 
 
 I can see a ship come sailing in 
 Beyond the headlands and harbor of Lynn, 
 And a young man standing on the deck, 
 With a silken kerchief round his neck. 
 
 Now he is pressing it to his lips, 
 And now he is kissing his finger-tips, 
 And now he is lifting and waving his hand, 
 And blowing the kisses toward the land. 
 
 MAIDEN. 
 
 Ah, that is the ship from over the sea, 
 That is bringing my lover back to me, 
 Bringing my lover so fond and true, 
 W ho does not change with the wind like you. 
 
DECORATION DAY. 15 
 
 WEATHERCOCK. 
 
 Jf I change with all the winds that blow. 
 It is only because they made me so, 
 And people would think it wondrous strange, 
 If I, a Weathercock, should not change. 
 
 O pretty Maiden, so fine and fair, 
 
 With your dreamy eyes arid your golden hair, 
 
 When you and your lover meet to-day 
 
 You will thank me for looking some other way* 
 
 DECORATION DAY. 
 
 SLEEP, comrades, sleep and rest 
 
 On this Field of the Grounded Arms, 
 
 Where foes no more molest, 
 Nor sentry s shot alarms ! 
 
 Ye have slept on the ground before, 
 
 And started to your feet 
 At the cannon s sudden roar, 
 
 Or the drum s redoubling beat. 
 
 But in this camp of Death 
 
 No sound your slumber breaks ; 
 
 Here is no fevered breath, 
 
 No wound that bleeds and aches. 
 
 All is repose and peace, 
 
 Untrampled lies the sod; 
 The shouts of battle cease, 
 
 It is the Truce of God ! l 
 
 * Early in the eleventh century, when war had brought great 
 misery, and bad harvests had added to the desolation, the churc tt 
 
16 HENRY WAVSWORTH LONGFELLOW. 
 
 Rest, comrades, rest and sleep! 
 
 The thoughts of men shall be 
 As sentinels to keep 
 
 Your rest from danger free. 
 
 Your silent tents of green 
 
 We deck with fragrant flowers ; 
 
 Yours has the suffering been, 
 The memory shall be ours. 
 
 HYMN OF THE MORAVIAN NUNS OF BETH* 
 LEHEM. 
 
 AT THE CONSECRATION OF PULASKl S BANNER. 1 
 
 WHEN the dying flame of day 
 
 Through the chancel shot its ray, 
 
 Far the glimmering tapers shed 
 
 Faint light on the cowled head ; 
 
 And the censer burning swung, 
 
 Where, before the altar, hung 
 
 The crimson banner, that with prayer 
 
 Had been consecrated there. 
 
 And the nuns sweet hymn was heard the while, 
 
 Sung low, in the dim, mysterious aisle. 
 
 proclaimed the Truce of God, by which it was forbidden to wage 
 war on any private account between Wednesday night and 
 Monday morning of each week during the whole of Advent, 
 and from the Monday before Ash- Wednesday till Whit-Sunday, 
 as also on all holidays and festivals. 
 
 1 It is said that the Polish Count Pulaski, who served in our 
 army in the Revolution, visited Lafayette when he lay sick at 
 Bethlehem, in Pennsylvania, and ordered a silk banner of the 
 Moravian sisterhood there, who helped to support their housa 
 by needlework. 
 
HYMN OF THE MORAVIAN NUNS. 17 
 
 " Take thy banner ! May it wave 
 Proudly o er the good and brave ; 
 When the battle s distant wail 
 Breaks the sabbath of our vale, 
 When the clarion s music thrills 
 To the hearts of these lone hills, 
 When the spear in conflict shakes, 
 And the strong lance shivering breaks. 
 
 " Take thy banner ! and, beneath 
 The battle-cloud s encircling wreath, 
 Guard it, till our homes are free I 
 Guard it ! God will prosper thee I 
 In the dark and trying hour, 
 In the breaking forth of power, 
 In the rush of steeds and men, 
 His right hand will shield thee then. 
 
 O 
 
 " Take thy banner ! But when night 
 Closes round the ghastly fight, 
 If the vanquished warrior bow, 
 Spare him ! By our holy vow, 
 By our prayers and many tears, 
 By the mercy that endears, 
 Spare him ! he our love hath shared \ 
 Spare him ! as thou wouldst be spared! 
 
 " Take thy banner ! and if e er 
 Thou shouldst press the soldier s bier, 
 And the muffled drum should beat 
 To the tread of mournful feet, 
 Then this crimson flag shall be 
 Martial cloak and shroud for thee." 
 
18 HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW. 
 
 The warrior took that banner proud, 
 And it was liis martial cloak and shroud 1 * 
 
 THE PHANTOM SHIP. 
 
 IN Mather s Magrialia Christi, 2 
 
 Of the old colonial time, 
 May be found in prcse the legend 
 
 That is here set down in rhyme. 
 
 A ship sailed from New Haven, 
 
 And the keen and frosty airs, 
 That filled her sails at parting, 
 
 Were heavy with good men s prayers. 
 
 " O Lord ! if it be thy pleasure " > 
 
 Thus prayed the old divine 
 " To bury our friends in the ocean, 
 
 Take them, for they are thine I " 
 
 1 Pulaski was wounded at the siege of Savannah and, dying 
 on one of the vessels of the fleet on his way north, was buried at 
 sea. As a matter of historic fact, the banner is preserved in the 
 cabinet of the Maryland Historical Society, at Baltimore. Its 
 size, twenty inches square, would have precluded its use as a 
 shroud. 
 
 2 The whole title of the book is Magnolia Christi Americana 
 [Christ s mighty works in America] ; or, The Ecclesiastical His* 
 tory of New England, from it* first Planting, in the year 1620, 
 unto the year of our Lord 1698. It was first published in 1702, 
 The story of the phantom ship is contained in it in the form of a 
 letter from James Pierpont, a New Haven Minister. The letter 
 occurs in Book I., chapter vi., and may also be found in TM 
 podleys Afoot, page 175. 
 
THE PHANTOM SHIP. 18 
 
 But Master Lamberton muttered, 
 
 And under his breath said he, 
 "This ship is so crank and walty 
 I fear our grave she will be I " 
 
 And the ships that came from England, 
 When the winter months were gone, 
 
 Brought no tidings of this vessel 
 Nor of Master Lamberton. 
 
 This put the people to praying 
 
 That the Lord would let them hear 
 
 What in his greater wisdom 
 
 He had done with friends so dear. 
 
 And at last their prayers were answered : * 
 
 It was in the month of June, 
 An hour before the sunset 
 
 Of a windy afternoon, 
 
 When, steadily steering landward, 
 
 A ship was seen below, 
 And they knew it was Lamberton, Master, 
 
 Who sailed so long ago. 
 
 On she came, with a cloud of canvas, 
 
 Right against the wind that blew, 
 Until the eye could distinguish 
 
 The faces of the crew. 
 
 Then fell her straining topmasts, 
 
 Hanging tangled in the shrouds, 
 And her sails were loosened and lifted, 
 
 And blown away like clouds. 
 
20 HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW. 
 
 And the masts, with all their rigging, 
 
 Fell slowly, one by one, 
 And the hulk dilated and vanished^ 
 
 As a sea-mist in the sun ! 
 
 And the people who saw this marvel 
 
 Each said unto his friend, 
 That this was the mould of their vessel, 
 
 And thus her tragic end. 
 
 And the pastor of the village 
 Gave thanks to God in prayer, 
 
 That, to quiet their troubled spirits, 
 He had sent this Ship of Air. 
 
 PEGASUS IN POUND. 
 
 ONCE into a quiet village, 
 
 Without haste and without heed, 
 In the golden prime of morning, 
 
 Strayed the poet s winged steed. 1 
 
 It was Autumn, and incessant 
 
 Piped the quails from shocks and sheaves, 
 And, like living coals, the apples 
 
 Burned among the withering leaves. 
 
 1 In classic mythology Pegasus was a winged horse belonging 
 to Apollo and the Muses. Thus when a poet wrote he was said 
 to mount Pegasus and ride ; the horse not only bore him swiftly, 
 and by his canter gave rhythm to the verse, but by his wings 
 bore UIG rider above the earth. 
 
PEGASUS IN POUND. 21 
 
 Loud the clamorous bell was ringing 
 From its belfry gaunt and grim ; 
 
 T was the daily call to labor, 
 Not a triumph meant for him. 
 
 Not the less he saw the landscape, 
 
 In its gleaming vapor veiled ; 
 Not the less he breathed the odors 
 
 That the dying leaves exhaled. 
 
 Thus, upon the village common. 
 
 By the school-boys he was found ; 
 And the wise men, in their wisdom, 
 
 Put him straightway into pound. 
 
 Then the sombre village crier, 
 
 Ringing loud his brazen bell, 
 Wandered down the street proclaiming 
 
 There was an estray to sell. 
 
 And the curious country people, 
 Rich and poor, and young and old 
 
 Came in haste to see this wondrous 
 Winged steed, with mane of gold. 
 
 Thus the day passed, and the evening 
 
 Fell, with vapors cold and dim ; 
 But ifc brought no food nor shelter, 
 
 Brought no straw nor stall, for him. 
 
 Patiently, and still expectant, 
 
 Looked he through the wooden bara. 
 
 Saw the moon rise o er the landscape, 
 Saw the tranquil, patient stars ; 
 
22 HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW. 
 
 Till at length the bell at midnight 
 
 Sounded from its dark abode, 
 And, from out a neighboring farm-yard 
 
 Loud the cock Alectryon l crowed. 
 
 Then, with nostrils wide distended, 
 
 Breaking from his iron chain, 
 And unfolding far his pinions, 
 
 To those stars he soared again. 
 
 On the morrow, when the village 
 
 Woke to all its toil and care, 
 Lo ! the strange steed had departed, 
 
 And they knew not when nor where. 
 
 But they found, upon the greensward 
 Where his struggling hoofs had trod, 
 
 Pure and bright, a fountain 2 flowing 
 From the hoof -marks in the sod. 
 
 From that hour, the fount unfailing 
 Gladdens the whole region round, 
 
 Strengthening all who drink its waters, 
 While it soothes them with its sound. 
 
 1 Alectryon, in the old fables, was a youth who had been sta 
 tioned by Mars to give notice when Apollo, the sun-god, was to 
 appear. The boy fell asleep, and, for punishment, was turned 
 by Mars into a cock, and ever since has remembered his duty 
 and crows when the sun rises. 
 
 2 The poet Ovid says that, with a blow of his hoof, Pegasus 
 opened the fountain of Hippocrene (horse-spring) on Mount 
 Helicon, and that the Muses used to drink from it. Our poet 
 has turned the pretty story into a fable of wider meaning, by 
 reminding us that poetry, not appreciated by all people, is yet a 
 never-failing source of pleasure in the toiling world. 
 
THE SERMON OF ST. FRANCIS. 23 
 
 THE SERMON OF ST. FRANCIS. 
 
 UP soared the lark into the air, 
 A shaft of song, a winged prayer, 
 As if a soul, released from pain, 
 Were flying back to heaven again* 
 
 St. Francis 1 heard ; it was to him 
 An emblem of the Seraphim ; 
 The upward motion of the fire, 
 The light, the heat, the heart s desire. 
 
 Around Assisi s convent gate 
 The birds, God s poor who cannot wait, 
 From moor and mere and darksome wood 
 Came flocking for their dole of food. 
 
 O brother birds," St. Francis said, 
 " Ye come to me and ask for bread, 
 
 But not with bread alone to-day 
 
 Shall ye be fed and sent away. 
 
 ** Ye shall be fed, ye happy birds, 
 With manna of celestial words; 
 Not mine, though mine they seem to be, 
 Not mine, though they be spoken through me. 
 
 46 O, doubly are ye bound to praise 
 The great Creator in your lays ; 
 
 * St. Francis of Assisi lived in Italy at the end of the twelfth 
 and beginning of the thirteenth century, and was founder of the 
 order of the Franciscans. There are many stories of his intiniac> 
 with birds and beasts. 
 
24 HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW. 
 
 He giveth you your plumes of down, 
 Your crimson hoods, your cloaks of brown, 
 
 "He giveth you your wings to fly 
 And breathe a purer air on high, 
 And careth for you everywhere, 
 Who for yourselves so little care ! 
 
 With flutter of swift wings and songs 
 Together rose the feathered throngs, 
 And singing scattered far apart ; 
 Deep peace was in St. Francis heart. 
 
 He knew not if the brotherhood 
 His homily had understood ; 
 He only knew that to one ear 
 The meaning of his words was clear. 
 
 WALTER VON DER VOGELWEID. 
 
 VOGELWEID the Minnesinger, 1 
 When he left this world of ours, 
 
 Laid his body in the cloister, 
 
 Under Wiirtzburg s minster towers. 
 
 And he gave the monks his treasures, 
 Gave them all with this behest : 
 
 They should feed the birds at noontide 
 Daily on his place of rest ; 
 
 1 The Minnesingers were German lyrical poets, who first sang 
 about the middle of the twelfth century; their songs breathed 
 of love and sweetness in woods, meadows, flowers, grass, rivers, 
 birds, and women, while some had a religious character. Wal 
 ter s name is pronounced Fogelvld. 
 
WALTER VON DER VOGELWEID. 25 
 
 Saying, " From these wandering minstrels 
 I have learned the art of song ; 
 
 Let me now repay the lessons 
 
 They have taught so well and long." 
 
 Thus the bard of love departed ; 
 
 And, fulfilling his desire, 
 On his tomb the birds were feasted 
 
 By the children of the choir. 
 
 Day by day, o er tower and turret, 
 
 In foul weather and in fair, 
 Day by day, in vaster numbers, 
 
 Flocked the poets of the air. 
 
 On the tree whose heavy branches 
 
 Overshadowed all the place, 
 On the pavement, on the tombstone, 
 
 On the poet s sculptured face, 
 
 On the cross-bars of each window, 
 
 On the lintel of each door, 
 They renewed the War of Wartburg, 1 
 
 Which the bard had fought before. 
 
 There they sang their merry carols, 
 Sang their lauds on every side ; 
 
 And the name their voices uttered 
 Was the name of Vogelweid. 
 
 Castle Wartburg was the residence of Landgrave Herrmana 
 f Thiiringen, in Vogelweid s time, and a great resort of the 
 Minnesingers. The Wartburg Minstrels War is the name of a 
 pcem which celebrates the singing contests of that day. Long 
 afterward Wartburg became famous as the place where Lutke* 
 translated the Bible into German. 
 
26 dENRY WADS WORTH LONGFELLOW. 
 
 Till at length the portly abbot 
 
 Murmured, " Why this waste of food ? 
 
 Be it changed to loaves henceforward 
 For our fasting brotherhood." 
 
 Then in vain o er tower and turret, 
 From the walls and v/oodland nests, 
 
 When the minster bells rang noontide, 
 Gathered the unwelcome guests. 
 
 Then in vain, with cries discordant, 
 Clamorous round the Gothic spire, 
 
 Screamed the feathered Minnesingers 
 For the children of the choir. 
 
 Time has long effaced the inscriptions 
 On the cloister s funeral stones, 
 
 And tradition only tells us 
 
 Where repose the poet s bones. 
 
 But around the vast cathedral, 
 By sweet echoes multiplied, 
 
 Still the birds repeat the legend s 
 And the name of Vogelweid. 
 
 SIR HUMPHREY GILBERT. 
 
 SOUTHWARD with fleet of ice 
 Sailed the corsair Death j 
 
 Wild and fast blew the blast, 
 
 And the east-wind was his breath. 
 
 His lordly ships of ice 
 Glisten in the sun ; 
 
SIR HUMPHREY GILBERT. 27 
 
 On each side, like pennons wide, 
 Flashing crystal streamlets run> 
 
 His sails of white sea-mist 
 
 Dripped with silver rain ; 
 But where he passed there were cast 
 
 Leaden shadows o er the mam. 
 
 Eastward from Campobello 
 
 Sir Humphrey Gilbert l sailed ; 
 
 Three days or more seaward he bore, 
 Then, alas ! the land-wind failed. 
 
 Alas ! the land-wind failed, 
 
 A.nd ice-cold grew the night ; 
 And nevermore, on sea or shore, 
 
 Should Sir Humphrey see the light. 
 
 He sat upon the deck, 
 
 The Book was in his hand ; 
 * Do not fear ! Heaven is as near," 
 He said, " by water as by land ! " 
 
 In the first watch of the night, 
 Without a signal s sound, 
 
 1 Sir Humphrey Gilbert was half-brother to Sir Walter 
 Raleigh, and came to America as leader of an expedition in 
 Io83. It was when he was returning to England, after an un 
 successful voyage in search of a silver mine, that he met his death 
 as the poem tells. He was aboard the Squirrel, the smallest 
 vessel of his little fleet, a boat of only ten tons burden. The 
 historian of the expedition tells how the captain of one of the 
 other vessels came near enough to see Sir Humphrey sitting in 
 the stern with his book, and to hear his cheerful words. 
 
28 HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW. 
 
 Out of the sea mysteriously, 
 
 The fleet of Death rose all around. 
 
 The moon and the evening star 
 Were hanging in the shrouds ; 
 
 Every mast, as it passed, 
 
 Seemed to rake the passing clouds. 
 
 They grappled with their prize, 
 At midnight black and cold ! 
 
 As of a rock was the shock ; 
 
 Heavily the ground-swell rolled. 
 
 Southward through day and dark, 
 They drift in close embrace, 
 
 With mist and rain, o er the open main ; 
 Yet there seems no change of place. 
 
 Southward, forever southward, 
 
 They drift through dark and day ; 
 
 And like a dream, in the Gulf-Stream l 
 Sinking, vanish all away. 
 
 VICTOR GALBRAITK.a 
 
 UNDER the walls of Monterey 
 
 At daybreak the bugles begin to play, 
 
 1 The warm river in the midst of the ocean, with its banks of 
 cold water, which we call the Gulf Stream, has an important 
 influence upon the climate of the countries by which it flows. 
 The icebergs, as they drift into it from the north, melt away like 
 a dream. 
 
 2 "This poem," says Mr. Longfellow, "is founded on fact 
 Victor Galbraith was a bugler in a company of volunteer cavalry, 
 
VICTOR GALBRAITH. 2& 
 
 Victor Galbraith ! 
 
 In the midst of the morning damp and gray> 
 These were the words they seemed to say : 
 " Come forth to thy death, 
 
 Victor Galbraith ! " 
 
 Forth he came, with a martial tread 5 
 Firm was his step, erect his head ; 
 
 Victor Galbraith, 
 He who so well the bugle played, 
 Could not mistake the words it said: 
 u Come forth to thy death, 
 
 Victor Galbraith ! " 
 
 He looked at the earth, he looked at the sky, 
 He looked at the files of musketry, 
 
 Victor Galbraith ! 
 
 And he said, with a steady voice and eye, 
 44 Take good aim ; I am ready to die 1 " 
 
 Thus challenges death 
 
 Victor Galbraith. 
 
 Twelve fiery tongues flashed straight and red, 
 Six leaden balls on their errand sped ; 
 
 Victor Galbraith 
 
 Falls to the ground, but he is not dead ; 
 His name was not stamped on those balls of lead, 
 
 And they only scath 
 
 Victor Galbraith. 
 
 nnd was shot in Mexico for some breach of discipline. It is a 
 common superstition among soldiers, that no balls will kill them 
 unless their names are written on them. The old proverb 
 Every bullet has its billet " 
 
30 HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW. 
 
 Three balls are in his breast and brain, 
 But he rises out of the dust again, 
 
 Victor Galbraith ! 
 
 The water he drinks has a bloody stain ; 
 44 Oh, kill me, and put me out of my pain I " 
 
 In his agony prayeth 
 
 Victor Galbraith, 
 
 Forth dart once more those tongues of flame, 
 And the bugler has died a death of shame, 
 
 Victor Galbraith ! 
 
 His soul has gone back to whence it came, 
 And no one answers to the name, 
 
 When the Sergeant saith, 
 Victor Galbraith ! " 
 
 Under the walls of Monterey 
 By night a bugle is heard to play, 
 
 Victor Galbraith ! 
 
 Through the mist of the valley damp and gray 
 The sentinels hear the sound, and say, 
 " That is the wraith 
 
 Of Victor Galbraith 1 " 
 
 THE ROPEWALK. 
 
 IN that building, long and low, 
 With its windows all a-row, 
 
 Like the port-holes of a hulk, 
 Human spiders spin and spin, 
 Backward down their threads sc thin 
 
 Dropping, each a hempen bulk. 
 
THE ROPE WALK. 31 
 
 At the end, an open aoor ; 
 Squares of sunshine on the floor 
 
 Light the long and dusky lane ; 
 And the whirring of a wheel, 
 Dull and drowsy, makes rne feel 
 
 All its spokes a.re in my brain. 
 
 As the spinners to the end 
 Downward go and reascend, 
 
 Gleam the long threads in the sun*, 
 While within this brain of mine 
 Cobwebs brighter and more fine 
 
 By the busy wheel are spun. 
 
 Two fair maidens in a swing, 
 Like white doves upon the wing, 
 
 First before my vision pass ; 
 Laughing, as their gentle hands 
 Closely clasp the twisted strands, 
 
 At their shadow on the grass. 
 
 Then a booth of mountebanks, 
 With its smell of tan and planks, 
 
 And a girl poised high in air 
 On a cord, in spangled dress, 
 With a faded loveliness, 
 
 And a weary look of care. 
 
 Then a homestead among farms, 
 And a woman with bare arms 
 
 Drawing water from a well ; 
 As the bucket mount? apace, 
 With it mounts her own fair face, 
 
 As at some magician s spell. 
 
82 HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW. 
 
 Then an old man in a tower, 
 Kinging loud the noontide hour, 
 
 While the rope coils round and round 
 Like a serpent at his feet. 
 And again, in swift retreat, 
 
 Nearly lifts him from the ground. 
 
 Then within a prison-yard, 
 faces fixed, and stern, and hard, 
 
 Laughter and indecent mirth ; 
 An I it is the gallows-tree ! 
 Breath of Christian charity, 
 
 Blow, and sweep it from the earth! 
 
 Then a school-boy, with his kite 
 Gleaming in a sky of light, 
 
 And an eager, upward look ; 
 Steeds pursued through lane and field ; 
 
 Fowlers with their snares concealed ; 
 
 And an angler by a brook. 
 
 Ships rejoicing in the breeze, 
 Wrecks that float o er unknown seas, 
 
 Anchors dragged through faithless sand 
 Sea-fog drifting overhead, 
 And, with lessening line and lead, 
 
 Sailors feeling for the land. 
 
 All these scenes do I behold, 
 These, and many left untold, 
 
 In that building long and low ; 
 While the wheel goes round and round, 
 With a drowsy, dreamy sound, 
 
 And the spinners backward go. 
 
SANTA FILOMENA, 83 
 
 SANTA FILOMENA.* 
 
 WHENE ER a noble deed is wrought, 
 Whene er is spoken a noble thought, 
 
 Our hearts, in glad surprise, 
 
 To higher levels rise. 
 
 The tidal wave of deeper souls 
 Into our inmost being rolls, 
 
 And lifts us unawares 
 
 Out of all meaner cares. 
 
 Honor to those whose words or deeds 
 Thus help us in our daily needs, 
 
 And by their overflow 
 
 Raise us from what is low ! 
 
 Thus thought I, as by night I read 
 
 Of the great army of the dead, 
 The trenches cold and damp, 
 The starved and frozen camp, 
 
 The wounded from the battle-plain, 
 In dreary hospitals of pain, 
 
 1 This poem is in honor of Miss Nightingale, an English lady t 
 won the admiration of Christendom by her devotion to the 
 ick and wounded in the Crimean War of 1854-55, when England 
 and France were fighting Russia. Filomena [Latin, Philomela"} 
 is the Italian for Nightingale, and by a singular fortune there is 
 a Saint Filomena whose memory is honored, and at Pisa, in Italy, 
 there is a chapel dedicated to her, and over the altar a picture 
 " representing the Saint as a beautiful, nymph-like figure, float 
 ing down from heaven attended by two angels bearing the lily, 
 palm, and javelin, and beneath, in the foreground, the sick and 
 maimed, who are healed by her intercession." 
 
84 HENRY WADS WORTH LONGFELLOW. 
 
 The cheerless corridors, 
 The cold and stony floors. 
 
 Lo ! in that house of misery 
 
 A lady with a lamp I see 
 
 Pass through the glimmering glooua, 
 And flit from room to room. 
 
 And slow, as in a dream of bliss, 
 The speechless sufferer turns to kiss 
 Her shadow, as it falls 
 Upon the darkening walls. 
 
 As if a door in heaven should be 
 Opened and then closed suddenly, 
 The vision came and went, 
 The light shone and was spent. 
 
 On England s annals, through the long 
 Hereafter of her speech and song, 
 That light its rays shall cast 
 From portals of the past. 
 
 A Lady with a Lamp shall stand 
 In the great history of the land, 
 
 A noble type of good, 
 
 Heroic womanhood. 
 
 Nor even shall be wanting here 
 The palm, the lily, and the spear 9 
 
 The symbols that of yore 
 
 Saint Filomena bore. 
 
THE THREE KINGS. 85 
 
 THE THREE KINGS. 
 
 THREE Kings came riding from far away, 
 
 Melchior and Gaspar and Baltasar ; l 
 Three Wise Men out of the East were they, 
 And they travelled by night and they slept by day f 
 For their guide was a beautiful, wonderful star. ^ 
 
 The star was so beautiful, large, and clear, 
 
 That all the other stars of the sky 
 Became a white mist in the atmosphere, 
 And by this they knew that the coining was near 
 
 Of the Prince foretold in the prophecy. 
 
 Three caskets they bore on their saddle-bows, 
 
 Three caskets of gold with golden keys ; 
 Their robes were of crimson silk with rows 
 Of bells and pomegranates and furbelows, 
 Their turbans like blossoming almond-trees. 
 
 And so the Three Kings rode into the West, 
 
 Through the dusk of night, over hill and dell, 
 And sometimes they nodded with beard on breast, 
 And sometimes talked, as they paused to rest, 
 With the people they met at some wayside well* 
 
 44 Of the child that is born," said Baltasar, 
 
 " Good people, I pray you, tell us the news | 
 For we in the East have seen his star, 
 And have ridden fast, and have ridden far, 
 To find and worship the King of the Jews." 
 
 1 So, according to old tradition, were the Kings or Wise Men 
 ef the East named. 
 
g6 HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW. 
 
 And the people answered, " You ask in vain ; 
 
 We know of no king but Herod the Great ! n 
 They thought the Wise Men were men insane, 
 As they spurred their horses across the plain, 
 
 Like riders in haste, and who cannot wait. 
 
 And when they came to Jerusalem, 
 
 Herod the Great, who had heard this thing, 
 
 Sent for the Wise Men and questioned them ; 
 
 And said, " Go down unto Bethlehem, 
 And bring me tidings of this new king." 
 
 So they rode away ; and the star stood still, 
 
 The only one in the gray of morn ; 
 Yes, it stopped, it stood still of its own free will. 
 Right over Bethlehem on the hill, 
 
 The city of David where Christ was born. 
 
 And the Three Kings rode through the gate and the 
 
 guard, 
 
 Through the silent street, till their horses turned 
 And neighed as they entered the great inn-yard ; 
 But the windows were closed, and the doors were 
 
 barred, 
 And only a light in the stable burned. 
 
 And cradled there in the scented hay, 
 
 In the air made sweet by the breath of kin*,, 
 The little child in the manger lay, 
 The child, that would be king one day 
 Of a kingdom not human but divine. 
 
 His mother Mary of Nazareth 
 
 Sat watching beside his place of rest, 
 
THE CASTLE BY THE SEA. 37 
 
 Watching the even flow of his breath, 
 For the joy of life and the terror of death 
 Were mingled together in her breast. 
 
 They laid their offerings at his feet : 
 The gold was their tribute to a King, 
 
 The frankincense, with its odor sweet, 
 
 Was for the Priest, the Paraclete, 1 
 The myrrh for the body s burying. 
 
 And the mother wondered and bowed her head. 
 
 And sat as still as a statue of stone ; 
 Her heart was troubled yet comforted, 
 Remembering what the Angel had said 
 
 Of an endless reign and of David s throne. 
 
 Then the Kings rode out of the city gate, 
 With a clatter of hoofs in proud array ; 
 But they went not back to Herod the Great, 
 For they knew his malice and feared his hate, 
 And returned to their homes by another way. 
 
 THE CASTLE BY THE SEA. 2 
 
 FROM THE GERMAN OF UHLAND. 3 
 
 " HAST thou seen that lordly castle, 
 That Castle by the sea ? 
 
 t The Paraclete is the Greek for Comforter, the name 6y 
 Which the Holy Spirit is sometimes called in the New Testament. 
 
 2 The quotation marks will help the reader to see that the 
 poem is a dialogue between one who knew only of the coming 
 marriage of a princess, and one who knew of the calamity which 
 pad interrupted the marriage. 
 
 8 Uhland was a German poet, who was born in 1787, a4. died 
 fci 1862. 
 
88 HENRY WADS WORTH LONGFELLOW. 
 
 Golden and red about it 
 The clouds float gorgeously. 
 
 "And fain it would stoop downward 
 
 To the mirrored wave below ; 
 And fain it would soar upward 
 In the evening s crimson glow." 
 
 " Well have I seen that castle, 
 
 That Castle by the Sea, 
 And the moon above it standing, 
 And the mist rise solemnly." 
 
 ** The winds and the waves of ocean, 
 
 Had they a merry chime ? 
 Didst thou hear, from those lofty chambers 
 The harp and the minstrel s rhyme ? " 
 
 ** The winds and the waves of ocean, 
 
 They rested quietly, 
 
 But I heard on the gale a sound of wail, 
 And tears came to mine eye." 
 
 " And sawest thou on the turrets 
 
 The King and his royal bride ? 
 And the wave of their crimson mantles? 
 And the golden crown of pride ? 
 
 ** Led they not forth, in rapture, 
 A beauteous maiden there ? 
 Resplendent as the morning sun, 
 Beaming with golden hair ? " 
 
THE SKELETON IN ARMOR. 
 
 " Well saw I the ancient parents, 
 Without the crown of pride ; 
 They were moving slow, in weeds of woe, 
 No maiden was by their side 1 " 
 
 THE SKELETON IN ARMOR. 1 
 
 44 SPEAK ! speak ! thou fearful guest I 
 Who, with thy hollow breast 
 Still in rude armor drest, 
 
 Contest to daunt me ! 
 Wrapt not in Eastern balms, 2 
 But with thy fleshless palms 
 Stretched, as if asking alms, 
 
 Why dost thou haunt me ? " 
 
 Then, from those cavernous ejes 
 Pale flashes seemed to rise, 
 As when the Northern skies 
 Gleam in December; 
 
 * " This ballad was suggested to me," says Mr. Longfellow, 
 * while riding on the sea-shore at Newport. A year or two pre 
 vious a skeleton had been dug up at Fall River, clad in broken 
 and corroded armor ; and the idea occurred to me of connecting 
 it with the Round Tower at Newport, generally known hitherto 
 as the Old Windmill, though now claimed by the Danes as a 
 work of their early ancestors." It is generally conceded 
 that the Norsemen had nothing to do with the old mill at 
 port, which is a close copy of one standing at Chesterton, te 
 Warwickshire, England. The destruction of the armor shortly 
 after it was found has prevented any trustworthy examination of 
 it, to see if it was really Scandinavian or only Indian. The poet 
 sings as one haunted by the skeleton, and able to call out its 
 Voice. , 
 
 * This old warrior was not embalmed \s an Egyptian mummy. 
 
40 3ENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW. 
 
 And, like the water s flow 
 Under December s snow. 
 Came a dull voice of woe 
 From the heart s chamber. 
 
 * I was a Viking l old ! 
 My deeds, though manifold, 
 No Skald 2 in song has told, 
 
 No Saga 3 taught thee I 
 Take heed, that in thy verse 
 Thou dost the tale rehearse, 
 Else dread a dead man s curse ; 
 
 For this I sought thee. 
 
 " Far in the Northern Land, 
 By the wild Baltic s strand, 
 I, with my childish hand, 
 Tamed the gerfalcon ; 
 \nd, with my skates fast-bound, 
 3kimmed the half -frozen Sound, 
 That the poor whimpering hound 
 Trembled to walk on. 
 
 " Oft to his frozen lair 
 Tracked I the grisly bear, 
 While from my path the hare 
 Fled like a shadow ; 
 
 1 The Vik-ings took their name from an old Norse word r wfc 
 Still used in Norway, signifying creek, because these sea-piratef 
 made their haunts among the indentations of the coast, and 
 sallied out thence in search of booty. 
 
 2 The Skald was the Norse chronicler and pcet who sang of 
 bra^e deeds at the feasts of the warriors. 
 
 8 The Saga was the saying or chronicle of the heroic deeds. 
 There are many of these old sagas still preserved in Northern 
 literature. 
 
THE SKELETON IN ARMOK. 41 
 
 Oft through the forest dark 
 Followed the were-wolf s 1 bark* 
 Until the soaring lark 
 Sang from the meadow. 
 
 * But when I older grew, 
 Joining a corsair s crew, 
 O er the dark sea I flew 
 
 With the marauders. 
 Wild was the life we led ; 
 Many the souls that sped, 
 Many the hearts that bled, 
 
 By our stern orders. 
 
 * Many a wassail-bout 
 Wore the long winter out ; 
 Often our midnight shout 
 
 Set the cocks crowing, 
 As we the Berserk s 2 tale 
 Measured in cups of ale. 
 Draining the oaken pail, 
 
 Filled to o erflowing. 
 
 " Once as I told in glee 
 Tales of the stormy sea, 
 Soft eyes did gaze on me, 
 
 1 In the fables of Northern Europe there were said to be men 
 who could change themselves into wolves at pleasure, and they 
 Were called were-wolves. 
 
 * There was a famous warrior in the fabulous history of Nois 
 way who went into battle bare of armor (ber bare ; scerke a 
 ghirt of mail), but possessed of a terrible rage ; he had twelve 
 eons like himself, who were also called Berserks or Berserkers, 
 and the phrase Berserker rage has come into use to express a 
 oerrible fury which makes a man fearless and strong. 
 
42 tlENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW. 
 
 Burning, yet tender ; 
 And as the white stars shine 
 On the dark Norway pine, 
 On that dark heart of mine 
 
 Fell their soft splendor. 
 
 a I wooed the blue-eyed maid, 
 Yielding, yet half afraid, 
 And in the forest s shade 
 
 Our vows were plighted. 
 Under its loosened vest 
 Fluttered her little breast, 
 Like birds within their nest 
 
 By the hawk frighted. 
 
 tt Bright in her father s hall 
 
 O 
 
 Shields gleamed upon the wall, 
 Loud sang the minstrels all, 
 
 Chanting his glory ; 
 When of old Hildebrand 
 I asked his daughter s hand, 
 Mute did the minstrels stand 
 
 To hear my story. 
 
 "While the brown ale he quaffed, 
 Loud then the champion Iaughed 5 
 And as the wind-gusts waft 
 
 The sea-foam brightly, 
 So the loud laugh of scorn, 
 Out of those lips unshorn, 
 From the deep drinking-horn 
 
 Blew the foam lightly. 
 
THE SKELETON IN ARMOR. 43 
 
 tt She was a Prince s child, 
 I but a Viking wild, 
 And though she blushed and smiled, 
 
 I was discarded ! 
 Should not the dove so white 
 Follow the sea-mew s flight, 
 Why did they leave that night 
 
 Her nest unguarded ? 
 
 " Scarce had I put to sea, 
 Bearing the maid with me, 
 Fairest of all was she 
 
 Among the Norsemen ! 
 When on the white sea-strand, 
 Waving his armed hand, 
 Saw we old Hildebrand, 
 
 With twenty horsemen. 
 
 " Then launched they to the blast 
 Bent like a reed each mast, 
 Yet we were gaining fast, 
 
 When the wind failed us ; 
 And with a sudden flaw 
 Came round the gusty Skaw, 
 So that our foe we saw 
 
 Laugh as he hailed us. 
 
 * And as to catch the gale 
 Sound veered the flapping sail, 
 Death ! was the helmsman s hail, 
 
 Death without quarter! 
 Mid-ships with iron keel 
 Struck we her ribs of steel ; 
 Down her black hulk did reel 
 
 Through the black water I 
 
HENRY WADS WORTH LONGFELLOW 
 
 " As with his wings aslant, 
 Sails the fierce cormorant, 
 Seeking some rocky haunt, 
 
 With his prey laden ; 
 So toward the open main, 
 Beating to sea again, 
 Through the wild hurricane, 
 
 Bore I the maiden. 
 
 * Three weeks we westward bore, 
 And when the storm was o er, 
 Cloud-like we saw the shore 
 
 Stretching to leeward ; 
 There for my lady s bower 
 Built I the lofty tower, 
 Which, to this very hour, 
 Stands looking seaward. 
 
 ** There lived we many years ; 
 Time dried the maiden s tears ; 
 She had forgot her fears, 
 
 She was a mother ; 
 Death closed her mild blue eyes, 
 Cinder that tower she lies ; 
 Ne er shall the sun arise 
 On such another I 
 
 11 Still grew my bosom then, 
 Still as a stagnant fen ! 
 Hateful to me were men, 
 The sunlight hateful I 
 In that vast forest here, 
 Clad in my warlike gear, 
 Fell I upon my spear, 
 O, death was grateful! 
 
FIFTIETH BIRTHDAY OF AGASSI Z. 45 
 
 " Thus, seamed with many scars, 
 Bursting these prison bars, 
 Up to its native stars 
 
 My soul ascended ! 
 There from the flowing bowl 
 Deep drinks the warrior s soul, 
 Skoal ! l to the Northland ! skoal ! " 
 
 Thus the tale ended. 
 
 THE FIFTIETH BIRTHDAY OF AGASSIZ. 8 
 
 MAY 28, 1857. 
 
 IT was fifty years ago 
 
 In the pleasant month of May, 
 In the beautiful Pays de Vaud, 8 
 
 A child in its cradle lay. 
 
 And Nature, the old nurse, took 
 
 The child upon her knee, 
 Saying : " Here is a story-book 
 
 Thy Father has written for thee." 
 
 " Come, wander with me," she said, 
 
 " Into regions yet untrod ; 
 And read what is still unread 
 In the manuscripts of God." 
 
 1 " In Scandinavia," says Mr. Longfrellow, " this is the custom* 
 nry salutation when drinking a health. I have slightly changed 
 the orthography of the word [skal] in order to preserve the cor 
 rect pronunciation." 
 
 2 Louis John Rudolph Agassiz, the great naturalist and teacher, 
 was horn in Switzerland, May 28, 1807, and died at Cambridge, 
 Massachusetts, December 14, 1873. 
 
 8 Pronounced Pah ee de Vo. 
 
46 HENRY WADS WORTH LONGFELLOW. 
 
 And he wandered away and away 
 With Nature, the dear old nurse, 
 
 Who sang to him night and day 
 The rhymes of the universe. 
 
 And whenever the way seemed long, 
 Or his heart began to fail, 
 
 She would sing a more wonderful song, 
 Or tell a more marvellous tale. 
 
 So she keeps him still a child, 
 
 And will not let him go, 
 Though at times his heart beats wild 
 
 For the beautiful Pays de Vaud ; 
 
 Though at times he hears in his dreams 
 The Ranz des Vaches l of old, 
 
 And the rush of mountain streams 
 From glaciers clear and cold ; 
 
 And the mother at home says, " Hark I 
 For his voice I listen and yearn ; 
 
 It is growing late and dark, 
 And my boy does not return I " 
 
 MAIDENHOOD. 
 
 MAIDEN ! with the meek, brown eyes, 
 In whose orbs a shadow lies 
 Like the dusk in evening skies! 
 
 1 A melody played hy the Swiss mountaineers on the Alphorn, 
 when leading the cows to pasture, or calling them home. Pro 
 nounced Ranz da Vash. 
 
MAIDENHOOD. 47 
 
 Thou whose locks outshine the sun, 
 Golden tresses, wreathed in one, 
 As the braided streamlets run ! 
 
 Standing, with reluctant feet, 
 Where the brook and river meet, 
 Womanhood and childhood fleet 1 
 
 Gazing, with a timid glance, 
 On the brooklet s swift advance, 
 On the river s broad expanse ! 
 
 Deep and still, that gliding stream 
 Beautiful to thee must seem, 
 As the river of a dream. 
 
 Then why pause with indecision, 
 When bright angels in thy vision 
 Beckon thee to fields Elysian ? 
 
 Seest thou shadows sailing by, 
 As the dove, with startled eye, 
 Sees the falcon s shadow fly ? 
 
 Hearest thou voices on the shore, 
 That our ears perceive no more, 
 Deafened by the cataract s roar ? 
 
 O, thou child of many prayers ! 
 
 Life hath quicksands, Life hath snares! 
 
 Care and age come unawares ! 
 
 Lrike the swell of some sweet tune, 
 Morning rises into noon, 
 May glides onward into June. 
 
48 HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW. 
 
 Childhood is the bough, where slumbered 
 Birds and blossoms many-numbered ; 
 Age, that bough with snows encumbered. 
 
 Gather, then, each flower that grows, 
 When the young heart overflows, 
 To embalm that tent of snows. 
 
 Bear a lily in thy hand ; 
 
 Gates of brass cannot withstand 
 
 One touch of that magic wand. 
 
 Bear tnrough sorrow, wrong, and ruth, 
 In thy heart the dew of youth, 
 On thy lips the smile of truth. 
 
 Oh, that dew, like balm, shall steal 
 Into wounds that cannot heal, 
 Even as sleep our eyes doth seal ; 
 
 And that smile, like sunshine, dart 
 Into many a sunless heart, 
 For a smile of God thou art, 
 
 EXCELSIOR. 1 
 
 THE shades of night were falling fast, 
 As through an Alpine village passed 
 A youth, who bore, mid snow and ice, 
 A banner with the strange device, 
 Excelsior ! 
 
 ir The original manuscript of this poem, showing 1 the various 
 claanges made by the poet in the course of composition is in th 
 
EXCELSIOR. 49 
 
 His brow was sad ; his eye beneath 
 Flashed like a falchion from its sheath, 
 And like a silver clarion rung 
 The accents of that unknown tongue, 
 Excelsior ! 
 
 In happy homes he saw the light 
 Of household fires gleam warm and bright 5 
 Above, the spectral glaciers shone, 
 And from his lips escaped a groan, 
 Excelsior ! 
 
 Try not the Pass ! " the old man said ; 
 " Dark lowers the tempest overhead, 
 
 The roaring torrent is deep and wide I * 
 
 And loud that clarion voice replied, 
 Excelsior I 
 
 Oh stay," the maiden said, " and rest 
 Thy weary head upon this breast ! " 
 A tear stood in his bright blue eye, 
 But still he answered, with a sigh, 
 Excelsior ! 
 
 " Beware the pine-tree s withered branch I 
 Beware the awful avalanche ! " 
 This was the peasant s last Good-night, 
 A. voice replied, far up the height, 
 Excelsior ! 
 
 library of Harvard University. Mr. Longfellow in a letter to a 
 friend intimates his intention in the poem in these words : " This 
 was no more than to display, in a series of pictures, the life of a. 
 man of genius, resisting all temptations, laying aside all fears, 
 heedless of all warnings, and pressing right on to accomplish his 
 purposfl His uiotto is Excelsior higher. " 
 
50 HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW. 
 
 At break of day, as heavenward 
 The pious monks of Saint Bernard 1 
 Uttered the oft-repeated prayer, 
 A voice cried through the startled air 5 
 
 Excelsior ! 
 
 A traveller, by the faithful hound, 
 Half -buried in the snow was found, 
 Still grasping in his hand of ice 
 That banner with the strange device, 
 Excelsior ! 
 
 There in the twilight cold and gray, 
 Lifeless, but beautiful, he lay, 
 And from the sky, serene and far, 
 A voice fell, like a falling star, 
 Excelsior ! 
 
 THE VILLAGE BLACKSMITH, 
 
 a spreading chestnut-tree 
 The village smithy 2 stands ; 
 The smith, a mighty man is he, 
 With large and sinewy hands ; 
 
 * The monastery of St. Bernard high up in the Alps occupies a 
 dangerous pass, and many travellers have found shelter there. 
 It gave rise to the breed of St. Bernard dogs, famous for their 
 intelligence and the aid they have given in rescuing travellers 
 from the blinding snow. 
 
 2 The suggestion of the poem came from the smithy which the 
 poet passed daily, and which stood beneath a horse-chestnut tree 
 not far from his house in Cambridge. The tree, against the pre 
 tests of Mr. Longfellow and others, was removed in 1876, on the 
 ground that it imperilled drivers of heavy loads who passed 
 under it. 
 
THE VILLAGE BLACKSMITH. 51 
 
 And the muscles of his brawny arms 
 Are as strong as iron bands. 
 
 His hair is crisp, and black, and long, 
 
 His face is like the tan ; 
 His brow is wet with honest sweat, 
 
 He earns whate er he can, 
 And looks the whole world in the face,. 
 
 For he owes not any man. 
 
 Week in, week out, from morn till night, 
 
 You can hear his bellows blow ; 
 You can hear him swing his heavy sledge, 
 
 With measured beat and slow, 
 Like a sexton ringing the village bell, 
 
 When the evening; sun is low. 
 
 O 
 
 And children coming home from school 
 
 Look in at the open door ; 
 They love to see the flaming forge, 
 
 And hear the bellows roar, 
 And catch 1 the burning sparks that fly 
 
 Like chaff from a threshing-floor. 
 
 He goes on Sunday to the church, 
 
 And sits among his boys ; 
 He hears the parson pray and preach, 
 
 He hears his daughter s voice, 
 Singing in the village choir, 
 
 And it makes his heart rejoice. 
 
 1 After this poem had been printed for some time, Mr. Long* 
 fellow was disposed to change this word to " watch," but the 
 riginal form had grown so familiar that he decided to leave it. 
 
62 HENRY WADS WORTH LONGFELLOW. 
 
 It sounds to him like her mother s voice, 
 
 Singing in Paradise ! 
 He needs must think of her once more, 
 
 How in the grave she lies ; 
 And with his hard, rough hand he wipes 
 
 A tear out of his eyes. 
 
 Toiling, rejoicing, sorrowing, 
 
 Onward through life he goes ; 
 Each morning sees some task begin, 
 
 Each evening sees it close ; 
 Something attempted, something done, 
 
 Has earned a night s repose. 
 
 Thanks, thanks to thee, my worthy friend, 
 
 For the lesson thou hast taught 1 
 Thus at the flaming forge of life 
 
 Our fortunes must be wrought ; 
 Thus on its sounding anvil shaped 
 
 Each burning deed and thought. 
 
 FROM MY ARM-CHAIR. 
 
 TO THE CHILDREN OF CAMBRIDGE 
 
 PRESENTED TO ME, ON MY SEVENTY-SECOND BIRTHDAY, FEB* 
 KUARY 27, 1879, THIS CHAIR MADE FROM THB WOOD OF THJi 
 
 VILLAGE BLACKSMITH S CHESTNUT-TREE. 
 
 AM I a king, that I should call my own 
 
 This splendid ebon throne? 
 Or by what reason, or what right divine, 
 
 Can I proclaim it mine ? 
 
 Only, perhaps, by right divine of song 
 It may to me belong ; 
 
FROM MY ARM-CHAIR. 63 
 
 Only because the spreading chestnut-tree 
 Of old was sung by me. ^ 
 
 Well I remember it in all its prime, 
 
 When in the summer-time 
 The affluent foliage of its branches made 
 
 A civern of cool shade. 
 
 There, by the blacksmith s forge, beside the street, 
 
 Its blossoms white and sweet 
 Enticed the bees, until it seemed alive, 
 
 And murmured like a hive. 
 
 And when the winds of autumn, with a shout, 
 
 Tossed its great arms about, 
 The shining chestnuts, bursting from the sheath, 
 
 Dropped to the ground beneath. 
 
 And now some fragments of its branches bare, 
 
 Shaped as a stately chair, 
 Have by my hearthstone found a home at last, 
 
 And whisper of the past. 
 
 The Danish king could not in all his pride 
 
 Repel the ocean tide, 
 But, seated in this chair, I can in rhyme 
 
 Roll back the tide of Time. 
 
 I see again, as one in vision sees, 
 
 The blossoms and the bees, 
 And hear the children s voices shout and call, 
 
 And the brown chestnuts fall. 
 
 1 see the smithy with its fires aglow, 
 I hear the bellows blow, 
 
54 HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW. 
 
 And the shrill hammers on the anvil beat 
 The iron white with heat I 
 
 And thus, dear children, have ye made for me 
 
 This day a jubilee, 
 And to my more than threescore years and ten 
 
 Brought back my youth again. 
 
 The heart hath its own memory, like the mind T 
 
 And in it are enshrined 
 The precious keepsakes, into which is wrought 
 
 The giver s loving thought. 
 
 Only your love and your remembrance could 
 
 Give life to this dead wood, 
 And make these branches, leafless now so long, 
 
 Blossom again in song. 1 
 
 SONG. 
 
 STAY, stay at home, my heart, and rest; 
 Home-keeping hearts are happiest, 
 For those that wander they know not where 
 Are full of trouble and full of care 5 
 To stay at home is best. 
 
 Weary and homesick and distressed, 
 They wander east, they wander west, 
 
 1 Contributions for the purchase of the chair came from some 
 seven hundred children of the public schools. Mr. Longfellcw 
 had this poem, which he wrote on the day the chair was given 
 dim. printed on a sheet, and was accustomed to give a copy to 
 each child who visited him and sat in the chair. 
 
THE WRECK OF THE HESPERUS. 56 
 
 And are baffled and beaten and blown about 
 By the winds of the wilderness of doubt ; 
 To stay at home is best. 
 
 Then stay at home, my heart, and rest ; 
 The bird is safest in its nest ; 
 O er all that flutter their wings and fly 
 A hawk is hovering in the sky ; 
 To stay at home is best. 
 
 THE WRECK OF THE HESPERUS. 
 
 IT was the schooner Hesperus, 
 
 That sailed the wintry sea ; 
 And the skipper had taken his little daughter, 
 
 To bear him company. 
 
 Blue were her eyes as the fairy-flax, 
 Her cheeks like the dawn of day, 
 
 And her bosom white as the hawthorn buds, 
 That ope in the month of May. 
 
 The skipper he stood beside the helm, 
 
 His pipe was in his mouth, 
 And he watched how the veering flaw did blow 
 
 The smoke now West, now South. 
 
 Then up and spake an old Sailor, 
 
 Had sailed to the Spanish Main, 
 * I pray thee, put into yonder port, 
 For I fear a hurricane. 
 
 *I<ast night, the moon had a golden ring, 
 And to-night no moon we see 1 " 
 
56 HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW. 
 
 The skipper, he blew a whiff from his pipe t 
 And a scornful laugh laughed he. 
 
 Colder and louder blew the wind, 
 
 A gale from the Northeast, 
 The snow fell hissing in the brine, 
 
 And the billows frothed like yeast. 
 
 Down came the storm, and smote amain 
 
 The vessel in its strength ; 
 She shuddered and paused, like a frighted steeds 
 
 Then leaped her cable s length. 
 
 * Come hither! come hither! my little daughter, 
 
 And do not tremble so ; 
 For I can weather the roughest gale 
 That ever wind did blow." 
 
 He wrapped her warm in his seaman s coat 
 
 Against the stinging blast ; 
 He cut a rope from a broken spar, 
 
 And bound her to the mast. 
 
 * O father ! I hear the church-bells ring, 
 Oh say, what may it be ? " 
 
 * T is a fog-bell on a rock-bound coast ! ?? 
 
 And he steered for the open sea, 
 
 * O father ! I hear the sound of guns, 
 
 Oh say, what may it be ? " 
 
 * Some ship in distress, that cannot live 
 
 In such an angry sea ! " 
 
 **O father! I see a gleaming light, 
 Oh say, what may it be ? " 
 
THE WRECK OF THE HESPERUS. 67 
 
 But the father answered never a word, 
 A frozen corpse was he. 
 
 Lashed to the helm, all stiff and stark, 
 With his face turned to the skies, 
 
 The lantern gleamed through the gleaming snow 
 On his fixed and glassy eyes. 
 
 Then the maiden clasped her hands and prayed 
 
 That saved she might be ; 
 And she thought of Christ, who stilled the wave, 
 
 On the Lake of Galilee. 
 
 And fast through the midnight dark and drear, 
 Through the whistling sleet and snow, 
 
 Like a sheeted ghost, the vessel swept 
 Tow rds the reef of Norman s Woe. 
 
 And ever the fitful gusts between 
 
 A sound came from the land ; 
 It was the sound of the trampling surf 
 
 On the rocks and the hard sea-sand. 
 
 The breakers were right beneath her bows, 
 
 She drifted a dreary wreck, 
 And a whooping billow swept the crew 
 
 Like icicles from her deck. 
 
 She struck where the white and fleecy waves 
 
 Looked soft as carded wool, 
 But the cruel rocks, they gored her side 
 
 Like the horns of an angry bull. 
 
 Her rattling shrouds, all sheathed in ice, 
 With the masts went by the board ; 
 
68 HENRI WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW. 
 
 Like a vessel of glass, she stove and sank, 
 Ho ! ho ! the breakers roared ! 
 
 At daybreak, on the bleak sea-beach, 
 
 A fisherman stood aghast, 
 To see the form of a maiden fair, 
 
 Lashed close to a drifting mast. 
 
 The salt sea was frozen on her breast, 
 
 The salt tears in her eyes ; 
 And he saw her hair, like the brown seaweed, 
 
 On the billows fall and rise. 
 
 Such was the wreck of the Hesperus, 
 In the midnight and the snow ! 
 
 Christ save us all from a death like this, 
 On the reef of Norman s Woe I l 
 
 THE BELLS OF LYNN. 
 
 HEARD AT NAHANT. 3 
 
 CURFEW of the setting sun ! O Bells of Lynn ! 
 O requiem of the dying day ! O Bells of Lynn ! 
 
 Prom the dark belfries of yon cloud-cathedral wafted, 
 Your sounds aerial seem to float, O Bells of Lynn I 
 
 It was the loss of a real schooner Hesperus, off the reef of 
 Norman s Woe, near Gloucester, Massachusetts, which suggested 
 this ballad to the poet. 
 
 2 Nahant, a promontory running out from Lynn beach, was 
 long a summer home of Mr. Longfellow. Though there is no 
 rhyme, the steady recurrence of the phrase, " O Bells of Lynn/ 1 
 gives both rhythmic swing and the effect of rhyme. 
 
THE BELLS OF LYNN. 59 
 
 Borne on the evening wind across the crimson twi 
 light, 
 O er land and sea they rise and fall, O Bells of Lynn ! 
 
 The fisherman in his boat, far out beyond the head 
 land, 
 Listens, and leisurely rows ashore, O Bells of Lynn! 
 
 Over the shining sands the wandering cattle home* 
 
 ward 
 Follow each other at your call, O Bells of Lynn I 
 
 The distant lighthouse hears, ard with his flaming 
 
 signal 
 Answers you, passing the watchword on, O Bells of 
 
 Lynn! 
 
 And down the darkening coast run the tumultuous 
 
 surges, 
 And clap their hands, and shout to you, O Bells of 
 
 Lynn ! 
 
 Till from the shuddering sea, with your wild incanta 
 tions, 
 Ye summon up the spectral moon, O Bells of Lynn I 
 
 And startled at the sight, like the weird woman of 
 
 Endor, 
 Ye 3ry aloud, and then are still, O Bells of Lynn I 
 
60 HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW. 
 
 THE TIDE RISES, THE TIDE FALLS. 
 
 THE tide rises, the tide falls, 
 The twilight darkens, the curlew calls ; 
 Along the sea-sands damp and brown 
 The traveller hastens toward the town, 
 And the tide rises, the tide falls. 
 
 Darkness settles on roofs and walls, 
 But the sea, the sea in the darkness calls; 
 The little waves, with their soft, white hands, 
 Efface the footprints in the sands, 
 And the tide rises, the tide falls. 
 
 The morning breaks ; the steeds in their stalls 
 Stamp and neigh, as the hostler calls ; 
 The day returns, but nevermore 
 Returns the traveller to the shore, 
 And the tide rises, the tide falls. 
 
 THE OPEN WINDOW. 
 
 THE old house by the lindens l 
 
 Stood silent in the shade, 
 And on the gravelled pathway 
 
 The light and shadow played. 
 
 * The old house by the lindens is what was known as thu 
 bechmere house which formerly stood on Brattle Street, covnei 
 of Sparks Street, in Cambridge. It was in this house that Baron 
 Riedesel was quartered as prisoner of war after the surrender of 
 Burgoyne, and the window-pane used to be shewn on which the 
 Baroness wrote her name with a diamond. 
 
RESIGNATION. 61 
 
 I saw the nursery windows 
 
 Wide open to the air ; 
 But the faces of the children. 
 
 They were no longer there. 
 
 The large Newfoundland house-dog 
 
 Was standing by the door ; 
 He looked for his little playmates, 
 
 Who would return no more. 
 
 They walked not under the lindens, 
 
 They played not in the hall ; 
 But shadow, and silence, and sadness 
 
 Were hanging over all. 
 
 The birds sang in the branches, 
 
 With sweet, familiar tone ; 
 But the voices of the children 
 
 Will be heard in dreams alone I 
 
 And the boy that, walked beside me, 
 
 He could not understand 
 Why closer in mine, ah ! closer, 
 
 I pressed his warm, soft hand I 
 
 RESIGNATION. 1 
 
 THERE is no flock, however watched and tended, 
 But one dead lamb is there ! 
 
 * Written in the autumn of 1848, after the death of his little 
 daughter Fanny. There is a passage in the poet s diary, undet 
 date of November 12, in which he says : " I feel very sad to-day 
 I miss very much my dear little Fanny. An inappeasable long 1 * 
 ing to see her comes over me at times, which I can hardly 
 trol." 
 
62 HENRY WADS WORTH LONGFELLOW. 
 
 There is no fireside, liowsoe 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 I 
 
 Let us he patient ! These severe afflictions 
 
 Not from the ground arise, 
 But oftentimes celestial benedictions 
 
 Assume this dark disguise. 
 
 4 
 
 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 elysian, 
 
 Whose portal we call Death. 
 
 She is not dead, the child of our affection, 
 
 But gone unto that school 
 Where she no longer needs our poor protection, 
 
 And Christ himself doth rule. 
 
 In that great cloister s stillness and seclusion, 
 
 By guardian angels led, 
 Safe from temptation, safe from sin s pollution, 
 
 She lives, whom we call dead. 
 
 Pay after day we think what she is doing 
 In those bright realms of air; 
 
A DAY OF SUNSHINE. 6{ 
 
 Year after year, her tender steps pursuing, 
 Behold, her grown more fair. 
 
 Thus do we walk with her, and keep unbroken 
 
 The bond which nature gives, 
 Thinking that our remembrance, though unspoken, 
 
 May reach her where she lives. 
 
 Not as a child shall we again behold her 5 
 
 For when with raptures wild 
 In our embraces we again enfold her, 
 
 She will not be a, child ; 
 
 But a fair maiden, in her Father s mansion, 
 
 Clothed with celestial grace ; 
 And beautiful with all the soul s expansion 
 
 Shall we behold her face. 
 
 And though at times impetuous with emotion 
 
 And anguish long suppressed, 
 The swelling heart heaves moaning like the ocean* 
 
 That cannot be at rest, 
 
 We will be patient, and assuage the feeling 
 
 We may not wholly stay ; 
 By silence sanctifying, not concealing, 
 
 The grief that must have way. 
 
 A DAY OF SUNSHINE. 
 
 O GIFT of God ! O perfect day : 
 Whereon shall no man work, but play j 
 Whereon it is enough for me, 
 Not to be doing, but to be ! 
 
64 HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW. 
 
 Through every fibre of my brain, 
 Through every nerve, through every vein, 
 I feel the electric thrill, the touch 
 Of life, that seems almost too much. 
 
 I hear the wind among the trees 
 Playing celestial symphonies ; 
 J see the branches downward bent, 
 Like keys of some great instrument. 
 
 And over me unrolls on high 
 The splendid scenery of the sky, 
 Where through a sapphire sea the sun 
 Sails like a golden galleon f 
 
 Towards yonder cloud-land in the West, 
 Towards yonder Islands of the Blest, 
 Whose steep sierra far uplifts 
 Its craggy summits white with drifts. 
 
 Blow, winds ! and waft through all the rooms 
 The snow-flakes of the cherry-blooms ! 
 Blow, winds ! and bend within my reach 
 The fiery blossoms of the peach ! 
 
 O Life and Love ! O happy throng 
 Of thoughts, whose only speech is song I 
 O heart of man ! canst thou not be 
 Blithe as the air is, and as free ? 
 
 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, 
 T 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, 
 Fsll on village, vale, and hill. 
 
 Then the moon, in all her pride, 
 Like a spirit glorified, 
 Filled and overflowed the nighc 
 With revelations of her light. 
 
 And the Poet s song again 
 
 Passed like music through my Irain ; 
 
 Night interpreted to me 
 
 All its grace and mystery. 
 
 TWILIGHT. 
 
 THE twilight is sad and cloudy, 
 The wind blows wild and free, 
 
 And like the wings of sea-birds 
 Flash the white caps of the sea* 
 
 But in the fisherman s cottage 
 There shines a ruddier light, 
 
 And a little face at the window 
 Peers out into the night. 
 
HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW. 
 
 Close, close it is pressed to the window, 
 
 As if those childish eyes 
 Were looking into the darkness 
 
 To see some form arise. 
 
 And a woman s waving shadow 
 
 Is passing to and fro, 
 Now rising to the ceiling, 
 
 Now bowing and bending low. 
 
 "What tale do the roaring ocean, 
 
 And the night-wind, bleak and wild> 
 
 As they beat at the crazy casement, 
 Tell to that little child? 
 
 And why do the roaring ocean, 
 
 And the night-wind, wild and bleak. 
 
 As they beat at the heart of the mother 
 Drive the color from her cheek ? 
 
 DAYBREAK. 
 
 A WIND came up out of the sea, 
 
 And said, " O mists make room for me." 
 
 It hailed the ships, and cried, " Sail on, 
 Ye mariners, the night is gone." 
 
 And hurried landward far away, 
 Crying, " Awake ! it is the day." 
 
 It said unto the forest, " Shout! 
 Hang all your leafy banners out ! * 
 
THE CITY AND THE SEA. 67 
 
 it touched the wood-bird s folded wing, 
 And said, " O bird, awake and sing." 
 
 And o er the farms, " O chanticleer, 
 Your clarion blow ; the day is near." 
 
 It whispered to the fields of corn, 
 * Bow down, and hail the coming morn." 
 
 It shouted through the belfry tower, 
 " Awake, O bell ! proclaim the hour." 
 
 It crossed the churchyard with a sigh, 
 And said, " Not yet ! in quiet lie." 
 
 THE CITY AND THE SEA. 
 
 THE panting City cried to the Sea, 
 " I am faint with heat, Oh breathe on me ! " 
 
 And the Sea said, " Lo, I breathe ! but my breath 
 To some will be life, to others death ! " 
 
 As to Prometheus, bringing ease 
 In pain, come the Oceanides, 1 
 
 So to the city, hot with the flame 
 
 Of the pitiless sun, the east wind came. 
 
 It came from the heaving breast of the deep, 
 Silent as dreams are, and sudden as sleep. 
 
 1 In the classic fable Prometheus was chained to a rock for 
 punishment, and the daughters of Ocean came to console him. 
 
68 HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW. 
 
 Life-giving, death-giving, which will it be ; 
 O breath of the merciful, merciless Sea ? 
 
 FOUR BY THE CLOCK. 1 
 
 by the clock ! and yet not day ; 
 Bat the great world rolls and wheels away, 
 With its cities on land, and its ships at sea, 
 Into the dawn that is to be I 
 
 Only the lamp in the anchored bark 
 Sends its glimmer across the dark, 
 And the heavy breathing of the sea 
 Is the only sound that comes to me. 
 
 A PSALM OF LIFE. 
 
 THAT THE HEART OF THE YOUNG MAN SAID TO 
 THE PSALMIST. 
 
 TELL me not, in mournful numbers, 
 Life is but an empty dream ! 
 
 For the soul is dead that slumbers, 
 And things are not what they seem. 
 
 Life is real ! Life is earnest ! 
 
 And the grave is not its goal ; 
 Dust thou art, to dust returnest, 
 
 Was not spoken of the soul. 
 
 Not enjoyment, and not sorrow, 
 Is our destined end or way ; 
 
 i w Nahant, September 8, 1860, four o clock in the morning. 1 * 
 
A PSALM OF LIFE. 69 
 
 But to act, that each to-morrow 
 Find us farther than to-day. 
 
 Art is long, and Time is fleeting, 
 
 And our hearts, though stout and brave, 
 
 Still, like muffled drums, are beating 
 Funeral inarches to the grave. 
 
 In the world s broad field of battle, 
 
 In the bivouac of Life, 
 Be not like dumb, driven cattle I 
 
 Be a hero in the strife ! 
 
 Trust no Future, howe er pleasant ! 
 
 Let the dead Past bury its dead ! 
 Act, act in the living Present ! 
 
 Heart within, and God overhead I 
 
 Laves of great men all remind us 
 
 We can make our lives sublime, 
 And, departing, leave behind us 
 
 Footprints on the sands of time ; 
 
 Footprints, that perhaps another, 
 
 Sailing o er life s solemn main, 
 A forlorn and shipwrecked brother, 
 
 Seeing, shall take heart again. 
 
 Let us, then, be up and doing, 
 
 With a heart for any fate ; 
 Still achieving, still pursuing, 
 
 Learn to labor and to wait. 
 
20 HENRY WADSViORTH LONGFELLOW 
 
 THE CASTLE-BUILDER. 
 
 A GENTLE boy, with soft and silken locks, 
 A dreamy boy, with brown and tender eyes, 
 
 A castle-builder, with his wooden blocks, 
 And towers that touch imaginary skies. 
 
 A fearless rider on his father s knee, 
 An eager listener unto stories told 
 
 At the Round Table 1 of the nursery, 
 Of heroes and adventures manifold. 
 
 There will be other towers for thee to build ; 
 
 There will be other steeds for thee to ride ; 
 There will be other legends, and all filled 
 
 With greater marvels and more glorified. 
 
 Build on, and make thy castles high and fair, 
 Rising and reaching upward to the skies ; 
 
 Listen to voices in the upper air, 
 
 Nor lose thy simple faith in mysteries. 
 
 THE CHAMBER OVER THE GATE. 
 
 Is it so far from thee 
 Thou canst no longer see, 
 In the Chamber over the Gate, 
 That old man desolate, 
 Weeping and wailing sore 
 For his son, who is no more? 
 O Absalom, my son ! 
 
 1 In old English legend there was a famous order of knights 
 called the Knights of the Round Table, with King Arthur at 
 their head. 
 
THE CHAMBER OVER THE GATE. 71 
 
 Is it so long ago 
 That cry of human woe 
 From the walled city came, 
 Calling on his dear name, 
 That it has died away 
 In the distance of to-day? 
 O Absalom, my son ! 
 
 There is no far or near, 
 There is neither there nor here, 
 There is neither soon nor late, 
 In that Chamber over the Gate, 
 Nor any long ago 
 To that cry of human woe, 
 O Absalom, my son ! 
 
 From the ages that are past 
 The voice sounds like a blast, 
 Over seas that wreck and drown, 
 Over tumult of traffic and town ; 
 And from ages yet to be 
 Come the echoes back to me, 
 O Absalom, my son ! 
 
 Somewhere at every hour 
 The watchman on the tower 
 Looks forth, and sees the fleet 
 Approach of the hurrying feet 
 Of messengers, that bear 
 The tidings of despair. 
 O Absalom, my son ! 
 
 He goes forth from the door, 
 Who shall return no more. 
 
72 HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW. 
 
 With him our joy departs ; 
 The light goes out in our hearts . 
 In the Chamber over the Gate 
 We sit disconsolate. 
 O Absalom, my son I 
 
 That t is a common grief 
 Bringeth but slight relief ; 
 Ours is the bitterest loss, 
 Ours is the heaviest cross ; 
 And forever the cry will be 
 " Would God I had died for thee, 
 O Absalom, my son ! " 1 
 
 THE REVENGE OF RAIN-IN-THE-FACE, 
 
 IN that desolate land and lone, 
 Where the Big Horn and Yellowstone 
 
 Roar down their mountain path, 
 By their fires the Sioux Chiefs 
 Muttered their woes and griefs 
 
 And the menace of their wrath. 
 
 * Revenge ! " cried Rain-in-the-Face, 
 " Revenge upon all the race 
 
 Of the White Chief with yellow hair! " 2 
 
 1 Suggested to the poet when writing a letter of condolence to 
 the Bishop of Mississippi, whose son, the Rev. Duncan C. Green, 
 had died at his post at Greenville, Mississippi, September 15, 
 1878, during the prevalence of yellow fever. The reader of the 
 Bible does not need to be reminded of the touching story of 
 David s lament over his son Absalom. 
 
 2 General George A. Ouster, who was surprised, and with his 
 entire force put to death by the Sioux Indians, June 26, 1876. 
 **the year of a hundred years." 
 
THE REVENGE OF RAIN-IN-THE-I<AC& 73 
 
 And the mountains dark and high 
 From their crags reechoed the cry 
 Of his anger and despair. 
 
 In the meadow, spreading wide 
 By woodland and river-side 
 
 The Indian village stood; 
 All was silent as a dream s 
 Save the rushing of the stream 
 
 And the blue-jay in the wood. 
 
 In his war paint and his beads, 
 Like a bison among the reeds, 
 
 In ambush the Sitting Bull 
 Lay with three thousand braves 
 Crouched in the clefts and caves, 
 
 Savage, unmerciful ! 
 
 Into the fatal snare 
 
 The White Chief with yellow hail 
 
 And his three hundred men 
 Dashed headlong, sword in hand j 
 But of that gallant band 
 
 Not one returned again. 
 
 The sudden darkness of death 
 Overwhelmed them like the breath 
 
 And smoke of a furnace fire : 
 By the river s bank, and between 
 The rocks of the ravine, 
 
 They lay in their bloody attire. 
 
 But the foemen fled in the night, 
 And Rain-in-the-Face, in his flight, 
 
HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW. 
 
 Uplifted high in air 
 As a ghastly trophy, bore 
 The brave heart, that beat no more, 
 
 Of the White Chief with yellow hair. 
 
 Whose was the right and the wrong? 
 Sing it, O funeral song, 
 
 With a voice that is full of tears, 
 And say that our broken faith 
 Wrought all this ruin and scathe, 
 
 In the Year of a Hundred Years. 
 
 PRELUDE. 
 
 As treasures that men seek, 
 
 Deep buried in sea-sands, 
 Vanish if they but speak, 
 
 And elude their eager hands, 
 
 So ye escape and slip, 
 
 O songs, and fade away, 
 When the word is on my lip 
 
 To interpret what ye say. 
 
 Were it not better, then, 
 
 To let the treasures rest 
 Hid from the eyes of men 
 
 Locked in their iron chest ? 
 
 I have but marked the place, 
 
 But half the secret told, 
 That, following this slight trace, 
 
 Others may find the gold,, 1 
 
 1 This poem was written to serve as a prelude to a, group of 
 translations. The three poems which follow this are translations. 
 
THE BOY AND THE BROOK. 75 
 THE BOY AND THE BROOK. 
 
 FROM THE ARMENIAN. 
 
 DOWN from yon distant mountain height 
 
 The brooklet flows through the village street ; 
 A boy comes forth to wash his hands, 
 Washing, yes, washing, there he stands, 
 In the water cool and sweet. 
 
 Brook, from what mountain dost thou come ? 
 
 O my brooklet cool and sweet ! 
 I come from yon mountain high and cold 
 "Where lieth the new snow on the old, 
 
 And melts in the summer heat. 
 
 Brook, to what river dost thou go ? 
 
 O my brooklet cool and sweet ! 
 I go to the river there below 
 Where in bunches the violets grow, 
 
 And sun and shadow meet. 
 
 Brook, to what garden dost thou go? 
 
 O my brooklet cool and sweet I 
 I go to the garden in the vale 
 Where all night long the nightingale 
 
 Her love-song doth repeat. 
 
 Brook, to what fountain dost thou go ? 
 
 O my brooklet cool and sweet ! 
 I go to the fountain at whose brink 
 
 Throughout his life Mr. Longfellow delighted in turning poetry 
 from other languages into English verse, and his translations are 
 sometimes more melodious than the originals. 
 
T6 HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW. 
 
 The maid that loves thee comes to drink, 
 And whenever she looks therein, 
 I rise to meet her, and kiss her chin, 
 And my joy is then complete. 
 
 THE SEA HATH ITS PEARLS. 
 
 FROM THE GERMAN OF HEINRICH HEINE. 
 
 THE sea hath its pearls, 
 The heaven hath its stars ; 
 
 But my heart, my heart, 
 My heart hath its love. 
 
 Great are the sea and the heaven, 
 Yet greater is my heart ; 
 
 And fairer than pearls and stars 
 Flashes and beams my love. 
 
 A SONG FROM THE PORTUGUESE. 
 
 IF thou art sleeping, maiden, 
 
 Awake, and open thy door. 
 T is the break of day, and we must away, 
 
 O er meadow, and mount, and moor. 
 
 Wait not to find thy slippers, 
 
 But come with thy naked feet s 
 We shall have to pass through the dewy grass> 
 
 And waters wide and fleet. 
 
TO THE AVON. 77 
 
 LOSS AND GAIN. 
 
 WHEN I compare 
 
 What I have lost with what I have grained, 
 What I have missed with what attained, 
 Little room do I find for pride, 
 
 I am aware 
 
 How many days have beon idly spent ; 
 How like an arrow the good intent 
 Has fallen short or been turned aside. 
 
 But who shall dare 
 
 To measure loss and gain in this wise? 
 Defeat may be victory in disguise ; 
 The lowest ebb is the turn of the tide. 
 
 TO THE AVON. 
 
 FLOW on, sweet river ! like his verse 
 Who lies beneath this sculptured hearse j 
 Nor wait beside the churchyard wall 
 For him who cannot hear thy call. 
 
 Thy playmate once ; I see him now 
 A boy with sunshine on his brow, 
 And hear in Stratford s quiet street 
 The patter of his little feet. 
 
 I see him by thy shallow edge 
 Wading knee-deep amid the sedge -, 
 And lost in thought, as if thy stream 
 Were the swift river of a dream. 
 
78 HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW. 
 
 He wonders whitherward it flows ; 
 And fain would follow where it goes, 
 To the wide world, that shall erelong 
 Be filled with his melodious song. 
 
 Flow on, fair stream ! That dream is o er; 
 He stands upon another shore ; 
 A vaster river near him flows, 
 And still he follows where it goes. 
 
 THE ARROW AND THE SONG. 1 
 
 I SHOT an arrow into the air, 
 It fell to earth, I knew not where ; 
 For, so swiftly it flew, the sight 
 Could not follow it in its flight. 
 
 I breathed a song into the an% 
 It fell to earth, I knew not where; 
 For who has sight so keen and strong, 
 That it can follow the flight of song ? 
 
 Long, long afterward, in an oak 
 I found the arrow, still unbroke ; 
 And the song, from beginning to end, 
 I found again in the heart of a friend. 
 
 * " October 16, 1845. Before church, wrote The Arrow and the 
 Song, which came into my mind as 1 stood with my back to the 
 fire, and glanced on to the paper with arrow s speed. Literally 
 an improvisation." Diary of H. W. 
 
THE CHALLENGE. 
 
 THE CHALLENGE. 
 
 I HAVE a vague remembrance 
 
 Of a story, that is told 
 In some ancient Spanish legend 
 
 Or chronicle of old. 
 
 It was when brave King Sanchez * 
 
 Was before Zamora slain, 
 And his great besieging army 
 
 Lay encamped upon the plain. 
 
 Don Diego de Ordonez 2 
 Sallied forth in front of all, 
 
 And shouted loud his challenge 
 To the warders on the wall. 
 
 All the people of Zamora, 
 
 Both the born and the unborn, 
 
 As traitors did he challenge 
 With taunting words of scorn. 
 
 The living, in their houses, 
 
 And in their graves, the dead! 
 
 And the waters of their rivers, 
 
 And their wine, and oil, and bread I 
 
 There is a greater army, 
 
 That besets us round with strife, 
 A starving, numberless army, 
 
 At all the gates of life. 
 
 1 Sanchath. Ordonyath. 
 
80 HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW. 
 
 The poverty-stricken millions 
 
 Who challenge our wine and bread, 
 
 And impeach us all as traitors, 
 Both the living and the dead. 
 
 And whenever I sit at the banquet, 
 Where the feast and song are high, 
 
 Amid the mirth and the music 
 I can hear that fearful cry. 
 
 And hollow and haggard faces 
 Look into the lighted hall, 
 
 And wasted hands are extended 
 To catch the crumbs that fall. 
 
 For within there is light and plenty, 
 
 And odors fill the air ; 
 But without there is cold and darkness, 
 
 And hunger and despair. 
 
 And there in the camp of famine 
 In wind and cold and rain, 
 
 Christ, the great Lord of the army, 
 Lies dead upon the plain 1 
 
 THE DAY IS DONE. 
 
 i 
 
 [TV ritten in the fall of 1844 as proem to The Waif, a small volume 
 of posms selected by Mr. Longfellow and published at Christmas ot 
 that year.] 
 
 THE day is done, and the darkness 
 Falls from the wings of Night, 
 
 As a feather is wafted downward 
 From an eagle in his flight. 
 
THE DAY IS DONE. 81 
 
 I see the lights of the village 
 
 Gleam through the rain and the mist, 
 
 And a feeling of sadness comes o er me 
 That my soul cannot resist : 
 
 A feeling of sadness and longing, 
 
 That is not akin to pain, 
 And resembles sorrow only 
 
 As the mist resembles the rain. 
 
 Come, read to me some poem, 
 
 Some simple and heartfelt lay, 
 That shall soothe this restless feeling, 
 
 And banish the thoughts of day. 
 
 Not from the grand old masters, 
 
 Not from the bards sublime, 
 Whose distant footsteps echo 
 
 Through the corridors of Time. 
 
 For, like strains of martial music, 
 
 Thair mighty thoughts suggest 
 Life s endless toil and endeavor ; 
 
 And to-night I long for rest. 
 
 Read from some humbler poet, 
 
 Whose songs gushed from his heart, 
 
 As showers from the clouds of summer, 
 Or tears from the eyelids start ; 
 
 Who, through long days of labor, 
 
 And nights devoid of ease, 
 Still heard in his soul the music 
 
 Of wonderful melodies. 
 
82 HENRY WADS WORTH LONGFELLOW. 
 
 Such songs have power to quiet 
 
 The restless pulse of care, 
 And come like the benediction 
 
 That follows after prayer. 
 
 Then read from the treasured volume 
 
 The poem of thy choice, 
 And lend to the rhyme of the poet 
 
 The beauty of thy voice. 
 
 the night shall be filled with music, 
 And the cares, that infest the day, 
 Shall fold their tents, like the Arabs, 
 as silently steal away. 
 
 TO AN OLD DANISH SONG BOOK. 
 
 [Afrar reading Hans Andersen s Story of my Life, Longfellov notes 
 m his diary : " Autumn always brings back very freshly my autumnal 
 sojourn in Copenhagen, delightfully mingled with bracing air and yel 
 low falling leaves. I have tried to record the impression in the song 
 To an Old Danish Song Book: ] 
 
 WELCOME, niy old friend, 
 Welcome to a foreign fireside, 
 While the sullen gales of autumn 
 Shake the windows. 
 
 The ungrateful world 
 Has, it seems, dealt harshly with thee, 
 Since, beneath the skies of Denmark, 
 First I met thee. 
 
 There are marks of a ere, 
 
 O * 
 
 There are thumb-marks on thy margin, 
 
TO AN OLD DANISH SONG BOOK. 83 
 
 Made by hands that clasped thee rudely, 
 At the alehouse. 
 
 Soiled and dull thou art ; 
 Yellow are thy time-worn pages, 
 As the russet, rain-molested 
 Leaves of autumn. 
 
 Thou art stained with wine 
 Scattered from hilarious goblets, 
 As the leaves with the libations 
 Of Olympus. 
 
 fet dost thou recall 
 Days departed, half-forgotten, 
 When in dreamy youth I wandered 
 By the Baltic, 
 
 When I paused to hear 
 The old ballad of King Christian * 
 Shouted from suburban taverns 
 In the twilight. 
 
 Thou recallest bards, 
 
 Who, in solitary chambers, 
 
 And with hearts by passion wasted, 
 
 Wrote thy pages. 
 
 Thou recallest homes 
 Where thy songs of love and friendship 
 Made the gloomy Northern winter 
 Bright as summer. 
 
 See Longfellow s translation of this national song of Den* 
 nark in Paul Revere s Ride and other Poems, Riverside Litera 
 ture Series. No. 63. 
 
84 HENRY WADSWOETH LONGFELLOW. 
 
 Once some ancient Scald, 1 
 In his bleak, ancestral Iceland, 
 Chanted staves o these old ballads 
 To the Vikings. 
 
 Once in Elsinore, 
 At the court of old King Hamlet, 
 Yorick and his boon companions 
 Sang these ditties. 
 
 Once Prince Frederick s Guard 
 Sang them in their smoky barracks ; 
 Suddenly the English cannon 
 Joined the chorus I 
 
 Peasants in the field, 
 Sailors on the roaring ocean, 
 Students, tradesmen, pale mechanics, 
 All have sung them. 
 
 Thou hast been their friend ; 
 They, alas ! have left thee friendless t 
 Yet at least by one warm fireside 
 Art thou welcome. 
 
 And, as swallows build 
 In these wide, old-fashioned chimneys, 
 So thy twittering song shall nestle 
 In my bosom, - 
 
 Quiet, close, and warm, 
 Sheltered from all molestation, 
 And recalling by their voices 
 Youth and travel. 
 
 1 Scahld, 
 
AMALFL 85 
 
 AMALFL 
 
 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 and of lands, 
 Far above the convent stands. 
 On its terraced walk aloof 
 Leans a monk with folded hands. 
 Placid, satisfied, serene, 
 
86 HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW, 
 
 Looking down upon the scene 
 Over wall and red-tiled roof ; 
 Wondering unto what good end 
 All this toil and traffic tend, 
 And why all men cannot be 
 Free from care and free from pain, 
 And the sordid love of gain, 
 And as indolent as he. 
 
 "Where are now the freighted barks 
 From the marts of east and west ? 
 Where the knights in iron sarks 
 Journeying to the Holy Land, 
 Glove of steel upon the hand, 
 Cross of crimson on the breast? 
 Where the pomp of camp and court? 
 Where the pilgrims with their prayers ? 
 Where the merchants with their wares, 
 And their gallant brigantines 
 Safely sailing into port 
 Chased by corsair Algerines ? 
 
 Vanished like a fleet of cloud, 
 Like a passing trumpet-blast, 
 Are those splendors of the past, 
 And the commerce and the crowd I 
 Fathoms deep beneath the seas 
 Lie the ancient wharves and quays, 
 Swallowed by the engulfing waves ; 
 Silent streets and vacant halls, 
 Ruined roofs and towers and walls j 
 Hidden from all mortal eyes 
 Deep the sunken city lies : 
 Even cities have their graves I 
 This is an enchanted land I 
 
AMALFI. 81 
 
 Round the headlands far away 
 Sweeps the blue Salernian bay 
 With its sickle of white sana : 
 Further still and furthermost 
 On the dim discovered coast 
 Psestum with its ruins lies.> 
 And its roses all in bloom 
 Seem to tinge the fatal skies 
 Of that lonely land of doom. 
 
 On his terrace, high in air, 
 Nothing doth the good monk care 
 For such worldly themes as these. 
 From the garden just below 
 Little puffs of perfume blow, 
 And a sound is in his ears 
 Of the murmur of the bees 
 In the shining chestnut-trees ; 
 Nothing else he heeds or hears. 
 All the landscape seems to swoon 
 In the happy afternoon ; 
 Slowly o er his senses creep 
 The encroaching waves of sleep, 
 And he sinks as sank the town, 
 Unresisting, fathoms down, 
 Into caverns cool and deep I 
 
 Walled about with drifts of snow, 
 Hearing the fierce north-wind blow, 
 Seeing all the landscape white 
 And the river cased in ice, 
 Comes this memory of delight, 
 Comes this vision unto me 
 Of a long-lost Paradise 
 In the land beyond the sea. 
 
88 HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW. 
 THE DISCOVERER OF THE NORTH CAPE. 
 
 A LEAF FROM KING ALFRED S OROSIUS. 1 
 
 OTHERE, 2 the old sea-captain, 
 
 Who dwelt in Helgoland, 
 To King Alfred, the Lover of Truth, 
 Brought a snow-white walrus-tooth, 
 
 Which he held in his brown right hand. 
 
 His figure was tall and stately, 
 Like a boy s his eye appeared ; 
 
 His hair was yellow as hay, 
 
 But threads of a silvery gray 
 Gleamed in his tawny beard. 
 
 Hearty and hale was Othere, 
 His cheek had the color of oak ; 
 
 With a kind of a laugh in his speech, 
 
 Like the sea-tide on a beach, 
 As unto the King he spoke, 
 
 And Alfred, King of the Saxons, 
 
 Had a book upon his knees, 
 And wrote down the wondrous tale 
 Of him who was first to sail 
 
 Into the Arctic seas. 
 
 44 So far I live to the northward, 
 No man lives north of me ; 
 
 1 Orosius was a Spanish priest who lived in the fifth century 
 and wrote a universal history which was translated by King 
 Alfred the Great of England. 
 
THE DISCOVERER OF THE NORTH CAPE. 8* 
 
 To the east are wild mountain-chains, 
 And beyond them meres and plains; 
 To the westward all is sea. 
 
 ** So far I live to the northward, 
 
 From the harbor of Skeringes-hale, 
 
 If you only sailed by day, 
 
 With a fair wind all the way, 
 
 More than a month would you sail* 
 
 u I own six hundred reindeer, 
 
 With sheep and swine beside ; 
 
 I have tribute from the Finns, 
 
 Whalebone and reindeer-skins, 
 And ropes of walrus-hide. 
 
 * I ploughed the land with horses, 
 
 But my heart was ill at ease, 
 For the old seafaring men 
 Came to me now and then, 
 
 With their sagas of the seas; 
 
 ** Of Iceland and of Greenland, 
 
 And the stormy Hebrides, 
 And the undiscovered deep ; 
 Oh I could not eat nor sleep 
 
 For thinking of those seas. 
 
 ** To the northward stretched the desert) 
 
 How far I fain would know ; 
 So at last I sallied forth, 
 And three days sailed due north, 
 
 As far as the whale-ships go. 
 
flO HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW. 
 
 * To the west of me was the ocean, 
 To the right the desolate shore, 
 But I did not slacken sail 
 For the walrus or the whale, 
 Till after three days more. 
 
 The days grew longer and longer, 
 Till they became as one, 
 
 And northward through the haze 
 
 I saw the sullen blaze 
 
 Of the red midnight sun. 
 
 C And then uprose before me, 
 
 Upon the water s edge, 
 The huge and haggard shape 
 Of that unknown North Cape, 
 Whose form is like a wedge. 
 
 * The sea was rough and stormy, 
 
 The tempest howled and wailed, 
 And the sea-fog, like a ghost, 
 Haunted that dreary coast, 
 But onward still I sailed. 
 
 * Four days I steered to eastward, 
 
 Four days without a night : 
 Bound in a fiery ring 
 Went the great sun, O King, 
 With red and lurid light." 
 
 Here Alfred, King of the Saxons, 
 
 Ceased writing for a while ; 
 And raised his eyes from his book, 
 With a strange and puzzled look. 
 And an incredulous smile,. 
 
THE DISCOVERER OF THE NORTH CAPE. 91 
 
 But Othere, the old sea-captain, 
 He neither paused nor stirred, 
 
 Till the King listened and then 
 
 Once more took up his pen, 
 And wrote down every word. 
 
 84 And now the land," said Othere, 
 
 " Bent southward suddenly, 
 And I followed the curving shore 
 And ever southward bore 
 
 Into a nameless sea. 
 
 ** And there we hunted the walrus, 
 
 The nar whale, and the seal ; 
 Ha ! t was a noble game ! 
 And like the lightning s flame 
 Flew our harpoons of steel. 
 
 ** There were six of us all together, 
 
 Norsemen of Helgoland ; 
 In two days and no more 
 We killed of them threescore, 
 
 And dragged them to the strand I * 
 
 Here Alfred the Truth-teller 
 
 Suddenly closed his book, 
 And lifted his blue eyes, 
 With doubt and strange surmise 
 
 Depicted in their look. 
 
 And Othere the old sea-captain 
 
 Stared at him wild and weird, 
 Then smiled, till his shining teeth 
 Gleamed white from underneath 
 His tawny, quivering beard. 
 
92 HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW. 
 
 And to the King of the Saxons, 
 
 In witness of the truth, 
 Raising his noble head, 
 He stretched his brown hand, and said, 
 
 " Behold this walrus-tooth I " 
 
 CURFEW. 
 
 I. 
 
 SOLEMNLY, mournfully, 
 
 Dealing its dole, 
 The Curfew l 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 hallJ 
 Sleep and oblivion 
 
 Reign over all 1 
 
 II. 
 
 The book is completed, 
 And closed, like the day; 
 
 f The origin of this word is interesting, and the fifth Iin9 
 Huts at it. 
 
THE POET AND HIS SONGS. 93 
 
 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 are darkened, 
 
 The hearth-stone is cokU 
 
 Darker and darker 
 
 The black shadows fall ; 
 Sleep and oblivion 
 
 Reign over all. 
 
 THE POET AND HIS SONG& 
 
 As the birds come in the Spring, 
 We know not from where ; 
 
 As the stars come at evening 
 From depths of the air ; 
 
 As the rain comes from the cloud, 
 And the brook from the ground 
 
 As suddenly, low or loud, 
 Out of silence a sound ; 
 
 As the grape comes to the vine, 
 
 The fruit to the tree : 
 As the wind comes to the pine, 
 
 And the tide to the sea; 
 
94 HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW. 
 
 As come the white sails of ships 
 
 O er the ocean s verge ; 
 As comes the smile to the lips, 
 
 The foam to the surge ; 
 
 So come to the Poet his songs, 
 
 All hitherward blown 
 From the misty realm, that belongs 
 
 To the vast Unknown. 
 
 His, and not his, are the lays 
 
 He sings ; and their fame 
 Is his, and not his ; and the praise 
 
 And the pride of a name. 
 
 For voices pursue him by day, 
 
 And haunt him by night, 
 And he listens, and needs must obey. 
 
 When the Angel says, " Write I " * 
 
 * This poem was written to close the last volume of rerse pub 
 lashed by Mr. Longfellow. 
 
2Etje tttoersfoe literature 
 
 PAUL REVERE S RIDE 
 AND OTHER POEMS 
 
 WITH EXPLANATORY NOTES 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 PAUL REVERE S RIDE . . . r . V -__ 
 
 THE BRIDGE 6 
 
 THE CUMBERLAND 
 
 CHRISTMAS BELLS 10 
 
 KILLED AT THE FORD 
 
 IT IS NOT ALWAYS MAY 13 
 
 RAIN IN SUMMER 
 
 MY LOST YOUTH 17 
 
 CHANGED 
 
 THE HAPPIEST LAND 21 
 
 THE EMPEROR S BIRD S-NEST 
 
 THE OLD CLOCK ON THE STAIRS 25 
 
 SONG OF THE BELL 
 
 LADY WENTWORTH ... 28 
 
 MAD RIVER 
 
 THE BUILDERS 37 
 
 ANNIE OF THARAW 38 
 
 THE BELL OF ATRI 40 
 
 THE BROOK AND THE WAVE 
 
 THE RETURN OF SPRING 
 
 THE BELEAGUERED CITY .. ^5 
 
 CASPAR BECERRA 47 
 
 To THE RIVER CHARLES 48 
 
 THREE FRIENDS OF MINE . 50 
 
 CHARLES SUMNER 52 
 
 OLIVER BASSELIN 54 
 
 NUREMBERG .56 
 
 THE BELLS OF SAN BLAS **9 
 
 THE GOLDEN MILE-STONE 
 
 THE BIRDS OF KILLINGWORTH ... 
 
 THE HERONS OF ELMWOOD 2 
 
 BAYARD TAYLOR \ 
 
 TRAVELS BY THE FIRESIDE ... 
 
 A BALLAD OF THE FBENCH FLEET .. 77 
 
 KING CHRISTIAN . JL -~ * 
 
iv CONTENTS. 
 
 A GLEAM OF SUNSHINE ........ 80 
 
 THE ARSENAL AT SPRINGFIELD 83 
 
 THE LADDER OF SAINT AUGUSTINE 85 
 
 HAWTHORNE . 87 
 
 THE WARDEN OF THE CINQUE PORTS 88 
 
 THE LEGEND OF THE CROSSBILL 90 
 
 AFTERMATH . . 91 
 
PAUL REVERE S RIDE, AND OTHER 
 POEMS. 
 
 PAUL REVERE S RIDE. 1 
 
 LISTEN, my children, and you shall hear 
 
 Of the midnight ride of Paul Revere, 
 
 On the eighteenth of April, in Seventy-five, 
 
 Hardly a man is now alive 
 
 Who remembers that famous day and year. 
 
 He said to his friend, " If the British march 
 
 By land or sea from the town to-night, 
 
 Hang a lantern aloft in the belfry arch 
 
 Of the North Church 2 tower as a signal light, 
 
 1 Mr. Longfellow imagined a party of friends met at a coun 
 try inn, and telling tales before the fire. The first of these 
 Tales of a Wayside Inn was by the landlord, and is this story oi 
 Paul Revere. Revere was an American patriot, a silversmith 
 and engraver by trade, whose tea-pots and cream jugs and tank 
 ards may be found in old Boston families. He was a spirited 
 man, and in- the secrets of the Boston patriots. 
 
 2 There has been some discussion as to the church tower from 
 which the lanterns were hung, some claiming that the church 
 was the old North Meeting-house in North Square, pulled down 
 afterward for fuel, during the siege of Boston ; but the evidence 
 points more clearly to Christ Church, still standing, and often 
 spoken of as the North Church. The poet has departed some 
 what from the actual historic facts, since Revere did not watch 
 
2 PAUL KE VERB S RIDE. 
 
 One, if by land, and two, if by sea ; 
 And I on the opposite shore will be, 
 Heady to ride and spread the alarm 
 Through every Middlesex village and farm, 
 For the country folk to be up and to arm." 
 
 XThen he said, " Good night ! " and with muffled oar 
 Silently rowed to the Charlestown shore, 
 Just as the moon rose over the bay, 
 Where swinging wide at her moorings lay 
 The Somerset, British man-of-war ; 
 A phantom ship, with each mast and spar 
 Across the moon like a prison bar, 
 And a huge black hulk, that was magnified 
 By its own reflection in the tide. 
 
 Meanwhile his friend, through alley and street, 
 Wanders and watches with eager ears, 
 Till in the silence around him he hears 
 The muster of men at the barrack door, 
 The sound of arms, and the tramp of feet, 
 And the measured tread of the grenadiers, 
 Marching down to their boats on the shore. 
 
 Then he climbed the tower of the Old North Church, 
 
 By the wooden stairs, with stealthy tread, 
 
 To the belfry-chamber overhead, 
 
 And startled the pigeons from their perch 
 
 On the sombre rafters, that round him made 
 
 Masses and moving shapes of shade, 
 
 for the lights, nor did he reach Concord. Since 1894, when April 
 19 was made a holiday in Massachusetts ("Patriots Day "), it has 
 been customary to have some one impersonate Paul Revere and 
 follow in detail the course of his famous ride. 
 
PA UL RE VERE S RIDE. 
 
 By the trembling ladder, steep and tall, 
 To the highest window in the wall, 
 Where he paused to listen and look down 
 A moment on the roofs of the town, A/ 
 
 And the moonlight flowing over all. 
 
 Beneath, in the churchyard, lay the dead, 
 
 In their night-encampment on the hill, 
 
 Wrapped in silence so deep and still 
 
 That he could hear, like a sentinel s tread, 
 
 The watchful night-wind, as it went 
 
 Creeping along from tent to tent, 
 
 And seeming to whisper, " All is well ! " 
 
 A moment only he feels the spell 
 
 Of the place and the hour, and the secret dread 
 
 Of the lonely belfry and the dead ; 
 
 For suddenly all his thoughts are bent 
 
 On a shadowy something far away, 
 
 Where the river widens to meet the bay, 
 
 A line of black that bends and floats 
 
 On the rising tide, like a bridge of boats. 
 
 Meanwhile, impatient to mount and ride, 
 Booted and spurred, with a heavy stride 
 On the opposite shore walked Paul Revere. 
 Now he patted his horse s side, 
 Now gazed at the landscape far and near, 
 Then, impetuous, stamped the earth, 
 And turned and tightened his saddle-girth ; 
 But mostly he watched with eager search 
 The belfry-tower of the Old North Church,"") 
 As it rose above the graves on the hill, 
 Lonely and spectral and sombre and still. 
 And lo ! as he looks, on the belfry s height 
 
4 PAUL RE VERB S RIDE. 
 
 A glimmer, and then a gleam of light ! 
 He springs to the saddle, the bridle he turns, 
 But lingers and gazes, till full on his sight 
 A second lamp in the belfry burns ! 
 
 A hurry of hoofs in a village street, 
 
 A shape in the moonlight, a bulk in the dark, 
 
 And beneath, from the pebbles, in passing, a spark 
 
 Struck out by a steed flying fearless and fleet : 
 
 That was all ! And yet, through the gloom and the 
 
 light, 
 
 The fate of a nation was riding that night ; 
 And the spark struck out by that steed, in his flight, 
 Kindled the land into flame with its heat. 
 
 He has left the village and mounted the steep, 
 And beneath him, tranquil and broad and deep. 
 Is the Mystic, meeting the ocean tides ; 
 And under the alders that skirt its edge, 
 Now soft on the sand, now loud on the ledge, 
 Is heard the tramp of his steed as he rides. 
 
 It was twelve by the village clock, 
 
 When he crossed the bridge into Medford town. 
 
 He heard the crowing of the cock, 
 
 And the barking of the farmer s dog, 
 
 And felt the damp of the river fog, 
 
 That rises after the sun goes down. 
 
 It was one by the village clock, 
 
 (When he galloped into Lexington. 
 He saw the gilded weathercock 
 Swim in the moonlight as he passed, 
 And the meeting-house windows, blank and bare, 
 
PAUL RE VERB S RIDE. 
 
 I Gaze at him with a spectral glare, 
 As if they already stood aghast 
 At the bloody work they would look upon. 
 
 It was two by the village clock, 
 When he came to the bridge in Concord town. 
 He heard the bleating of the flock, 
 And the twitter of birds among the trees, 
 | And felt the breath of the morning breeze 
 Blowing over the meadows brown. 
 And one was safe and asleep in his bed 
 Who at the bridge would be first to fall, 
 Who that day would be lying dead, 
 Pierced by a British musket-ball. 
 
 know the rest. In the books you have read, 
 / How the British Regulars fired and fled, 
 / How the farmers gave them ball for ball. 
 From behind each fence and farm-yard wall, 
 Chasing the red-coats down the lane, 
 Then crossing the fields to emerge again 
 Under the trees at the turn of the road, 
 And only pausing to fire and load. 
 
 4 So through the night rode Paul Revere ; 
 And so through the night went his cry of alarm 
 To every Middlesex village and farm, 
 A cry of defiance and not of fear, 
 A voice in the darkness, a knock at the door, 
 And a word that shall echo forevermore ! 
 For, borne on the night-wind of the Past, 
 \ Through all our history, to the last, 
 In the hour of darkness and peril and need, 
 The people will waken and listen to hear 
 
THE BRIDGE. 
 
 The hurrying hoof -beats of that steed, 
 And the midnight message of Paul Revere. 
 
 THE BRIDGE. 1 
 
 I STOOD on the bridge at midnight, 
 As the clocks were striking the hour, 
 
 And the moon rose o er the city, 
 Behind the dark church-tower. 
 
 I saw her bright reflection 
 
 In the waters under me, 
 Like a golden goblet falling 
 
 And sinking into the sea. 
 
 And far in the hazy distance 
 
 Of that lovely night in June, 
 The blaze of the flaming furnace 
 
 Gleamed redder than the moon. 
 
 Among the long, black rafters 
 
 The wavering shadows lay, 
 And the current that came from the ocean 
 
 Seemed to lift and bear them away ; 
 
 As, sweeping and eddying through them, 
 
 Rose the belated tide, 
 And, streaming into the moonlight, 
 
 The seaweed floated wide. 
 
 1 The poem when first published was entitled The Bridge 
 wer the Charles, the river which separates Cambridge from Bos 
 ton. 
 
THE BRIDGE. 
 
 And like those waters rushing 
 
 Among the wooden piers, 
 A flood of thoughts came o er me 
 
 That filled my eyes with tears. 
 
 How often, oh how often, 
 
 In the days that had gone by, 
 
 I had stood on that bridge at midnight 
 And gazed on that wave and sky 1 
 
 How often, oh how often, 
 
 I had wished that the ebbing tide 
 Would bear me away on its bosom 
 
 O er the ocean wild and wide ! 
 
 For my heart was hot and restless, 
 And my life was full of care, 
 
 And the burden laid upon me 
 
 Seemed greater than I could bear. 
 
 But now it has fallen from me, 
 
 It is buried in the sea ; 
 And only the sorrow of others 
 
 Throws its shadow over me. 
 
 Yet whenever I cross the river 
 On its bridge with wooden piers, 
 
 Like the odor of brine from the ocean 
 Comes the thought of other years. 
 
 And I think how many thousands 
 
 Of care-encumbered men, 
 Each bearing his burden of sorrow, 
 
 Have crossed the bridge since then. 
 
THE CUMBERLAND. 
 
 I see the long procession 
 
 Still passing to and fro, 
 The young heart hot and restless, 
 
 And the old subdued and slow I 
 
 And forever and forever, 
 As long as the river flows, 
 
 As long as the heart has passions, 
 As long as life has woes ; 
 
 The moon and its broken reflection 
 And its shadows shall appear, 
 
 As the symbol of love in heaven, 
 And its wavering image here. 
 
 THE CUMBERLAND. 
 
 AT anchor in Hampton Roads we lay, 
 
 On board of the Cumberland, sloop-of-war , 
 And at times from the fortress across the bay 
 The alarum of drums swept past, 
 Or a bugle blast 
 From the camp on the shore. 
 
 Then far away to the south uprose 
 
 A little feather of snow-white smoke, 
 And we knew that the iron ship 1 of our foes 
 
 " The iron ship was the United States Frigate Merrimac, cap 
 tured by the Confederates, plated with railroad iron, and renamed 
 the Virginia, which on March 8, 1862, came out of Gosport to 
 attack the Union vessels in Hampton Roads. The next day the 
 Monitor ironclad came upon the scene, and the two ironclads en 
 gaged each other. The whole character of naval warfare waa 
 changed from that day. 
 
THE CUMBERLAND. 
 
 Was steadily steering its course 
 To try the force 
 Of our ribs of oak. 
 
 Down upon us heavily runs, 
 
 Silent and sullen, the floating fort ; 
 Then comes a puff of smoke from her guns, 
 And leaps the terrible death, 
 With fiery breath, 
 From each open port. 
 
 We are not idle, but send her straight 
 
 Defiance back in a full broadside ! 
 As hail rebounds from a roof of slate, 
 Rebounds our heavier hail 
 From each iron scale 
 Of the monster s hide. 
 
 " Strike your flag ! " the rebel cries, 
 
 In his arrogant old plantation strain. 
 " Never ! " our gallant Morris replies ; 
 " It is better to sink than to yield ! * 
 And the whole air pealed 
 With the cheers of our men. 
 
 Then, like a kraken huge and black, 
 
 She crushed our ribs in her iron grasp ! 
 Down went the Cumberland all a wrack, 
 With a sudden shudder of death, 
 And the cannon s breath 
 For her dying gasp. 
 
 Next morn, as the sun rose over the bay, 
 Still floated our flag at the mainmast head. 
 
10 CHRISTMAS BELLS. 
 
 Lord, how beautiful was Thy day I 
 Every waft of the air 
 Was a whisper of prayer, 
 Or a dirge for the dead. 
 
 Ho I brave hearts that went down in the seas t 
 
 Ye are at peace in the troubled stream ; 
 Ho ! brave land ! with hearts like these, 
 Thy flag, that is rent in twain, 
 Shall be one again, 
 And without a seain ! 
 
 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 I 
 
 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 I 
 
KILLED AT THE FORD. 11 
 
 Then from each black, accursed mouth 
 The cannon thundered in the South, 1 , 
 
 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 born 
 Of peace on earth, good-will to men ! 
 
 And in despair I bowed my head ; 
 " There is no peace on earth," I said ; 
 
 " For hate is strong, 
 
 And mocks the song 
 Of peace on earth, good-will to men ! " 
 
 Then pealed the bells more loud and deep : 
 " God is not dead ; nor doth he sleep ! 
 
 The Wrong shall fail, 
 
 The Right prevail, 
 With peace on earth, good-will to men ! " 
 
 KILLED AT THE FORD. 
 
 HE is dead, the beautiful youth, 
 
 The heart of honor, the tongue of truth, 
 
 He, the life and light of us all, 
 
 Whose voice was blithe as a bugle-call, 
 
 Whom all eyes followed with one consent, 
 
 The cheer of whose laugh, and whose pleasant word, 
 
 Hushed all murmurs of discontent. 
 
 1 This poem was wi-itteu December 25, 1864. 
 
12 KILLED AT THE FORD. 
 
 Only last night, as we rode along, 
 
 Down the dark of the mountain gap, 
 
 To visit the picket-guard at the ford, 
 
 Little dreaming of any mishap, 
 
 He was humming the words of some old song: 
 
 " Two red roses he had on his cap 
 
 And another he bore at the point of his sword." 
 
 Sudden and swift a whistling ball 
 Came out of a wood, and the voice was still ; 
 Something I heard in the darkness fall, 
 And for a moment my blood grew chill ; 
 I spake in a whisper, as he who speaks 
 In a room where some one is lying dead ; 
 But he made no answer to what I said. 
 
 We lifted him up to his saddle again, 
 
 And through the mire and the mist and the 
 
 Carried him back to the silent camp, 
 
 And laid him as if asleep on his bed ; 
 
 And I saw by the light of the surgeon s lamp 
 
 Two white roses upon his cheeks, 
 
 And one, just over his heart, blood-red ! 
 
 And I saw in a vision how far and fleet 
 That fatal bullet went speeding forth, 
 Till it reached a town in the distant North, 
 Till it reached a house in a sunny street, 
 Till it reached a heart that ceased to beat 
 Without a murmur, without a cry ; 
 And a bell was tolled, in that far-off town, 
 For one who had passed from cross to crown, 
 And the neighbors wondered that she should die. 
 
IT IS NOT ALWAYS MAY. 13 
 
 IT IS NOT ALWAYS MAY. 
 
 No hay pharos en los nidos de antaiio. 1 
 
 Spanish Proverb. 
 
 THE sun is bright, the air is clear, 
 The darting swallows soar and sing, 
 
 And from the stately elms I hear 
 The bluebird prophesying Spring. 
 
 So blue yon winding river flows, 
 It seems an outlet from the sky, 
 
 Where, waiting till the west wind blows, 
 The freighted clouds at anchor lie. 
 
 r 
 
 All things are new; the buds, the leaves, 
 That gild the elm-tree s nodding crest, 
 
 And even the nest beneath the eaves ; 
 
 There are no birds in last year s nest I 
 
 All things rejoice in youth and love, 
 The fulness of their first delight ! 
 
 And learn from the soft heavens above 
 The melting tenderness of night. 
 
 Maiden, that read st this simple rhyme, 
 Enjoy thy youth, it will not stay ; 
 
 Enjoy the fragrance of thy prime, 
 For oh, it is not always May ! 
 
 Enjoy the Spring of Love and Youth, 
 To some good angel leave the rest ; 
 
 1 The translation of this Spanish proverb will be found in tbo 
 last line of the poein. 
 
14 RAIN IN SUMMER. 
 
 For Time will teach thee soon the truth, 
 There are no birds in last year s nest! 
 
 RAIN IN SUMMER 
 
 How beautiful is the rain ! 
 
 After the dust and heat, 
 
 In the broad and fiery street, 
 
 In the narrow lane, 
 
 How beautiful is the rain ! 
 
 How it clatters along the roofs, 
 
 Like the tramp of hoofs ! 
 
 How it gushes and struggles out 
 
 From the throat of the overflowing spout ! 
 
 Across the window-pane 
 
 It pours and pours ; 
 
 And swift and wide, 
 
 With a muddy tide, 
 
 Like a river down the gutter roars 
 
 The rain, the welcome rain ! 
 
 The sick man from his chamber looks 
 
 At the twisted brooks ; 
 
 He can feel the cool 
 
 Breath of each little pool ; 
 
 His fevered brain 
 
 Grows calm again, 
 
 And he breathes a blessing on the rain. 
 
 From the neighboring school 
 Come the boys, 
 
RAIN IN SUMMER. 15 
 
 With more than their wonted noise 
 
 And commotion ; 
 
 And down the wet streets 
 
 Sail their mimic fleets, 
 
 Till the treacherous pool 
 
 Ingulfs them in its whirling 
 
 And turbulent ocean. 
 
 In the country, on every side, 
 
 Where far and wide, 
 
 Like a leopard s tawny and spotted hide> 
 
 Stretches the plain, 
 
 To the dry grass and the drier grain 
 
 How welcome is the rain I 
 
 In the furrowed land 
 
 The toilsome and patient oxen stand ; 
 
 Lifting the yoke-encumbered head, 
 
 With their dilated nostrils spread, 
 
 They silently inhale 
 
 The clover-scented gale, 
 
 And the vapors that arise 
 
 From the well-watered and smoking soil 
 
 For this rest in the furrow after toil 
 
 Their large and lustrous eyes 
 
 Seem to thank the Lord, 
 
 More than man s spoken word. 
 
 Near at hand, 
 
 From under the sheltering trees, 
 
 The farmer sees 
 
 His pastures, and his fields of grain, 
 
 As they bend their tops 
 
 To the numberless beating drops 
 
i6 RAIN IN SUMMER. 
 
 Of the incessant rain. 
 
 He counts it as no sin 
 
 That he sees therein 
 
 Only his own thrift and gain. 
 
 These, and far more than these, 
 
 The Poet sees ! 
 
 He can behold 
 
 Aquarius old 
 
 Walking the fenceless fields of air? 
 
 And from each ample fold 
 
 Of the clouds about him rolled 
 
 Scattering everywhere 
 
 The showery rain, 
 
 As the farmer scatters his grain. 
 
 He can behold 
 
 Things manifold 
 
 That have not yet been wholly told, 
 
 Have not been wholly sung nor said. 
 
 For his thought, that never stops, 
 
 Follows the water-drops 
 
 Down to the graves of the dead, 
 
 Down through chasms and gulfs profound, 
 
 To the dreary fountain-head 
 
 Of lakes and rivers under ground ; 
 
 And sees them, when the rain is done, 
 
 On the bridge of colors seven 
 
 Climbing up once more to heaven, 
 
 Opposite the setting sun. 
 
 Thus the Seer, 
 
 With vision clear, 
 
 Sees forms appear and disappear, 
 
MY LOST YOUTH. 17 
 
 In the perpetual round of strange, 
 
 Mysterious change 
 
 From birth to death, from death to birth, 
 
 From earth to heaven, from heaven to earth | 
 
 Till glimpses more sublime 
 
 Of things unseen before, 
 
 Unto his wondering eyes reveal 
 
 The Universe, as an immeasurable wheel 
 
 Turning forevermore 
 
 In the rapid and rushing river of Time. 
 
 MY LOST YOUTH. 
 
 OFTEN I think of the beautiful town 
 
 That is seated by the sea ; 1 
 Often in thought go up and down 
 The pleasant streets of that dear old town, 
 And my youth comes back to me. 
 And a verse of a Lapland song 
 Is haunting my memory still : 
 " A boy s will is the wind s will, 
 And the thoughts of youth are long, long thoughts.** 
 
 1 During one of his visits to Portland in 1846, Mr. Long 
 fellow relates how he took a long walk round Munjoy s hill and 
 down to the old Fort Lawrence. " I lay down," he says, " in one 
 of the embrasures and listened to the lashing, lulling sound of. 
 *he sea just at my feet. It was a beautiful afternoon, and the 
 harbor was full of white sails, coming and departing. Meditated 
 a poem on the Old Fort." It does not appear that any poem 
 was then written, but the theme remained, and in 1855, when in 
 Cambridge, he notes in his diary, March 29 : "A day of pain ; 
 cowering over the fire. At night, as I lie in bed, a poem conies 
 into my mind, a memory of Portland, iny native town, the 
 aty by the sea." 
 
13 MY LOST YOUTH. 
 
 I can see the shadowy lines of its trees, 
 
 And catch, in sudden gleams, 
 The sheen of the far-surrounding seas, 
 And islands that were the Hesperides 
 Of all my boyish dreams. 
 
 And the burden of that old song, 
 It murmurs and whispers still : 
 " A boy s will is the wind s will, 
 And the thoughts of youth are long, long thoughts." 
 
 I remember the black wharves and the slips, 
 
 And the sea-tides tossing free ; 
 And Spanish sailors with bearded lips, 
 And the beauty and mystery of the ships, 
 And the magic of the sea. 
 
 And the voice of that wayward song 
 Is singing and saying still : 
 " A boy s will is the wind s will, 
 And the thoughts of youth are long, long thoughts." 
 
 I remember the bulwarks by the shore, 
 
 And the fort upon the hill ; 
 The sunrise gun, with its hollow roar, 
 The drum-beat repeated o er and o er, 
 And the bugle wild and shrill. 
 And the music of that old song 
 Throbs in my memory still : 
 " A boy s will is the wind s will, 
 And the thoughts of youth are long, long thoughts." 
 
 I remember the sea-fight l far away, 
 How it thundered o er the tide ! 
 
 1 In 1813, when Longfellow was a boy of six, there was an 
 engagement off the harbor of Portland between the American 
 
MY LOST YOUTH. 19 
 
 A.nd the dead captains, as they lay 
 In their graves, overlooking the tranquil bay 
 Where they in battle died. 
 
 And the sound of that mournful song 
 
 Goes through me with a thrill : 
 
 " A boy s will is the wind s will, 
 A.nd the thoughts of youth are long, long thoughts.** 
 
 I can see the breezy dome of groves, 
 The shadows of Deering s Woods ; 
 And the friendships old and the early loves 
 Come back with a Sabbath sound, as of doves 
 In quiet neighborhoods. 
 
 And the verse of that sweet old song, 
 It flutters and murmurs still : 
 " A boy s will is the wind s will, 
 And the thoughts of youth are long, long thoughts." 
 
 I remember the gleams and glooms that dart 
 
 Across the school-boy s brain ; 
 The song and the silence in the heart, 
 That in part are prophecies, and in part 
 Are longings wild and vain. 
 
 And the voice of that fitful song 
 Sings on, and is never still : 
 " A boy s will is the wind s will, 
 And the thoughts of youth are long, long thoughts." 
 
 There are things of which I may not speak , 
 There are dreams that cannot die ; 
 
 brig Enterprise and the English brig Boxer. Both captains were 
 slain, but the Enterprise won the day and after a fight of three 
 quarters of an hour came into the harbor, bringing the Boxei 
 frith her. 
 
20 MY LOST YOUTH. 
 
 There are thoughts that make the strong heart weak, 
 And bring a pallor into the cheek, 
 And a mist before the eye. 
 
 And the words of that fatal song 
 
 Come over me like a chill : 
 
 " A boy s will is the wind s will, 
 And the thoughts of youth are long, long thoughts, 1 * 5 
 
 ! 
 
 i 
 
 Strange to me now are the forms I meet 
 
 When I visit the dear old town ; 
 But the native air is pure and sweet, 
 And the trees that o ershadow each well-known street* 
 As they balance up and down, 
 Are singing the beautiful song, 
 Are sighing and whispering still : 
 " A boy s will is the wind s will, 
 And the thoughts of youth are long, long thoughts. * 
 
 And Deering s Woods are fresh and fair, 
 
 And with joy that is almost pain 
 My heart goes back to wander there, 
 And among the dreams of the days that were, 
 I find my lost youth again. 
 
 And the strange and beautiful song, 
 The groves are repeating it still : 
 " A boy s will is the wind s will, 
 And the thoughts of youth are long, long thoughts.* 
 
THE HAPPIEST LAND. 21 
 
 CHANGED. 
 
 the outskirts of the town, 1 
 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. 
 
 THE HAPPIEST LAND. 
 
 THERE sat one day in quiet, 
 
 By an alehouse on the Rhine, 
 Four hale and hearty fellows, 
 
 And drank the precious wine. 
 
 The landlord s daughter filled their cups> 
 
 Around the rustic board ; 
 Then sat they all so calm and still, 
 
 And spake not one rude word. 
 
 1 It was a walk in Portland, the poet s old home, which sug* 
 gested this poem. 
 
 a Translated from the German. 
 
THE HAPPIEST LAND. 
 
 But when the maid departed, 
 
 A Swabian raised his hand, 
 And cried, all hot and flushed with wine, 
 " Long live the Swabian land I 
 
 * The greatest kingdom upon earth 
 
 Cannot with that compare ; 
 With all the stout and hardy men 
 And the nut-brown maidens there." 
 
 " Ha ! " cried a Saxon, laughing, 
 
 And dashed his beard with wine; 
 
 ** I had rather live in Lapland, 
 
 Than that Swabian land of thine ! 
 
 " The goodliest land on all this earth, 
 
 It is the Saxon land ! 
 There have I as many maidens 
 As fingers on this hand ! " 
 
 " Hold your tongues ! both Swabian and Saxon ! * 
 
 A bold Bohemian cries ; 
 * If there s a heaven upon this earth, 
 
 In Bohemia it lies. 
 
 * There the tailor blows the flute, 
 
 And the cobbler blows the horn, 
 And the miner blows the bugle, 
 Over mountain gorge and bourn." 
 
 And then the landlord s daughter 
 
 Up to heaven raised her hand, 
 And said, " Ye may no more contend, 
 
 There lies the happiest land ! " 
 
THE EMPEROR S BIRD S-NEST. 23 
 
 THE EMPEROR S BIRD S-NEST. 
 
 ONCE the Emperor Charles of Spain, 
 With his swarthy, grave commanders, 
 
 I forget in what campaign, 
 
 Long besieged, in mud and rain, 
 Some old frontier town of Flanders. 
 
 Up and down the dreary camp, 
 In great boots of Spanish leather, 
 
 Striding with a measured tramp, 
 
 These Hidalgos, dull and damp, 
 
 Cursed the Frenchmen, cursed the weather. 
 
 Thus as to and fro they went, 
 
 Over upland and through hollow, 
 
 Giving their impatience vent, 
 
 Perched upon the Emperor s tent, 
 In her nest, they spied a swallow. 
 
 Yes, it was a swallow s nest, 
 
 Built of clay and hair of horses, 
 Mane, or tail, or dragon s crest, 
 Found on hedge-rows east and west, 
 
 After skirmish of the forces. 
 
 Then an old Hildalgo said, 
 
 As he twirled his gray mustachio, 
 " Sure this swallow overhead 
 Thinks the Emperor s tent a shed, 
 And the Emperor but a Macho ! "* 
 
 1 Pronounced Macho. It signifies in Spanish a mule. 
 
24 THE EMPEROR S BIRD S-NEST. 
 
 Hearing his imperial name 
 
 Coupled with those words of malice, 
 
 Half in anger, half in shame, 
 
 Forth the great campaigner came 
 Slowly from his canvas palace. 
 
 " Let no hand the bird molest, * 
 Said he solemnly, " nor hurt her I " 
 
 Adding then, by way of jest, 
 
 " Golondrina l is my guest, 
 
 T is the wife of some deserter ! " 
 
 Swift as bowstring speeds a shaft, 
 
 Through the camp was spread the rumor, 
 
 And the soldiers, as they quaffed 
 
 Flemish beer at dinner, laughed 
 At the Emperor s pleasant humor. 
 
 So unharmed and unafraid 
 
 Sat the swallow still and brooded, 
 Till the constant cannonade 
 Through the walls a breach had made, 
 And the siege was thus concluded. 
 
 Then the army, elsewhere bent, 
 
 Struck its tents as if disbanding, 
 Only not the Emperor s tent, 
 For he ordered, ere he went, 
 
 Very curtly, " Leave it standing ! " 
 
 So it stood there all alone, 
 
 Loosely flapping, torn and tattered, 
 
 * The feminine form of golondrino, a swallow, and also a 
 Jocose name for a deserter. 
 
THE OLD CLOCK ON THE STAIRS. 25 
 
 Till the brood was fledged and flown, 
 Singing o er those walls of stone 
 
 Which the cannon-shot had shattered. 
 
 THE OLD CLOCK ON THE STAIRS. 
 
 SOMEWHAT back from the village street 
 Stands the old-fashioned country-seat. 1 
 Across its antique portico 
 Tall poplar-trees their shadows throw; 
 And from its station in the hall 
 An ancient timepiece says to all, 
 " Forever never ! 
 Never forever 1 " 
 
 Half-way up the stairs it stands, 
 And points and beckons with its hands 
 From its case of massive oak, 
 Like a monk, who, under his cloak, 
 Crosses himself, and sighs, alas ! 
 With sorrowful voice to all who pass, 
 " Forever never ! 
 Never forever ! " 
 
 By day its voice is low and light; 
 
 But in the silent dead of night, 
 
 Distinct as a passing footstep s fall, 
 
 It echoes along the vacant hall, 
 
 Along the ceiling, along the floor, 
 
 And seems to say, at each chamber-door, 
 
 1 The house thus described was that now known as the Plun* 
 fcett mansion in Pittsfield, once the home of Mrs. Longfellow r s 
 maternal grandfather. In the poet s own house in Cambridge 
 there also stood a tall old clock on the stairs. 
 
26 THE OLD CLOCK ON THE STAIRS. 
 
 " Forever never ! 
 Never forever ! " 
 
 Through days of sorrow and of mirth, 
 Through days of death and days of birth, 
 Through every swift vicissitude 
 Of changeful time, unchanged it has stood, 
 And as if, like God, it all things saw, 
 It calmly repeats those words of awe, 
 " Forever never ! 
 Never forever ! " 
 
 In that mansion used to be 
 Free-hearted Hospitality ; 
 His great fires up the chimney roared ; 
 The stranger feasted at his board ; 
 But, like the skeleton at the feast, 
 That warning timepiece never ceased, 
 " Forever never ! 
 Never forever ! " 
 
 There groups of merry children played, 
 There youths and maidens dreaming strayed ; 
 O precious hours ! O golden prime, 
 And affluence of love and time ! 
 Even as a miser counts his gold, 
 Those hours the ancient timepiece told, 
 " Forever never ! 
 Never forever ! " 
 
 From that chamber, clothed in white, 
 The bride came forth on her wedding night ; 
 There, in that silent room below, 
 The dead lay in his shroud of snow ; 
 
SONG OF THE BELL. 27 
 
 And in the hush that followed the prayer, 
 Was heard the old clock on the stair, 
 " Forever never ! 
 Never forever ! " 
 
 All are scattered now and fled, 
 Some are married, some are dead ; 
 And when I ask, with throbs of pain, 
 " Ah ! when shall they all meet again ? * 
 As in the days long since gone by, 
 The ancient timepiece makes reply,- 
 " Forever never ! 
 Never forever ! " 
 
 Never here, forever there, 
 Where all parting, pain, and care, 
 And death, and time shall disappear,-* 
 Forever there, but never here ! 
 The horologe of Eternity 
 Sayeth this incessantly, 
 " Forever never ! 
 Never forever ! " 
 
 SONG OF THE BELL. 1 
 
 BELL ! thou soundest merrily, 
 When the bridal party 
 
 To the church doth hie ! 
 Bell ! thou soundest solemnly, 
 When, on Sabbath morning, 
 
 Fields deserted lie ! 
 
 * Translation of a Swiss poem. 
 
28 LADY WENTWORTH. 
 
 Bell ! thou soundest merrily ; 
 Tellest thou at evening, 
 
 Bed-time draweth nigh ! 
 Bell ! thou soundest mournfully 
 Tellest thou the bitter 
 
 Parting hath gone by ! 
 
 Say! how canst thou mourn? 
 How canst thou rejoice ? 
 
 Thou art but metal dull ! 
 And yet all our sorrowings, 
 And all our rejoicings, 
 
 Thou dost feel them all ! 
 
 God hath wonders many, 
 Which we cannot fathom, 
 
 Placed within thy form ! 
 When the heart is sinking, 
 Thou alone canst raise it, 
 
 Trembling in the storm I 
 
 LADY WENTWORTH. 1 
 
 ONE hundred years ago, and something more, 
 In Queen Street, Portsmouth, at her tavern door $ 
 Neat as a pin, and blooming as a rose, 
 Stood Mistress Stavers in her furbelows, 
 Just as hex- cuckoo-clock was striking nine. 
 Above her head, resplendent on the sign, 
 
 1 This is another of the Tales of a Wayside Inn. It is a poet* 
 eal rendering of an actual fact. 
 
LADY WENT WORTH. 29 
 
 The portrait of the Earl of Halifax, 1 
 In scarlet coat and periwig of flax, 
 Surveyed at leisure all her varied charms, 
 Her cap, her bodice, her white folded arms, 
 And half resolved, though he was past his prime- 
 And rather damaged by the lapse of time, 
 To fall down at her feet, and to declare 
 The passion that had driven him to despair. 
 For from his lofty station he had seen 
 Stavers, her husband, dressed in bottle-green, 
 Drive his new Flying Stage-coach, four in hand, 
 Down the long lane, and out into the land, 
 And knew that he was far upon the way 
 To Ipswich and to Boston on the Bay ! 2 
 
 Just then the meditations of the Earl 
 
 Were interrupted by a little girl, 
 
 Barefooted, ragged, with neglected hair, 
 
 Eyes full of laughter, neck and shoulders bare, 
 
 A thin slip of a girl, like a new moon, 
 
 Sure to be rounded into beauty soon, 
 
 1 The inn bore the name of the Earl of Halifax. It was com 
 mon before the Revolution to name taverns after the king or some 
 notable, and the Earl of Halifax was a prominent English states- 
 man, who had been prime minister of George I. 
 
 2 Once a week the Flying Stage-coach was driven by John 
 Stavers, the inn-keeper, from Portsmouth to Boston. " The car 
 riage," says Mr. T. B. Aklrich in his pleasant book, An Old Town 
 by the Sea, " was a two-horse curricle, wide enough to accommodate 
 4hree passengers. The fare was thirteen shillings and sixpence 
 sterling per head. The curricle was presently superseded by a 
 series of fat yellow coaches, one of which nearly a century later, 
 and long after that pleasant mode of travel had fallen obsolete 
 was the cause of much mental tribulation to the writer of this 
 chronicle." Readers of The Story of a Bad Boy will guess t 
 rhat Mr. Aldrich refers. 
 
80 LADY WENTWORTH. 
 
 A creature men would worship and adore, 
 Though now in mean habiliments she bore 
 A pail of water, dripping through the street, 
 And bathing, as she went, her naked feet. 
 
 It was a pretty picture, full of grace ; 
 
 The slender form, the delicate, thin face j 
 
 The swaying motion, as she hurried by ; 
 
 The shining feet, the laughter in her eye, 
 
 That o er her face in ripples gleamed and glanced., 
 
 As in her pail the shifting sunbeam danced : 
 
 And with uncommon feelings of delight 
 
 The Earl of Halifax beheld the sight. 
 
 Not so Dame Stavers, for he heard her say 
 
 These words, or thought he did, as plain as day. 
 
 " O Martha Hilton ! Fie ! how dare you go 
 
 About the town half dressed, and looking so ! " 
 
 At which the gypsy laughed, and straight replied : 
 
 " No matter how I look ; I yet shall ride 
 
 In my own chariot, ma am." And on the child 
 
 The Earl of Halifax benignly smiled, 
 
 As with her heavy burden she passed on, 
 
 Looked back, then turned the corner, and was 
 
 What next, upon that memorable day, 
 Arrested his attention was a gay 
 And brilliant equipage, that flashed and spun, 
 The silver harness glittering in the sun, 
 Outriders with red jackets, lithe and lank, - 
 Pounding the saddles as they rose and sank, 
 While all alone within the chariot sat 
 A portly person with three-cornered hat, 
 A crimson velvet coat, head high in air, 
 Gold-headed cane, and nicely powdered hair, 
 
LADY WENT WORTH. 31 
 
 And diamond buckles sparkling at his knees, 
 Dignified, stately, florid, much at ease. 
 Onward the pageant swept, and as it passed, 
 Fair Mistress Stavers courtesied low and fast; 
 For this was Governor Wentworth * driving down 
 To Little Harbor, just beyond the town, 
 Where his Great House stood looking out to sea, 
 A goodly place, where it was good to be. 
 
 It was a pleasant mansion, an abode 
 
 Near and yet hidden from the great high-road, 
 
 Sequestered among trees, a noble pile, 
 
 Baronial and colonial in its style, 
 
 Gables and dormer-windows everywhere, 
 
 And stacks of chimneys rising high in air, 
 
 Pandean pipes, on which all winds that blew 
 
 Made mournful music the whole winter through. 
 
 Within, unwonted splendors met the eye, 
 
 Panels, and floors of oak, and tapestry ; 
 
 Carved chimney-pieces, where on brazen dogs 
 
 Revelled and roared the Christmas fires of logs ; 
 
 Doors opening into darkness unawares, 
 
 Mysterious passages, and nights of stairs; 
 
 And on the walls, in heavy gilded frames, 
 
 The ancestral Wentworths with Old-Scripture names. 3 
 
 Such was the mansion where the great man dwelt, 
 
 A widower and childless ; and he felt 
 
 1 Governor Benning Wentworth of New Hampshire. His 
 Great House at Little Harbor is still standing, about a mile and a 
 half below Portsmouth, and at this writing (1894) is owned and 
 occupied by a son-in-law of Parkman the historian. 
 
 2 These family mementos were long ago removed, but some 
 thing of the old-time dignity remains to the house. One may 
 still see in the passageway outside the old council-chamber, racka 
 for the twelve muskets of the governor s guard. 
 
82 LADY WENTWORTH. 
 
 The loneliness, the uncongenial gloom, 
 That like a presence haunted every room ; 
 For though not given to weakness, he could feel 
 The pain of wounds, that ache because they heal. 
 
 The years came and the years went, seven in all, 
 And passed in cloud and sunshine o er the Hall ; 
 The dawns their splendor through its chambers shed, 
 The sunsets flushed its western windows red ; 
 The snow was on its roofs, the wind, the rain ; 
 Its woodlands were in leaf and bare again ; 
 Moons waxed and waned, the lilacs bloomed and died, 
 In the broad river ebbed and flowed the tide, 
 Ships went to sea, and ships came home from sea, 
 And the slow years sailed by and ceased to be. 
 
 And all these years had Martha Hilton served 
 
 In the Great House, not wholly unobserved : 
 
 By day, by night, the silver crescent grew, 
 
 Though hidden by clouds, her light still shining 
 
 through ; 
 
 A maid of all work, whether coarse or fine, 
 A servant who made service seern divine ! 1 
 Through her each room was fair to look upon ; 
 The mirrors glistened, and the brasses shone, 
 The very knocker on the outer door, 
 If she but passed, was brighter than before. 
 
 And now the ceaseless turning of the mill 
 Of time, that never for an hour stands still, 
 
 1 George Herbert, the poet, has a verse in one of his poem* 
 reads 
 
 " A servant with this clause 
 Makes drudgery divine ; 
 Who sweeps a room as by Thy laws 
 Makes that and th action fine." 
 
LADY WENTWORTH. 38 
 
 Ground out the Governor s sixtieth birthday, 1 
 And powdered his brown hair with silver-gray* 
 The robin, the forerunner of the spring, 
 The bluebird with his jocund carolling, 
 The restless swallows building in the eaves, 
 The golden buttercups, the grass, the leaves, 
 The lilacs tossing in the winds of May, 
 All welcomed this majestic holiday 1 
 He gave a splendid banquet, served on plate, 
 Such as became the Governor of the State, 
 Who represented England and the King, 
 And was magnificent in everything. 
 He had invited all his friends and peers, 
 The Pepperels, the Langdons, and the Lears, 
 The Sparhawks, the Penhallows, 2 and the rest ; 
 For why repeat the name of every guest ? 
 But I must mention one in bands and gown, 
 The rector there, the Eeverend Arthur Brown 
 Of the Established Church , with smiling face 
 He sat beside the Governor and said grace ; 
 And then the feast went on, as others do, 
 But ended as none other I e er knew. 
 
 When they had drunk the King, with many a cheer, 
 The Governor whispered in a servant s ear, 
 Who disappeared, and presently there stood 
 Within the room, in perfect womanhood, 
 A maiden, modest and yet self-possessed, 
 Youthful and beautiful, and simply dressed. 
 Can this be Martha Hilton ? It must be 1 
 Yes, Martha Hilton, and no other she ! 
 
 1 In point of fact, Governor Wentworth was born July 24, 1696^ 
 and his marriage was on March 15, 1760. 
 * All Portsmouth names. 
 
34 LADY WENTWORTH. 
 
 Dowered with the beauty of her twenty years, 
 How ladylike, how queenlike she appears ; 
 The pale, thin crescent of the days gone by 
 Is Dian now in all her majesty ! 
 Yet scarce a guest perceived that she was there, 
 Until the Governor, rising from his chair, 
 Played slightly with his ruffles, then looked down, 
 And said unto the Reverend Arthur Brown : 
 " This is my birthday : it shall likewise be 
 My wedding-day; and you shall marry me ! " 
 
 The listening guests were greatly mystified, 
 
 None more so than the rector, who replied : 
 
 " Marry you? Yes, that were a pleasant task, 
 
 Your Excellency ; but to whom ? I ask." 
 
 The Governor answered : u To this lady here ; " 
 
 And beckoned Martha Hilton to draw near. 
 
 She came and stood, all blushes, at his side. 
 
 The rector paused. The impatient Governor cried 
 
 " This is the lady ; do you hesitate ? 
 
 Then I command you as Chief Magistrate." 
 
 The rector read the service loud and clear : 
 
 " Dearly beloved, we are gathered here," 
 
 And so on to the end. At his command 
 
 On the fourth finger of her fair left hand 
 
 The Governor placed the ring ; and that was all: 
 
 Martha was Lady Wentworth of the Hall! 
 
MAD RIVER. 35 
 
 MAD RIVER. 
 
 IN THE WHITE MOUNTAINS. 
 
 TRAVELLER. 
 
 dost thou wildly rush and roar, 
 
 Mad River, Mad River ? l 
 Wilt thou not pause and cease to pour 
 Thy hurrying, headlong waters o er 
 
 This rocky shelf forever ? 
 
 What secret trouble stirs thy breast? 
 
 Why all this fret and flurry? 
 Dost thou not know that what is best 
 In this too restless world is rest 
 
 From over- work and worry ? 
 
 THE RIVER. 
 
 What wouldst thou in these mountains seek^ 
 
 O stranger from the city? 
 Is it perhaps some foolish freak 
 Of thine, to put the words I speak 
 
 Into a plaintive ditty ? 
 
 TRAVELLER. 
 
 Yes ; I would learn of thee thy song, 
 With all its flowing numbers, 
 
 And in a voice as fresh and strong 
 
 As thine is, sing it all day long, 
 And hear it in my slumbers. 
 
 * There are doubtless more rivers than one of this name in the 
 White Mountains, but there is one, at least, about which the poem 
 might have been written, issuing from the woods behind Water* 
 Ville, and flowing into the Pemigewasset. 
 
36 MAD RIVER. 
 
 THE RIVER. 
 
 A brooklet nameless and unknown 
 Was I at first, resembling 
 
 A little child, that all alone 
 
 Comes venturing down the stairs of stone, 
 Irresolute and trembling. 
 
 Later, by wayward fancies led, 
 
 For the wide world I panted ; 
 
 Out of the forest, dark and dread, 
 
 Across the open fields I fled, 
 
 Like one pursued and haunted. 
 
 I tossed my arms, I sang aloud, 
 
 My voice exultant blending 
 
 With thunder from the passing cloud, 
 
 The wind, the forest bent and bowed, 
 
 The rush of rain descending. 
 
 I heard the distant ocean call, 
 
 Imploring and entreating ; 
 Drawn onward, o er this rocky wall 
 I plunged, and the loud waterfall 
 Made answer to the greeting. 
 
 And now, beset with many ills, 
 
 A toilsome life I follow ; 
 Compelled to carry from the hills 
 These logs to the impatient mills 
 Below there in the hollow. 
 
 Yet something ever cheers and ehartnS 
 
 The rudeness of my labors ; 
 Daily I water with these arms 
 
THE BUILDERS. 3T 
 
 The cattle of a hundred farms, 
 
 And have the birds for neighbors. 
 
 Men call me Mad, and well they may, 
 
 When, full of rage and trouble, 
 I burst my banks of sand and clay, 
 And ^weep their wooden bridge away, 
 Like withered reeds or stubble. 
 
 Now go and write thy little rhyme, 
 
 As of thine own creating. 
 Thou seest the day is past its prime ; 
 I can no longer waste my time ; 
 
 The mills are tired of waiting. 
 
 THE BUILDERS. 
 
 ALL are architects of Fate, 
 
 Working in these walls of Time ; 
 
 Some with massive deeds and great, 
 Some with ornaments of rhyme. 
 
 Nothing useless is, or low ; 
 
 Each thing in its place is best ; 
 And what seems but idle show 
 
 Strengthens and supports the rest. 
 
 For the structure that we raise, 
 Time is with materials filled ; 
 
 Our to-days and yesterdays 
 
 Are the blocks with which we build. 
 
 Truly shape and fashion these ; 
 Leave no yawning gaps between ; 
 
8 ANNIE OF THARAW. 
 
 Think not, because no man sees, 
 Such things will remain unseen. 
 
 In the elder days of Art, 
 
 Builders wrought with greatest care 
 Each minute and unseen part ; 
 
 For the Gods see everywhere. 
 
 Let us do our work as well, 
 Both the unseen and the seen ; 
 
 Make the house, where Gods may dwell, 
 Beautiful, entire, and clean. 
 
 Else our lives are incomplete, 
 Standing in these walls of Time, 
 
 Broken stairways, where the feet 
 Stumble as they seek to climb. 
 
 Build to-day, then, strong and sure, 
 With a firm and ample base ; 
 
 And ascending and secure 
 
 Shall to-morrow find its place. 
 
 Thus alone can we attain 
 
 To those turrets, where the eye 
 
 Sees the world as one vast plain, 
 And one boundless reach 01 sky. 
 
 ANNIE OF THARAW. 1 
 
 ANNIE of Tharaw, my true love of old, 
 She is my life, and my goods, and my gold. 
 
 1 Translated from the Gerinau of Siuaon Dach. 
 
ANNIE OF THARAW. 39 
 
 Annie of Tharaw her heart once again 
 To me has surrendered in joy and in pain. 
 
 Annie of Tharaw, my riches, my good, 
 Thou, O my soul, my flesh, and my blood ! 
 
 Then come the wild weather, come sleet or come snow 
 We will stand by each other 5 however it blow. 
 
 Oppression, and sickness, and sorrow, and pain 
 Shall be to our true love as links to the chain. 
 
 As the palm-tree stand eth so straight and so tall, 
 The more the hail beats, and the more the rains fall, 
 
 So love in our hearts shall grow mighty and strong, 
 Through crosses, through sorrows, through manifold 
 wrong. 
 
 Shonldst thou be torn from me to wander alone 
 
 In a desolate land where the sun is scarce known, 
 
 Through forests I 11 follow, and where the sea flows, 
 Through ice, and through iron, through armies of foes, 
 
 Annie of Tharaw, my light and my sun, 
 
 The threads of our two lives are woven in one. 
 
 Whate er I have bidden thee thou hast obeyed, 
 Whatever forbidden thou hast not gainsaid. 
 
 How in the turmoil of life can love staad, 
 Where there is not one heart, and one mouth, and one 
 hand ? 
 
40 THE BELL OF ATRI. 
 
 Some seek for dissension, and trouble, and strife ; 
 Like a dog and a cat live such man and wife. 
 
 Annie of Tharaw, such is not our love ; 
 
 Thou art iny lambkin, my chick, and my dove. 
 
 Whatever my desire is, in thine may be seen ; 
 
 j. am king of the household, and thou art its queen, 
 
 It is this, O my Annie, my heart s sweetest rest, 
 That makes of us twain but one soul in one breast. 
 
 This turns to a heaven the hut where we dwell ; 
 While wrangling soon changes a home to a hell. 
 
 THE BELL OF ATRI. 1 
 
 AT Atri in Abruzzo, 2 a small town 
 
 Of ancient Roman date, but scant renown., 
 
 One of those little places that have run 
 
 Half up the hill, beneath a blazing sun, 
 
 And then sat down to rest, as if to say, 
 
 " I climb no farther upward, come what may," 
 
 The Re Giovanni, 3 now unknown to fame, 
 
 So many monarchs since have borne the name, 
 
 Had a great bell hung in the market-place, 
 
 Beneath a roof, projecting some small space 
 
 By way of shelter from the sun and rain. 
 
 Then rode he through the streets with all his train, 
 
 1 One of the Tales of a Wayside Inn, supposed to be told by a 
 Sicilian in the party. 
 
 2 Pronounced A h brut so. 
 
 8 Pronounced Ra Geovan m; the translation will be found i 
 the 18th line of the poem. 
 
THE BELL OF ATRL 41 
 
 And, with the blast of trumpets loud and long, 
 Made proclamation, that whenever wrong 
 Was done to any man, he should but ring 
 The great bell in the square, and he, the King, 
 Would cause the Syndic to decide thereon. 
 Such was the proclamation of King John. 
 
 How swift the happy days in Atri sped, 
 What wrongs were righted, need not here be said, 
 Suffice it that, as all things must decay, 
 The hempen rope at length was worn away, 
 Unravelled at the end, and, strand by strand, 
 Loosened and wasted in the ringer s hand, 
 Till one, who noted this in passing by, 
 Mended the rope with braids of briony, 
 So that the leaves and tendrils of the vine 
 Hung like a votive garland at a shrine. 
 
 By chance it happened that in Atri dwelt 
 A knight, with spur on heel and sword in belt, 
 Who loved to hunt the wild-boar in the woods, 
 Who loved his falcons with their crimson hoods, 
 Who loved his hounds and horses, and all sports 
 And prodigalities of camps and courts ; 
 Loved, or had loved them ; for at last, grown old, 
 His only passion was the love of gold. 
 
 He sold his horses, sold his hawks and hounds, 
 Eented his vineyards and his garden-grounds, 
 Kept but one steed, his favorite steed of all, 
 To starve and shiver in a naked stall, 
 And day by day sat brooding in his chair, 
 Devising plans how best to hoard and spare. 
 
42 THE BELL OF ATRL 
 
 At length he said : " What is the use or need 
 To keep at my own cost this lazy steed, 
 Eating his head off in my stables here, 
 When rents are low and provender is dear? 
 Let hirn go feed upon the public ways ; 
 I want him only for the holidays." 
 So the old steed was turned into the heat 
 Of the long, lonely, silent, shadeless street ; 
 And wandered in suburban lanes forlorn, 
 Barked at by dogs, and torn by brier and thorn. 
 
 One afternoon, as in that sultry clime 
 
 It is the custom in the summer time, 
 
 With bolted doors and window-shutters closed, 
 
 The inhabitants of Atri slept or dozed ; 
 
 When suddenly upon their senses fell 
 
 The loud alarum of the accusing bell ! 
 
 The Syndic started from his deep repose, 
 
 Turned on his couch, and listened, and then rose 
 
 And donned his robes, and with reluctant pace 
 
 Went panting forth into the market-place, 
 
 Where the great bell upon its cross-beams swung, 
 
 Reiterating with persistent tongue, 
 
 In half-articulate jargon, the old song : 
 
 " Some one hath done a wrong, hath done a wrong ! * 
 
 But ere he reached the belfry s light arcade 
 He saw or thought he saw, beneath its shade, 
 No shape of human form of woman born, 
 But a poor steed dejected and forlorn, 
 Who with uplifted head and eager eye 
 Was tugging at the vines of briony. 
 " Domeneddio ! " l cried the Syndic straight, 
 . * An Italian exclamation which may be translated, Good Lord ! 
 
THE BELL OF ATRL 43 
 
 " This is the Knight of Atri s steed of state I 
 He calls for justice, being sore distressed, 
 And pleads his cause as loudly as the best." 
 
 Meanwhile from street and lane a noisy crowd 
 
 Had rolled together like a summer cloud, 
 
 And told the story of the wretched beast 
 
 In five-and-twenty different ways at least, 
 
 With much gesticulation and appeal 
 
 To heathen gods, in their excessive zeal. 
 
 The Knight was called and questioned ; in reply 
 
 Did not confess the fact, did not deny ; 
 
 Treated the matter as a pleasant jest, 
 
 And set at naught the Syndic and the rest, 
 
 Maintaining, in an angry undertone, 
 
 That he should do what pleased him with his own. 
 
 And thereupon the Syndic gravely read 
 
 The proclamation of the King ; then said : 
 
 " Pride goeth forth on horseback grand and gay, 
 
 But cometh back on foot, and begs its way ; 
 
 Fame is the fragrance of heroic deeds, 
 
 Of flowers of chivalry and not of weeds ! 
 
 These are familiar proverbs ; but I fear 
 
 They never yet have reached your knightly ear. 
 
 What fair renown, what honor, what repute 
 
 Can come to you from starving this poor brute ? 
 
 He who serves well and speaks not, merits more 
 
 Than they who clamor loudest at the door. 
 
 Therefore the law decrees that as this steed 
 
 Served you in youth, henceforth you shall take hee<J 
 
 To comfort his old age, and to provide 
 
 Shelter in stall, and food and field beside." 
 
44 THE RETURN OF SPRING. 
 
 The Knight withdrew abashed ; the people all 
 Led home the steed in triumph to his stall. 
 The King heard and approved, and laughed in glee, 
 And cried aloud : " Right well it pleaseth me 1 
 Church-bells at best but ring us to the door ; 
 But go not in to mass ; my bell doth more : 
 It cometh into court and pleads the cause 
 Of creatures dumb and unknown to the laws ; 
 And this shall make, in every Christian clime, 
 The Bell of Atri famous for all time." 
 
 THE BROOK AND THE WAVE, 
 
 THE brooklet came from the mountain, 
 
 As sang the bard of old, 
 Running with feet of silver 
 
 Over the sands of gold I 
 
 Far away in the briny ocean 
 
 There rolled a turbulent wave, 
 Now singing along the sea-beach, 
 
 Now howling along the cave. 
 
 And the brooklet has found the billow, 
 Though they flowed so far apart, 
 
 And has filled with its freshness and sweetness 
 That turbulent, bitter heart I 
 
 THE RETURN OF SPRING. 1 
 
 Now Time throws off his cloak again 
 Of ermined frost, and wind, and rain, 
 1 Translated from the French of Charles d Orle aus. 
 
THE BELEAGUERED CITY. 45 
 
 And clothes him in the embroidery 
 Of glittering sun and clear blue sky. 
 With beast and bird the forest rings, 
 Each in his jargon cries or sings ; 
 And Time throws off his cloak again 
 Of ermined frost, and wind, and rain. 
 
 River, and fount, and tinkling brook 
 
 Wear in their dainty livery 
 
 Drops of silver jewelry ; 
 
 In new-made suit they merry look ; 
 
 And Time throws off his cloak again 
 
 Of ermined frost, and wind, and rain. 
 
 THE BELEAGUERED CITY. 
 
 I HAVE read, in some old, marvellous 
 Some legend strange and vague, 
 
 That a midnight host of spectres pale 
 Beleaguered the walls of Prague. 
 
 Beside the Moldau s rushing stream, 
 With the wan moon overhead, 
 
 There stood, as in an awful dream, 
 The army of the dead. 
 
 White as a sea-fog, landward bound, 
 The spectral camp was seen, 
 
 And, with a sorrowful, deep sound, 
 The river flowed between. 
 
 No other voice nor sound was there, 
 No drum, nor sentry s pace ; 
 
46 THE BELEAGUERED CITY. 
 
 The mist-like banners clasped the air 
 As clouds with clouds embrace. 
 
 But when the old cathedral bell 
 Proclaimed the morning prayer, 
 
 The white pavilions rose and fell 
 On the alarmed air. 
 
 Down the broad valley fast and far 
 
 The troubled army fled ; 
 Up rose the glorious morning star, 
 
 The ghastly host was dead. 
 
 I have read, in the marvellous heart of man, 
 That strange and mystic scroll, 
 
 That an army of phantoms vast and wan 
 Beleaguer the human soul. 
 
 Encamped beside Life s rushing stream, 
 
 In Fancy s misty light, 
 Gigantic shapes and shadows gleam 
 
 Portentous through the night. 
 
 Upon its midnight battle-ground 
 
 The spectral camp is seen, 
 And, with a sorrowful, deep sound, 
 
 Flows the River of Life between. 
 
 No other voice nor sound is there, 
 
 In the army of the grave ; 
 No other challenge breaks the air, 
 
 But the rushing of Life s wave. 
 
 And when the solemn and deep church-bell 
 Entreats the soul to pray. 
 
CASPAR BECERRA. 47 
 
 fhe midnight phantoms feel the spell, 
 The shadows sweep away. 
 
 Down the broad Vale of Tears afar 
 
 The spectral camp is fled ; 
 Faith shineth as a morning 
 
 Our ghastly fears are dead. 
 
 GASPAR BECERRA. 1 
 
 BY his evening fire the artist 
 Pondered o er his secret shame ; 
 
 Baffled, weary, and disheartened, 
 
 Still he mused, and dreamed of fame. 
 
 T was an image of the Virgin 
 
 That had tasked his utmost skill ; 
 
 But, alas ! his fair ideal 
 
 Vanished and escaped him still. 
 
 From a distant Eastern island 
 
 Had the precious wood been brought; 
 Day and night the anxious master 
 
 At his toil untiring wrought ; 
 
 Till, discouraged and desponding, 
 Sat he now in shadows deep, 
 
 And the day s humiliation 
 Found oblivion in sleep. 
 
 Then a voice cried, " Rise, O master ? 
 From the burning brand of oak 
 1 Pronounced Becherra. 
 
48 TO THE RIVER CHARLES. 
 
 Shape the thought that stirs within thee ! " 
 And the startled artist woke, 
 
 Woke, and from the smoking embers 
 Seized and quenched the glowing wood 5 
 
 \nd therefrom he carved an image, 
 And he saw that it was good. 
 
 O thou sculptor, painter, poet ! 
 
 Take this lesson to thy heart : 
 That is best which lieth nearest ; 
 
 Shape from that thy work of art. 
 
 TO THE RIVER CHARLES. 
 
 RIVER! that in silence wmclest 
 
 Through the meadows, bright and free. 
 
 Till fH length thy rest thou iindest 
 In the bosom of the sea ! 
 
 Four long years of mingled feeling, 
 
 Half in rest, and half in strife, 
 1 have seen thy waters stealing 
 
 Onward, like the stream of life. 1 
 
 Thou hast taught me, Silent River ! 
 
 Many a lesson, deep and long ; 
 Thou hast been a generous giver ; 
 
 1 can give thee but a song. 
 
 Oft in sadness and in illness, 
 
 I have watched thy current glide, 
 
 * r Fhe river Charles flows in view of the mansion in Cambridge 
 Which Mr. Longfellow began to occupy in the summer of 1837. 
 
TO THE RIVER CHARLES. 49 
 
 Till the beauty of its stillness 
 Overflowed me, like a tide. 
 
 And in better hours and brighter, 
 
 When I saw thy waters gleam, 
 I have felt my heart beat lighter, 
 
 And leap onward with thy stream. 
 
 Not for this alone I love thee, 
 
 Nor because thy waves of blue 
 From celestial seas above thee 
 
 Take their own celestial hue. 
 
 Where yon shadowy woodlands hide thee, 
 
 And thy waters disappear, 
 Friends I love have dwelt beside thee, 
 
 And have made thy margin dear. 
 
 More than this ; thy name reminds me 
 Of three friends, 1 all true and tried ; 
 
 And that name, like magic, binds me 
 Closer, closer to thy side. 
 
 Friends my soul with joy remembers ! 
 
 How like quivering flames they start, 
 When I fan the living embers 
 
 On the hearthstone of my heart 
 
 T is for this, thou Silent River ! 
 
 That my spirit leans to thee ; 
 Thou hast been a generous giver, 
 
 Take this idle sonjr from me. 
 
 1 The three friends hinted at were Charles Sumner, Charles 
 Folsom, and Charles Amory. 
 
50 THREE FRIENDS OF MINE. 
 
 THREE FRIENDS OF MINE. 1 
 
 I remember them, those friends of mine 
 Who are no longer here, the noble three, 
 Who half my life were more than friends to me, 
 And whose discourse was like a generous wine, 
 
 I most of all remember the divine 
 
 Something, that shone in them, and made us see 
 The archetypal man, and what might be 
 The amplitude of Nature s first design. 
 
 In vain I stretch my hands to clasp their hands ; 
 I cannot find them. Nothing now is left 
 But a majestic memory. They meanwhile 
 
 W ander together in Elysian lands, 
 
 Perchance remembering me, who am bereft 
 
 Of their dear presence, and, remembering, smile. 
 
 II 
 
 In Attica thy birthplace should have been, 
 Or the Ionian Isles, or where the seas 
 Encircle in their arms the Cyclades, 2 
 So wholly Greek wast thou in thy serene 
 
 And childlike joy of life, O Philhellene ! 3 
 
 Around thee would have swarmed the Attic bees ; 
 Homer had been thy friend, or Socrates, 
 And Plato welcomed thee to his demesne. 
 
 1 These sonnets have to do with Cornelius Conway Feltou, 
 once Professor of Greek, afterward President of Harvard Col 
 lege, Louis Aga-ssiz and Charles Sumner. The second and third 
 sonnets were written at Nahant, where both Longfellow and 
 Agassiz had cottages. 
 
 2 Pronounced Sik la-des. 
 
 8 That is, a lover of Hellas, or Greece. 
 
THREE FRIENDS OF MINE. 5l 
 
 For thee old legends breathed historic breath ; 
 Thou sawest Poseidon in the purple sea, 
 And in the sunset Jason s fleece of gold ! 
 
 Oh, what hadst thou to do with cruel Death, 
 Who wast so full of life, or Death with thee, 
 That thou shouldst die before thou hadst grown old! 
 
 ill 
 
 I stand again on the familiar shore, 
 
 And hear the waves of the distracted sea 
 Piteously calling and lamenting thee, 
 And waiting restless at thy cottage door. 
 
 The rocks, the seaweed on the ocean floor, 
 The willows in the meadow, and the free 
 Wild winds of the Atlantic welcome me ; 
 Then why shouldst thou be dead, and come no more? 
 
 Ah, why shouldst thou be dead, when common men 
 Are busy with their trivial affairs, 
 Having and holding ? Why, when thou hadst read 
 
 Nature s mysterious manuscript, and then 
 Wast ready to reveal the truth it bears, 
 Why art thou silent ? Why shouldst thou be dead f 
 
 IV 
 
 Kiver, that stealest with such silent pace 
 Around the City of the Dead, 1 where lies 
 A friend who bore thy name, and whom these eyes 
 Shall see no more in his accustomed place, 
 
 Linger and fold him in thy soft embrace, 
 
 And say good night, for now the western skies 
 Are red with sunset, and gray mists arise 
 Like damps that gather on a dead man s face. 
 
 Good night ! good night ! as we so oft have said 
 Beneath this roof at midnight, in the days 
 1 Mount Auburn Cemetery liec near the river bank. 
 
52 CHARLES SUMNER. 
 
 That are no more, and shall no more return. 
 Thou hast but taken thy lamp and gone to bed ; 
 I stay a little longer, as one stays 
 To cover up the embers that still burn. 
 
 The doors are all wide open ; at the gate 
 The blossomed lilacs counterfeit a blaze, 
 And seem to warm the air ; a dreamy haze 
 Hangs o er the Brighton meadows like a fate, 
 
 And on their margin, with sea-tides elate, 
 The flooded Charles, as in the happier days, 
 Writes the last letter of his name, and stays 
 His restless steps, as if compelled to wait. 
 
 I also wait ; but they will come no more, 
 
 Those friends of mine, whose presence satisfied 
 The thirst and hunger of my heart. Ah me ! 
 
 They have forgotten the pathway to my door ! 
 Something is gone from nature since they died, 
 And summer is not summer, nor can be. 
 
 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. 
 
CHARLES SUMNER. 68 
 
 Like Winkelried, 1 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 s arch of stone 
 Is rounded in the stream. 
 
 Alike are life and death, 
 When life in death survives, 
 And the uninterrupted breath 
 Inspires a thousand lives. 
 
 Were a star quenched on high, 
 For ages would its light, 
 
 1 Arnold of Winkelried, a Swiss hero, who, as the story runs, 
 when the Austrians four thousand strong met the Swiss, fifteen 
 hundred in number, rushed forward, grasped with outstretched 
 arms a? many Austrian pikes as he could reach, buried them in 
 his own body and so fell forward to the earth. His companions 
 threw themselves into the breach thus made and so won the day. 
 The battle took place at Sempach in Switzerland, July 9, 
 anr 1 it anniversary is still kept. 
 
54: OLIVER BASSE LIN. 
 
 Still travelling downward from the sky, 
 Shine on our mortal sight. 
 
 So when a great man dies, 1 
 For years beyond our ken, 
 The light he leaves behind him lies 
 Upon the paths of men. 
 
 OLIVER BASSELIN. 
 
 IN the Valley of the Vire 2 
 
 Still is seen an ancient mill, 
 With its gables quaint and queer, 
 And beneath the window-sill, 
 On the stone, 
 These words alone : 
 <* Oliver Basselin lived here." 
 
 Far above it, on the steep, 
 
 Ruined stands the old Chateau; 
 Nothing but the donjon-keep 
 Left for shelter or for show. 
 Its vacant eyes 
 Stare at the skies, 
 Stare at the valley green and deep. 
 
 Once a convent, old and brown, 
 Looked, but an ! it looks no more, 
 
 From the neighboring hillside down 
 On the rushing and the roar 
 Of the stream 
 
 1 Simmer died March 11, 1874. 
 
 * The pronunciation will be seen by the rhyme. 
 
OLIVER BASSELIN. 
 
 Whose sunny gleam 
 Cheers the little Norman town. 
 
 In that darksome mill of stone, 
 To the water s dash and din, 
 Careless, humble, and unknown, 
 Sang the poet Basselin 
 Songs that fill 
 That ancient mill 
 With a splendor of its own. 
 
 Never feeling of unrest 
 
 Broke the pleasant dream he dreamed ; 
 Only made to be his nest, 
 All the lovely valley seemed; 
 No desire 
 Of soaring higher 
 Stirred or fluttered in his breast. 
 
 True, his songs were not divine ; 
 
 Were not songs of that high art, 
 Which, as winds do in the pine, 
 Find an answer in each heart ; 
 But the mirth 
 Of this green earth 
 Laughed and revelled in his line. 
 
 From the alehouse and the inn, 
 Opening on the narrow street, 
 
 Came the loud, convivial din, 
 Singing and applause of feet, 
 The laughing lays 
 
66 NUREMBERG. 
 
 That in those days 
 Sang the poet Basselin. 1 
 
 In the castle, cased in steel, 
 
 Knights, who fought at Agincourt, 
 Watched and waited, spur on heel ; 
 But the poet sang for sport 
 Songs that rang 
 Another clang, 
 Songs that lowlier hearts could feel. 
 
 NUREMBERG. 
 
 IN the valley of the Pegnitz, where across broad 
 
 meadow-lands 
 Rise the blue Franconiaii mountains, Nuremberg, the 
 
 ancient, stands. 
 
 Quaint old town of toil and traffic, quaint old town of 
 
 art and song, 
 Memories haunt thy pointed gables, like the rooks 
 
 that round them throng : 
 
 Memories of the Middle Ages, when the emperors, 
 rough and bold, 
 
 Had their dwelling in thy castle, time-defying, centu 
 ries old; 
 
 And thy brave and thrifty burghers boasted, in their 
 uncouth rhyme, 
 
 1 Basselin called liis light, gay songs, Songs of Vaux de Vire 
 that is, songs of the valleys of Vire, and the phrase became cor 
 rupted into the modern Vaudeville. 
 
NUREMBERG. 57 
 
 That their great imperial city stretched its hand 
 through every clime. 1 
 
 In the court-yard of the castle, bound with many an 
 
 iron band, 
 Stands the mighty linden planted by Queen Cuni- 
 
 gunde s hand ; 
 
 On the square the oriel window, where in old heroic 
 
 days 
 Sat the poet Melchior singing Kaiser Maximilian s 
 
 praise. 2 
 
 Everywhere I see around me rise the wondrous world 
 
 of Art : 
 Fountains wrought with richest sculpture standing in 
 
 the common mart ; 
 
 And above cathedral doorways saints and bishops 
 
 carved in stone, 
 By a former age commissioned as apostles to our own. 
 
 In the church of sainted Sebald 3 sleeps enshrined his 
 holy dust, 
 
 1 An old popular proverb of the town may be translated 
 
 Nuremberg s Hand 
 Goes through every land. 
 
 2 Melchior Pfinzing was a German poet of the sixteenth cen 
 tury, and the Emperor (Kaiser in German) Maximilian was the 
 hero of one of his best known poems. 
 
 8 " The tomb of St. Sebald, in the church which bears his 
 name, is one of the richest works of art in Nuremberg. It is of 
 bronze, and was cast by Peter Vischer and his sons, who labored 
 upon it thirteen years. It is adorned with nearly one hundred 
 figures, among which, those of the Twelve Apostles are conspicu 
 ous for size and beauty." H. W. Longfellow. 
 
58 NUREMBERG. 
 
 And in bronze the Twelve Apostles guard from age to 
 age their trust ; 
 
 In the church of sainted Lawrence stands a pix of 
 
 sculpture rare, 
 ( Like the foamy sheaf of fountains, rising through the 
 
 painted air. 
 
 Here, when Art was still religion, with a simple, rev 
 erent heart, 
 
 Lived and labored Albrecht Diirer, the Evangelist of 
 Art; 1 
 
 Hence in silence and in sorrow, toiling still with busy 
 
 hand, 
 Like an emigrant he wandered, seeking for the Better 
 
 Land. 
 
 Emigravit 2 is the inscription on the tomb-stone where 
 
 he lies ; 
 Dead he is not, but departed, for the artist never 
 
 dies. 
 
 Fairer seems the ancient city, and the sunshine seems 
 
 more fair, 
 That he once has trod its pavement, that he once has 
 
 breathed its air ! 
 
 1 The father of wood-engraving. 
 
 9 That ils, he went away from iiis country. 
 
THE BELLS OF SAN BLAS. 59 
 
 THE BELLS OF SAN BLAS. 1 
 
 WHAT say the Belis of San Bias 
 To the ships that southward pass 
 
 From the harbor of Mazatlan ? 
 To them it is nothing more 
 Than the sound of surf on the shore, 
 
 Nothing more to master or man. 
 
 But to me, a dreamer of dreams, 
 To whom what is and what seems 
 
 Are often one and the same, 
 The Bells of San Bias to me 
 Have a strange, wild melody, 
 
 And are something more than a name* 
 
 For bells are the voice of the church ; 
 They have tones that touch and search 
 
 The hearts of young and old ; 
 One sound to all, yet each 
 Lends a meaning to their speech, 
 
 And the meaning is manifold. 
 
 They are a voice of the Past, 
 Of an age that is fading fast, 
 
 Of a power austere and grand ; 
 When the flag of Spain unfurled 
 Its folds o er this western world, 
 
 And the Priest was lord of the land, 
 i The last poem written by Mr. Longfellow. The last verse 
 but one is dated March 12, 1882. The final verse was added 
 March 15. Mr. Longfellow died March 24. The poem was 
 suggested by an article, Typical Journeys and Country Life in 
 Mexico, by W. H. Bishop, in Harper s Magazine, March, 1882, 
 which the poet had just read. 
 
60 THE BELLS OF SAJ\ BLAS. 
 
 The chapel that once looked down 
 On the little seaport town 
 
 Has crumbled into the dust ; 
 And on oaken beams below 
 The bells swing to and fro, 
 
 And are green with mould and rust 
 
 * Is, then, the old faith dead," 
 They say, " and in its stead 
 
 Is some new faith proclaimed, 
 That we are forced to remain 
 Naked to sun and rain, 
 
 Unsheltered and ashamed? 
 
 a Once in our tower aloof 
 We rang over wall and roof 
 
 Our warnings and our complaints 5 
 And round about us there 
 The white doves filled the air, 
 
 Like the white souls of the saints. 
 
 **The saints ! Ah, have they grown 
 Forgetful of their own ? 
 
 Are they asleep, or dead, 
 That open to the sky 
 Their ruined Missions lie, 
 
 No longer tenanted ? 
 
 * Oh, bring us back once more 
 The vanished days of yore, 
 
 When the world with faith was fillecl ? 
 Bring back the fervid zeal. 
 The hearts of fire and steel, 
 
 The hands that believe and build. 
 
THE GOLDEN MILE-STONE. 5) 
 
 "Then from our tower again 
 
 We will send over land and main 
 
 Our voices of command, 
 Like exiled kings who return 
 To their thrones, and the people learn 
 
 That the Priest is lord of the land \ " 
 
 O Bells of San Bias, in vain 
 Ye call back the Past again I 
 
 The Past is deaf to your prayer ; 
 Out of the shadows of niffht 
 
 O 
 
 The world rolls into light ; 
 
 It is daybreak everywhere. 
 
 THE GOLDEN MILE-STONE. 1 
 
 LEAFLESS are the trees ; their purple branches 
 Spread themselves abroad, like reefs of coral, 
 
 Rising silent 
 In the Red Sea of the winter sunset. 
 
 From the hundred chimneys of the village, 
 Like the Afreet in the Arabian story, 
 
 Smoky coj umns 
 Tower aloft into the air of amber. 
 
 At the window winks the flickering firelight ; 
 Here and there the lamps of evening glimmer, 
 
 Social watch-fires 
 Answering one another through the darkness. 
 
 1 Mr. Longfellow wrote in his diary, under date of December 
 20, 1854 : 
 
 " The weather is ever so cold. The landscape looks dreary ; but 
 the sunset and twilight are resplendent. Sketch out a poem, 
 The Golden Mile-Stone." 
 
62 THE GOLDEN MILE-STONE. 
 
 On the hearth the lighted logs are glowing, 
 And like Ariel l in the cloven pine-tree 
 
 For its freedom 
 Groans and sighs the air imprisoned in them* 
 
 By the fireside there are old men seated, 
 Seeing ruined cities in the ashes, 
 
 Asking sadly 
 Of the Past what it can ne er restore them. 
 
 By the fireside there are youthful dreamers, 
 Building castles fair, with stately stairways, 
 
 Asking blindly 
 Of the Future what it cannot give them. 
 
 By the fireside tragedies are acted 
 
 In whose scenes appear two actors only, 
 
 Wife and husband, 
 And above them God the sole spectator. 
 
 By the fireside there are peace and comfort, 
 Wives, and children, with fair, thoughtful faces, 
 
 Waiting, watching 
 For a well-known footstep in the passage. 
 
 Each man s chimney is his Golden Mile-Stone ; * 
 Is the central point, from which he measures 
 
 Every distance 
 Through the gateways of the world around him. 
 
 1 See Shakespeare s The Tempest. 
 
 * A stone column was set up by the Romans to mark each mile 
 on their great military roads, and in the Forum in Rome, as at. the 
 centre of the Empire, the Emperor Augustus erected a gilt bronza 
 olumn. The base of the column is preserved. 
 
THE BIRDS OF KILLINGWORTH. 63 
 
 In his farthest wanderings still he sees it ; 
 
 Hears the talking flame, the answering night-wind, 
 
 As he heard them 
 When he sat with those who were, but are not, 
 
 Happy he whom neither wealth nor fashion, 
 Nor the march of the encroaching city, 
 
 Drives an exile 
 From the hearth of his ancestral homestead, 
 
 We may build more splendid habitations, 
 
 Fill our rooms with paintings and with sculptures, 
 
 But we cannot 
 Buy with gold the old associations ! 
 
 THE BIRDS OF KILLINGWORTfl. 1 
 
 IT was the season, when through all the land 
 The merle and mavis build, and building sing 
 
 Those lovely lyrics, written by His hand, 
 
 Whom Saxon Caedmon 2 calls the Blithe-heart King ; 
 
 When on the boughs the purple buds expand, 
 The banners of the vanguard of the Spring, 
 
 Arid rivulets, rejoicing, rush and leap, 
 
 And wave their fl uttering signals from the steep. 
 
 The robin and the bluebird, piping loud, 
 
 Filled all the blossoming orchards with their glee ; 
 1 One of the Tales of a Wayside Inn, supposed to be told by 
 the Poet of the company. Killingworth in Connecticut was 
 named from the English town Kenilworth, but both in England 
 and in Connecticut the name became changed into Killingworth 
 in popular usage, and here that name has become the regulal 
 Rame of the town. 
 
 a 1* renounced Kedmon. 
 
64 THE BIRDS OF KILLINGWORTH. 
 
 The sparrows chirped as if they still were proud 
 Their race in Holy Writ should mentioned be ; * 
 
 And hungry crows, assembled in a crowd, 
 Clamored their piteous prayer incessantly, 
 
 Knowing who hears the ravens cry, and said : 
 
 w Give us, O Lord, this day, our daily bread ! 
 
 Across the Sound the birds of passage sailed, 
 
 Speaking some unknown language strange and sweet 
 
 Of tropic isle remote, and passing hailed 
 
 The village with the cheers of all their fleet ; 
 
 Or quarrelling together, laughed and railed 
 Like foreign sailors, landed in the street 
 
 Of seaport town, and with outlandish noise 
 
 Of oaths and gibberish frightening girls and boys. 
 
 Thus came the jocund Spring in Killingworth, 
 In fabulous days, some hundred years ago ; 
 
 And thrifty farmers, as they tilled the earth, 
 Pleard with alarm the cawing of the crow, 
 
 That mingled with the universal mirth, 
 Cassandra-like, prognosticating woe ; 
 
 They shook their heads, and doomed with dreadful 
 words 
 
 To swift destruction the whole race of birds. 
 
 And a town-meeting was convened straightway 
 
 To set a price upon the guilty heads 
 Of these marauders, who, in lieu of pay, 
 
 Levied black-mail upon the garden beds 
 And cornfields, and beheld without dismay 
 
 The awful scarecrow, with his fluttering shreds; 
 
 i See the Gospel of Matthew, x. 29-31. 
 
THE BIRDS OF KILLINGWORTH. 65 
 
 The skeleton that waited at their feast, 1 
 Whereby their sinful pleasure was increased. 
 
 Then from his house, a temple painted white, 
 With fluted columns, and a roof of red, 
 
 The Squire came forth, august and splendid sight! 
 Slowly descending, with majestic tread, 
 
 Three flights of steps, nor looking left nor right, 
 Down the long street he walked, as one who said> 
 
 " A town that boasts inhabitants like me 
 
 Can have no lack of good society ! " 
 
 The Parson, too, appeared, a man austere, 
 The instinct of whose nature was to kill ; 
 
 The wrath of God he preached from year to year, 
 And read, with fervor, Edwards on the Will ; 2 
 
 His favorite pastime was to slay the deer 
 In Summer on some Adirondac hill ; 
 
 E en now, while walking down the rural lane, 
 
 He lopped the wayside lilies with his cane. 
 
 From the Academy, whose belfry crowned 
 The hill of Science with its vane of brass, 
 
 Came the Preceptor, gazing idly round, 
 
 Now at the clouds, and now at the green grass, 
 
 And all absorbed in reveries profound 
 Of fair Almira in the upper class, 
 
 Who was, as in a sonnet he had said, 
 
 As pure as water, and as good as bread. 
 
 1 There is an old story that the Egyptians used to set up an 
 image of a dead man at their feasts, to remind the guests of the 
 saying, " Let us eat and drink, for to-morrow we die." 
 
 2 Jonathan Edwards was a famous New England divine who 
 lived in the former half of the eighteenth century, and wrote a 
 great book on The Freedom of the Will. 
 
66 THE BIRDS OF KILLING WORTH. 
 
 And next the Deacon issued from his door, 
 In his voluminous neck-cloth, white as snow ; 
 
 A suit of sable bombazine he wore ; 
 
 His form was ponderous, and his step was slow ; 
 
 There never was so wise a man before ; 
 
 He seemed the incarnate " Well, I told you so ! " 
 
 And to perpetuate his great renown 
 
 There was a street named after him in town. 
 
 These came together in the new town-hall, 
 With sundry farmers from the region round. 
 
 The Squire presided, dignified and tall, 
 
 His air impressive and his reasoning sound ; 
 
 111 fared it with the birds, both great and small ; 
 Hardly a friend in all that crowd they found, 
 
 But enemies enough, who every one 
 
 Charged them with all the crimes beneath the sun. 
 
 When they had ended, from his place apart 
 .Rose the Preceptor, to redress the wrong, 
 
 And, trembling like a steed before the start, 
 
 Looked round bewildered on the expectant throng, 
 
 Then thought of fair Almira, and took heart 
 
 To speak out what was in him, clear and strong, 
 
 Alike regardless of their smile or frown, 
 
 And quite determined not to be laughed down. 
 
 46 Plato, anticipating the Reviewers, 
 
 From his Republic banished without pity 
 
 The Poets ; in this little town of yours, 
 
 You put to death, by means of a Committee, 
 
 The ballad-singers and the Troubadours, 
 The street-musicians of the heavenly city, 
 
 The birds, who make sweet music for us all 
 
 In OPT dark hours, as David did for Saul. 
 
THE BIRDS OF KILLINGWORTH. 67 
 
 ** Tlie thrush that carols at the dawn of day 
 From the green steeples of the piny wood ; 
 
 The oriole in the elm ; the noisy jay, 
 Jargoning like a foreigner at his food ; 
 
 The bluebird balanced on some topmost spray, 
 Flooding with melody the neighborhood ; 
 
 Linnet and meadow-lark, and all the throng 
 
 That dwell in nests, and have the gift of song. 
 
 64 You slay them all ! and wherefore ? for the gain 
 Of a $cant handful more or less of wheat, 
 
 Or rye, or barley, or some other grain, 
 
 Scratched up at random by industrious feet, 
 
 Searching for worm or weevil after rain ! 
 Or a few cherries, that are not so sweet 
 
 As are the songs these uninvited guests 
 
 Sing at their feast with comfortable breasts. 
 
 44 Do you ne er think what wondrous beings these ? 
 
 Do you ne er think who made them, and who taught 
 The dialect they speak, where melodies 
 
 Atane are the interpreters of thought ? 
 Whose household words are songs in many keys, 
 
 Sweeter than instrument of man e er caught 1 
 Whose habitations in the tree-tops even 
 Are half-way houses on the road to heaven ! 
 
 " Think, every morning when the sun peeps through 
 The dim, leaf-latticed windows of the grove, 
 
 How jubilant the happy birds renew 
 
 Their old, melodious madrigals of love ! l 
 
 And when you think of this, remember too 
 
 l Marlowe, an English poet of Shakespeare s time, has aline 
 " Melodious birds sing madrigals." 
 
68 THE BIRDS OF KILLINGWORTH. 
 
 T is always morning somewhere, and above 
 The awakening continents, from shore to shore, 
 Somewhere the birds are singing evermore. 
 
 44 Think of your woods and orchards without birds! 
 
 Of empty nests that cling to boughs and beams 
 As in an idiot s brain remembered words 
 
 Hang empty mid the cobwebs of his dreams ! 
 Will bleat of flocks or bellowing of herds 
 
 Make up for the lost music, when your teams 
 Drag home the stingy harvest, and no more 
 The feathered gleaners follow to your door ? 
 
 " What ! would you rather see the incessant stir 
 Of insects in the windrows of the hay, 
 
 And hear the locust and the grasshopper 
 Their melancholy hurdy-gurdies play ? 
 
 Is this more pleasant to you than the whir 
 Of meadow-lark, and her sweet roundelay, 
 
 Or twitter of little field-fares, as you take 
 
 Your nooning in the shade of bush and brake? 
 
 ** You call them thieves and pillagers ; but know, 
 They are the winged wardens of your farms, 
 
 Who from the cornfields drive the insidious foe, 
 And from your harvests keep a hundred harms ; 
 
 Even the blackest of them all, the crow, 
 Benders good service as your man-at-arms, 
 
 Crushing the beetle in his coat of mail, 
 
 And crying havoc on the slug and snail. 
 
 tt How can I teach your children gentleness, 
 
 And mercy to the weak, and reverence 
 For Life, which, in its weakness or excess, 
 
THE BIRDS OF KILLINGWORTH. 69 
 
 Is still a gleam of God s omnipotence, 
 Or Death, which, seeming darkness, is no less 
 
 The selfsame light, although averted hence, 
 When by your laws, your actions, and your speech^ 
 You contradict the very things I teach ? " 
 
 With this he closed ; and through the audience went 
 A murmur, like the rustle of dead leaves ; 
 
 The farmers laughed and nodded, and some bent 
 Their yellow heads together like their sheaves ; 
 
 Men have no faith in fine-spun sentiment 
 
 Who put their trust in bullocks arid in beeves. 
 
 The birds were doomed ; and, as the record shows, 
 
 A bounty offered for the heads of crows. 
 
 There was another audience out of reach, 
 Who had no voice nor vote in making laws, 
 
 But in the papers read his little speech, 
 
 And crowned his modest temples with applause; 
 
 They made him conscious, each one more than each, 
 He still was victor, vanquished in their cause. 
 
 Sweetest of all the applause he won from thee, 
 
 O fair Almira at the Academy ! 
 
 And so the dreadful massacre began ; 
 
 O er fields and orchards, and o er woodland crests, 
 The ceaseless fusillade of terror ran. 
 
 Dead fell the birds, with blood-stains on their breasts 
 Or wounded crept away from sight of man, 
 
 While the young died of famine in their nests ; 
 A slaughter to be told in groans, not words. 
 The very St. Bartholomew of Birds ! 1 
 
 i The Massacre of St. Bartholomew was the name given to 
 the sudden destruction of Huguenots in France, by order of the 
 
70 THE BIRDS OF KILLINGWORTH. 
 
 The Summer came, and all the birds were dead ; 
 
 The days were like hot coals ; the very ground 
 Was burned to ashes ; in the orchards fed 
 
 Myriads of caterpillars, and around 
 The cultivated fields arid garden beds 
 
 Hosts of devouring insects crawled, and found 
 No foe to check their march, till they had made 
 The land a desert without leaf or shade. 
 
 Devoured by worms, like Herod, 1 was the town, 
 
 Because, like Herod, it had ruthlessly 
 Slaughtered the Innocents. From the trees spun 
 down 
 
 The canker-worms upon the passers-by, 
 Upon each woman s bonnet, shawl, and gown, 
 
 Who shook them off with just a little cry ; 
 They were the terror of each favorite walk, 
 The endless theme of all the village talk. 
 
 The farmers grew impatient, but a few 
 
 Confessed their error, and would not complain, 
 
 For after all, the best thing one can do 
 When it is raining, is to let it rain. 
 
 Then they repealed the law, although they knew 
 It would not call the dead to life again ; 
 
 As school-boys, finding their mistake too late, 
 
 Draw a wet sponge across the accusing slate. 
 
 That year in Killingworth the Autumn came 
 Without the light of his majestic look, 
 
 ruling- sovereign, Charles IX., at the instance of his mother Cathe 
 
 rine, begun on St. Bartholomew s Day, i. e. between the 24-th and 
 
 25th of August. The year was 1572. 
 
 1 The Herod thus devoured was the grandson of the Herod 
 
 who ordered the massacre of the Innocents. 
 
THE BIRDS OF KILLINGWORTH. 71 
 
 The wonder of the falling tongues of flame, 
 The illumined pages of his Doom s-Day book. 1 
 
 A few lost leaves blushed crimson with their shame, 
 And drowned themselves despairing in the brook, 
 
 While the wild wind went moaning everywhere, 
 
 Lamenting the dead children of the air ! 
 
 But the next Spring a stranger sight was seen, 
 A sight that never yet by bard was sung, 
 
 As great a wonder as it would have been 
 If some dumb animal had found a tongue I 
 
 A wagon, overarched with evergreen, 
 
 Upon whose boughs were wicker cages hung, 
 
 All full of singing birds, came down the street, 
 
 Filling the air with music wild and sweet. 
 
 From all the country round these birds were brought, 
 By order of the town, with anxious quest, 
 
 And, loosened from their wicker prisons, sought 
 In woods and fields the places they loved best, 
 
 Singing loud canticles, which many thought 
 Were satires to the authorities addressed, 
 
 While others, listening in green lanes, averred 
 
 Such lovely music never had been heard ! 
 
 But blither still and louder carolled they 
 
 Upon the morrow, for they seemed to know 
 It was the fair Almira s wedding-day, 
 
 And everywhere, around, above, below, 
 When the Preceptor bore his bride away, 
 Their songs burst forth in joyous overflow, 
 1 The original Doom s-Day or Domesday book was a regfTs- 
 tration of all the lands in the kingdom of England, ordered by 
 William the Conqueror. The term is also applied to the judg 
 ement-book or book of the day of doom. 
 
72 THE HERONS OF ELMWOOD. 
 
 And a new heaven bent over a new earth 
 Amid the sunny farms of Killing-worth. 
 1863. 
 
 THE HERONS OF ELMWOOD, 
 
 WARM and still is the summer night* 
 As here by the river s brink I wander , 
 
 White overhead are the stars, and white 
 
 The glimmering lamps on the hillside yonder. 
 
 Silent are all the sounds of day ; 
 
 Nothing I hear but the chirp of crickets, 
 And the cry of the herons winging their way 
 
 O er the poet s house in the Elm wood 1 thickets. 
 
 Call to him, herons, as slowly you pass 
 
 To your roosts in the haunts of the exiled thrushes, 
 Sing him the song of the green morass, 
 
 And the tides that water the reeds and rushes. 
 
 Sing him the mystical Song of the Hern, 
 
 And the secret that baffles our utmost seeking ; 
 
 For only a sound of lament we discern, 
 
 And cannot interpret the words you are speaking. 
 
 Sing of the air, and the wild delight 
 
 Of wings that uplift and winds that uphold you, 
 The joy of freedom, the rapture of flight 
 
 Through the drift of the floating mists that enfold 
 you; 
 
 i Elmwood, a short distance from Longfellow s house, wat 
 the home of his brother poet and friend, James Russell Lowell. 
 
BAYARD TAYLOR. 73 
 
 Of the landscape lying so far below, 
 
 With its towns and rivers and desert places ; 
 
 And the splendor of light above, and the glow 
 Of the limitless, blue, ethereal spaces. 
 
 Ask him if songs of the Troubadours, 
 Or of Minnesingers in old black-letter, 
 
 Sound in his ears more sweet than yours, 
 
 And if yours are not sweeter and wilder and bet 
 ter. 
 
 Sing to him, say to him, here at his gate, 
 
 Where the boughs of the stately elms are meet 
 ing. 
 
 Some one hath lingered to meditate, 
 
 And send him unseen this friendly greeting ; 
 
 That many another hath done the same, 
 
 Though not by a sound was the silence broken ; 
 
 The surest pledge of a deathless name 
 
 Is the silent homage of thoughts unspoken. 
 1876. 
 
 BAYARD TAYLOR. 
 
 DEAD he lay among his books ! 
 The peace of God was in his looks. 
 
 As the statues in the gloom 
 Watch o er Maximilian s tomb, 1 
 
 So those volumes from their shelves 
 
 Watched him, silent as themselves. 
 
 1 In the cathedral at Innsbruck. 
 
T4 BAYARD TAYLOR. 
 
 Ah ! his hand will nevermore 
 Turn their storied pages o er ; 
 
 Nevermore his lips repeat 
 Songs of theirs, however sweet, 
 
 Let the lifeless body rest ! 
 He is gone, who was its guest ; 
 
 Gone, as travellers haste to leave 
 An inn, nor tarry until eve. 
 
 Traveller ! in what realms afar, 
 In what planet, in what star, 
 
 In what vast, aerial space, 
 Shines the light upon thy face? 
 
 In what gardens of delight 
 Rest thy weary feet to-night ? 
 
 Poet ! thou, whose latest verse 
 Was a garland on thy hearse ; 
 
 Thou hast sung, with organ tone, 
 In Deukalion s 1 life, thine own ; 
 
 On the ruins of the Past 
 Blooms the perfect flower at last. 
 
 Friend ! but yesterday the bells 
 Rang for thee their loud farewells ; 
 1 Prince Deukalion was the latest of Bayard Taylor s greaf 
 poems. 
 
TRAVELS BY THE FIRESIDE. 75 
 
 And to-day they toll for thee, 
 Lying dead beyond the sea ; 1 
 
 Lying dead among thy books, 
 The peace of God in all thy looks! 
 187a 
 
 TRAVELS BY THE FIRESIDE. 8 
 
 THE ceaseless rain is falling fast, 
 
 And yonder gilded vane, 
 Immovable for three days past, 
 
 Points to the misty main. 
 
 It drives me in upon myself 
 
 And to the fireside gleams, 
 To pleasant books that crowd my shelf, 
 
 And still more pleasant dreams. 
 
 I read whatever bards have sung 
 
 Of lands beyond the sea, 
 And the bright days when I was young 
 
 Come thronging back to me. 
 
 In fancy I can hear again 
 
 The Alpine torrent s roar, 
 The mule-bells on the hills of Spain, 
 
 The sea at Elsinore. 
 
 1 Taylor, the poet, the writer of travels and of stories, was 
 toade Minister of the United States in Germany, and died m 
 Berlin, December 19, 1878. 
 
 2 This poem was written as an introduction to a series of vol 
 umes edited by Mr. Longfellow, entitled Poezis of Places. 
 
76 TRAVELS BY THE FIRESIDE. 
 
 I see the convent s gleaming wall 
 Rise from its groves of pine, 
 
 And towers of old cathedrals tall, 
 And castles by the Rhine. 
 
 I journey on by park and spire, 
 Beneath centennial trees, 
 
 Through fields with poppies all on fira, 
 And gleams of distant seas. 
 
 I fear no more the dust and heat, 
 
 No more I feel fatigue, 
 While journeying with another s feet 
 
 O er many a lengthening league. 
 
 Let others traverse sea and land, 
 And toil through various climes, 
 
 I turn the world round with my hand 
 Reading these poets rhymes. 
 
 From them I learn whatever lies 
 Beneath each changing zone, 
 
 And see, when looking with their eyes, 
 Better than with mine own. 
 
A BALLAD OF THE FRENCH FLEET. 11 
 & BALLAD OF THE FRENCH FLEET. 1 
 
 OCTOBER, 1746. 
 
 MR. THOMAS PRINCE loquitur. 
 
 A FLEET with flags arrayed 
 
 Sailed from the port of Brest, 
 And the Admiral s ship displayed 
 
 The signal : " Steer southwest." 
 For this Admiral D Anville 
 
 Had sworn by cross and crown 
 To ravage with fire and steel 
 
 Our helpless Boston Town. 
 
 There were rumors in the street, 
 
 In the houses there was fear 
 Of the coming of the fleet, 
 
 And the danger hovering near. 
 And while from mouth to mouth 
 
 Spread the tidings of dismay, 
 I stood in the Old South, 
 
 Saying humbly : " Let us pray I 
 
 " O Lord ! we would not advise ; 
 
 But if in thy Providence 
 A tempest should arise 
 
 To drive the French fleet hence, 
 
 1 The capture of Louisburg, a stronghold of the French in 
 Cape Breton, in 1745, by a combined land and sea force, organ 
 ized by Governor Shirley of Massachusetts, greatly incensed the 
 French, and in 1746 they sent over a fleet under command of 
 the Admiral D Anville, with the special purpose of wreaking 
 vengeance on Boston. The fleet met with a series of disasters, 
 and nothing came of the attempt. The Reverend Thomas Prince 
 Was minister of the Old South in Boston. 
 
78 A BALLAD OF THE FRENCH FLEET. 
 
 And scatter it far and wide, 
 
 Or sink it in the sea, 
 We should be satisfied, 
 
 And thine the glory be." 
 
 This was the prayer I made, 
 
 For my soul was all on flame, 
 And even as I prayed 
 
 The answering tempest came ; 
 It came with a mighty power, 
 
 Shaking the windows and walls. 
 And tolling the bell in the tower, 
 
 As it tolls at funerals. 
 
 The lightning suddenly 
 
 Unsheathed its flaming sword, 
 And I cried : " Stand still, and see 
 
 The salvation of the Lord ! " 
 The heavens were black with cloud, 
 
 The sea was white with hail, 
 And ever more fierce and loud 
 
 Blew the October gale. 
 
 The fleet it overtook, 
 
 And the broad sails in the van 
 Like the tents of Cushan shook, 
 
 Or the curtains of Midian. 
 Down on the reeling decks 
 
 Crashed the o erwhelming seas ; 
 Ah, never were there wrecks 
 
 So pitiful as these ! 
 
 Like a potter s vessel broke 
 The great ships of the line ; 
 
KING CHRISTIAN. 79 
 
 They were carried away as a smoke, 
 
 Or sank like lead in the brine. 
 O Lord ! before thy path 
 
 They vanished and ceased to be, 
 When thou didst walk in wrath 
 
 With thine horses through the seaf 
 
 KING CHRISTIAN. 1 
 A NATIONAL SONG OF DENMARK. 
 
 KING CHRISTIAN stood by the lofty mast 
 
 In mist and smoke ; 
 His sword was hammering so fast, 
 Through Gothic helm and brain it passed ; 
 Then sank each hostile hulk and mast, 
 
 In mist and smoke. 
 
 * Fly ! " shouted they, " fly, he who can I 
 Who braves of Denmark s Christian 
 
 The stroke ? " 
 
 Nils Juel 2 gave heed to the tempest s roar, 
 
 Now is the hour ! 
 
 He hoisted his blood-red flag once more, 
 And smote upon the foe full sore, 
 And shouted loud, through the tempest s roar, 
 
 " Now is the hour ! " 
 " Fly! " shouted they, " for shelter fly I 
 Of Denmark s Juel who can defy 
 
 The power ? " 
 
 1 Written during a visit to Copenhagen in September, 1835. 
 The poet first heard the air from some strolling musician in a 
 coffee-house, and, looking up the words, translated them. 
 
 fi A celebrated Danish admiral. 
 
80 A GLEAM OF SUNSHINE. 
 
 North Sea ! a glimpse of Wessel l rent 
 
 Thy murky sky ! 
 
 Then champions to thine arms were sent ; 
 Terror and Death glared where he went ; 
 From the waves was heard a wail, that rent 
 
 Thy murky sky ! 
 
 From Denmark thunders Tordenskiol , 
 Let each to Heaven commend his soul, 
 
 And fly! 
 
 Path of the Dane to fame and might I 
 
 Dark-rolling wave ! 
 
 Receive thy friend, who, scorning flight, 
 Goes to meet danger with despite, 
 Proudly as thou the tempest s might, 
 
 Dark-rolling wave ! 
 And amid pleasures and alarms, 
 And war and victory, be thine arms 
 
 My grave I 
 
 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. 
 
 1 Peder Wessel was a vice-admiral, who, for his great prowess, 
 received the title of Tordenskiold (pronounced Tordenshold) or 
 Thundershield. 
 
A GLEAM OF SUNSHINE. 81 
 
 Here runs the highway to the town ; 
 
 There the green lane descends, 
 Through which I walked to church with thee 9 
 
 O gentlest of my friends ! 1 
 
 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 i 
 One of God s holy messengers 
 
 Did walk with me that day. 
 
 I saw the branches of the trees 
 
 Bend down thy touch to meet, 
 The clover-blossoms in the grass 
 
 Rise up to kiss thy feet. 
 
 * Sleep, sleep to-day, tormenting cares, 
 
 Of earth and folly born ! " 
 Solemnly sang the village choir 
 On that sweet Sabbath morn. 
 
 Through the closed blinds the golden sun 
 
 Poured in a dusty beam, 
 Like the celestial ladder seen 
 
 By Jacob in his dream. 
 
 1 The scene of this poem is mentioned in the poet s diary 
 under date of August 31, 1846. " In the afternoon a delicious 
 drive with F. and C. through Brookline, by the church and the 
 green lane, and homeward through a lovelier lane, with bar* 
 berries and wild vines clustering over the old stone walls." 
 
82 A GLEAM OF SUNSHINE. 
 
 And ever and anon, the wind 
 
 Sweet-scented with the hay, 
 Turned o er the hymn-book s fluttering leaves 
 
 That on the window lay. 
 
 Long was the good man s sermon, 
 
 Yet it seemed not so to me ; 
 For he spake of Ruth the beautiful, 
 
 And still I thought of thee. 
 
 Long was the prayer he uttered, 
 
 Yet it seemed not so to me ; 
 For in my heart I prayed with him, 
 
 And still I thought of thee. 
 
 But now, alas ! the place seems changed ; 
 
 Thou art no longer here : 
 Part of the sunshine of the scene 
 
 With thee did disappear. 
 
 Though thoughts, deep-rooted in my heart, 
 
 Like pine-trees dark and high, 
 Subdue the light of noon, and breathe 
 
 A low and ceaseless sigh ; 
 
 This memory brightens o er the past, 
 
 As when the sun, concealed 
 Behind some cloud that near us hangs, 
 
 Shines on a distant field. 
 
THE ARSENAL AT SPRINGFIELD. 83 
 
 THE ARSENAL AT SPRINGFIELD. 1 
 
 THIS is the Arsenal. From floor to ceiling, 
 Like a huge organ, rise the burnished arms ; 
 
 But from their silent pipes no anthem pealing 
 Startles the villages with strange alarms. 
 
 Ah ! what a sound will rise, how wild and dreary, 
 When the death-angel touches those swift keys I 
 
 What loud lament and dismal Miserere 
 Will mingle with their awful symphonies ! 
 
 I hear even now the infinite fierce chorus, 
 
 The cries of agony, the endless groan, 
 Which, through the ages that have gone before us, 
 
 In long reverberations reach our own. 
 
 On helm and harness rings the Saxon hammer, 
 
 Through Cimbric forest roars the Norseman s song, 
 
 And loud, amid the universal clamor, 
 
 O er distant deserts sounds the Tartar gong. 
 
 1 On his wedding journey in the summer of 1843, Mr. Long 
 fellow passed through Springfield, Massachusetts, and visited the 
 United States arsenal there, in company with Mr. Charles Sum- 
 ner. " While Mr. Sumner was endeavoring," says Mr. S. Long 
 fellow, " to impress upon the attendant that the money expended 
 upon these weapons of war would have heen much better spent 
 upon a great library, Mrs. Longfellow pleased her husband by 
 remarking how like an organ looked the ranged and shining 
 gun-barrels which covered the walls from floor to ceiling, and 
 suggesting what mournful music Death would bring from them. 
 We grew quite warlike against war, she wrote, and I urged 
 H. to write a peace poem. " The poem was written some months 
 later. The association with Sumner is especially interesting as 
 that statesman was conspicuous in his advocacy of peace princi 
 ples. 
 
84 THE ARSENAL AT SPRINGFIELD. 
 
 I hear the Florentine, who from his palace 
 Wheels out his battle-bell with dreadful dm> 
 
 And Aztec priests upon their teocallis 
 
 Beat the wild war-drums made of serpent s skin ; 
 
 The tumult of each sacked and burning village ; 
 
 The shout that every prayer for mercy drowns; 
 The soldiers revels in the midst of pillage ; 
 
 The wail of famine in beleaguered towns ; 
 
 The bursting shell, the gateway wrenched asunder, 
 The rattling musketry, the clashing blade ; 
 
 And ever and anon, in tones of thunder 
 The diapason of the cannonade. 
 
 Is it, O man, with such discordant noises, 
 With such accursed instruments as these, 
 
 Thou drownest Nature s sweet and kindly voices, 
 And jarrest the celestial harmonies ? 
 
 Were half the power that fills the world with terror, 
 Were half the wealth bestowed on camps and courts. 
 
 Given to redeem the human mind from error, 
 There were no need of arsenals or forts : 
 
 The warrior s name would be a name abhoned I 
 And every nation, that should lift again 
 
 Its hand against a brother, on its forehead 
 Would wear forevermore the curse of Cain ! 
 
 Down the dark future, through long generations, 
 The echoing sounds grow fainter and then cease ; 
 
 And like a bell, with solemn, sweet vibrations, 
 
 I hear once more the voice of Christ say, " Peace ! * 
 
THE LADDER OF SAINT AUGUSTINE. 85 
 
 Peace ! and no longer from its brazen portals 
 The blast of War s great organ shakes the skies ! 
 
 But beautiful as songs of the immortals, 
 The holy melodies of love arise. 
 
 THE LADDER OF SAINT AUGUSTINE. 
 
 SAINT AUGUSTINE ! well hast thoa said, 
 
 That of our vices we can frame 
 A ladder, if we will but tread 
 
 Beneath our feet each deed of shame ! * 
 
 All common things, each day s events, 
 That with the hour begin and end, 
 
 Our pleasures and our discontents, 
 Are rounds by which we may ascend* 
 
 The low desire, the base design, 
 That makes another s virtues less ; 
 
 The revel of the ruddy wine, 
 And all occasions of excess ; 
 
 The longing for ignoble things ; 
 
 The strife for triumph more than truth ; 
 The hardening of the heart, that brings 
 
 Irreverence for the dreams of youth ; 
 
 All thoughts of ill ; all evil deeds, 
 
 That have their root in thoughts of ill ; 
 
 Notice what Tennyson says at the beginning of In MemorianH 
 
 " I held it truth, with him who singa 
 To one clear harp in divers tones, 
 That men may rise on stepping-stone* 
 Of their dead selves to higher things." 
 
86 THE LADDER OF SAINT AUGUSTINE. 
 
 Whatever hinders or impedes 
 The action of the nobler will ; 
 
 All these must first be trampled down 
 Beneath our feet, if we would gain 
 
 In the bright fields of fair renown 
 The right of eminent domain. 
 
 We have not wings, we cannot soar ; 
 
 But we have feet to scale and climb 
 By slow degrees, by more and more, 
 
 The cloudy summits of our time. 
 
 The mighty pyramids of stone 
 
 That wedge-like cleave the desert airs, 
 
 When nearer seen, and better known, 
 Are but gigantic flights of stairs. 
 
 The distant mountains, that uprear 
 Their solid bastions to the skies, 
 
 Are crossed by pathways, that appear 
 As we to higher levels rise. 
 
 The heights by great men reached and kept 
 Were not attained by sudden flight, 
 
 But they, while their companions slept, 
 Were toiling upward in the night. 
 
 Standing on what too long we bore 
 
 With shoulders bent and downcast eyes, 
 
 Wo may discern unseen before 
 A path to higher destinies, 
 
 Nor deem the irrevocable Past 
 As wholly wasted, wholly vain, 
 
HA WTHORNE. 87 
 
 If, rising on its wrecks, at last 
 To something nobler we attain. 
 
 HAWTHORNE. 
 
 May 23, 1864. 1 
 
 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 iny ear. 
 
 *The date is that of the burial of Hawthorne. The poem was 
 Kritten just a month later. Mr. Longfellow wrote to Mr. Fields : 
 u I have only tried to describe the state of mind I was in on that 
 day. Did you not feel so likewise ? " In sending a copy of the 
 lines at the same time to Mrs. Hawthorne, he wrote : " I feel 
 how imperfect and inadequate they are ; but I trust you will 
 pardon their deficiencies for the love I bear his memory." 
 
88 THE WARDEN OF THE CINQUE PORTS. 
 
 For the one face I looked for was not there, 
 
 The one low voice was mute ; 
 Only an unseen presence filled the air, 
 
 And baffled my pursuit. 
 
 Now I look back, and meadow, manse, and stream 
 
 Dimly my thought defines ; 
 I only see a dream within a dream 
 
 The hill-top hearsed with pines. 
 
 I only hear above his place of rest 
 
 Their tender undertone, 
 The infinite longings of a troubled breast, 
 
 The voice so like his own. 
 
 There in seclusion and remote from men 
 
 The wizard hand lies cold, 
 Which at its topmost speed let fall the pen, 
 
 And left the tale half told. 
 
 Ah ! who shall lift that wand of magic power, 
 
 And the lost clew regain ? 
 The unfinished window in Aladdin s tower 
 
 Unfinished must remain ! 
 
 THE WARDEN OF THE CINQUE PORTS. 
 
 A MIST was driving down the British Channel, 
 
 The day was just begun, 
 And through the window-panes, on floor and panel 
 
 Streamed the red autumn sun. 
 
THE WARDEN OF THE CINQUE PORTS. 89 
 
 It glanced on flowing flag and rippling pennon, 
 
 And the white sails of ships ; 
 And, from the frowning rampart, the black cannon 
 
 Hailed it with feverish lips. 
 
 Sandwich and Romney, Hastings, Hithe, and Dover 
 
 Were all alert that day, 
 To see the French war-steamers speeding over. 
 
 When the fog cleared away. 
 
 Sullen and silent, and like couchant lions, 
 
 Their cannon, through the night, 
 Holding their breath, had watched, in grim defiance, 
 
 The sea-coast opposite. 
 
 And now they roared at drum-beat from their stations 
 
 On every citadel; 
 Each answering each, with morning salutations, 
 
 That all was well. 
 
 And down the coast, all taking up the burden, 
 
 Eeplied the distant forts, 
 As if to summon from his sleep the Warden l 
 
 And Lord of the Cinque Ports. 
 
 Him shall no sunshine from the fields of azure, 
 
 No drum-beat from the wall, 
 No morning gun from the black fort s embrasure. 
 
 Awaken with its call I 
 
 No more, surveying with an eye impartial 
 The long line of the coast, 
 
 1 The Warden was> the Duke of Wellington who died Septenv 
 feer 13, 1852, The five ports axe named in the ninth line. 
 
90 THE LEGEND OF THE CROSSBILL 
 
 Shall the gaunt figure of the old Field Marshal 
 Be seen upon his post ! 
 
 For in the night, unseen, a single warrior. 
 
 In sombre harness mailed, 
 Dreaded of man, and surnamed the Destroyer, 
 
 The rampart wall had scaled. 
 
 He passed into the chamber of the sleeper, 
 
 The dark and silent room, 
 And as he entered , darker grew, and deeper, 
 
 The silence and the gloom. 
 
 He did not pause to parley or dissemble, 
 
 But smote the Warden hoar ; 
 Ah ! what a blow ! that made all England tremble 
 
 And groan from shore to shore. 
 
 Meanwhile, without, the surly cannon waited, 
 
 The sun rose bright o erhead ; 
 Nothing in Nature s aspect intimated 
 
 That a great man was dead. 
 
 THE LEGEND OF THE CROSSBILL. 1 
 
 ON the cross the dying Saviour 
 Heavenward lifts his eyelids calm, 
 
 Feels, but scarcely feels, a trembling 
 In his pierced and bleeding palm. 
 
 And by all the world forsaken, 
 
 Sees He how with zealous care 
 1 Translated from the German of Julius Mosen. 
 
AFTERMATH. 91 
 
 At the ruthless nail of iron 
 A little bird is striving there. 
 
 Stained with blood and never tiring^ 
 
 With its beak it doth not cease, 
 From the cross t would free the Saviour, 
 
 Its Creator s Son release, 
 
 And the Saviour speaks in mildness; 
 
 " Blest be thou of all the good I 
 Bear, as token of this moment, 
 
 Marks of blood and holy rood I " 
 
 And that bird is called the crossbill \ 
 
 Covered all with blood so clear, 
 In the groves of pine it singeth 
 
 , like legends, strange to hear. 
 
 AFTERMATH 
 
 WHEN the summer fields are mown, 
 When the birds are fledged and 
 
 And the dry leaves strew the path ; 
 With the falling of the snow, 
 With the cawing of the crow, 
 Once again the fields we mow 
 And gather in the aftermath. 
 
 Not the sweet, new grass with flowers 
 Is this harvesting of ours ; 
 
 Not the upland clover bloom ; 
 
 * This poem was published just after the poet had completed 
 his Tales of a Wayside Inn on his sixty-sixth birthday. 
 
92 AFTERMATH. 
 
 But the rowen mixed with weeds, 
 Tangled tufts from marsh and meads, 
 Where the poppy drops its seeds 
 In the silence and the gloom. 
 
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