' EXJJBKB UNIVERSI 1Y OF CALIFORNIA 
 
 JOHN HENRY NASH LIBRARY 
 
 <8> SAN FRANCISCO 
 
 PRESENTED TO THE 
 
 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA 
 
 ROBERT GORDON SPRQUL, PRESIDENT. 
 
 MR.ANDMR5.MILTON S.RAV 
 CECILY, VIRGINIA AND ROSALYN RAY 
 
 AND THE 
 
 RAY OIL BURNEROOMPANY 
 
(BRUCE Typographer). NORTON (CHARLES ELIOT). Henry 
 Wadsworth Longfellow. A Sketch of His Life. Together with Long- 
 ellow's Chief Autobiographical Poems. 8vo, boards, uncut. With cloth 
 wrapper. Boston, 1907 
 
 Evidently a variant of WARDE, No. 77 as the two portraits he calls for are not 
 present and the limitation notice reads, "Copy No. 222 presented to Herman A. 
 Fajen with the compliments of Houghlon, Mifflin Company in Commemoration of 
 he One Hundredth Anniversary of the Birth of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. 
 February 27, 1007." Printed in Caslon type. 
 
HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW 
 
COPY NO. 
 PRESENTED TO 
 
 / 
 
 \ 
 
 WITH THE COMPLIMENTS OF 
 HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANY 
 
 IN COMMEMORATION OF THE 
 ONE HUNDREDTH ANNIVERSARY 
 
 OF THE BIRTH OF 
 HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW 
 
 FEBRUARY 27, 1907 
 
HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW 
 
 A SKETCH OF HIS LIFE 
 BY CHARLES ELIOT NORTON 
 
 BOSTON AND NEW YORK 
 
 HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANY 
 
 MDCCCCVII 
 
COPYRIGHT 1906 BY CHARLES ELIOT NORTON 
 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED 
 
NOTE 
 
 The commemoration, under the auspices of the Cam- 
 bridge Historical Society, on the %lth of February, 1907, 
 of the one hundredth anniversary of Longfellow's birth- 
 day, accounts for the character of this little volume. Be- 
 sides the sketch of the life of the Poet, it contains most 
 of those of his shorter poems which are referred to in the 
 narrative, and also those which have a distinctly auto- 
 biographical character, and those which relate to his 
 special friends and to the places of his birth and abode. 
 Thus, the little book gives the story of the Poet's life 
 briefly narrated in prose by a friend, and partially re- 
 corded in verse by himself. 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW: 
 
 A SKETCH OF HIS LIFE . . . . 1 
 
 AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL POEMS 
 
 THE BATTLE OF LOVELI/S POND (1820) . . 43 
 
 PRELUDE TO VOICES OF THE NIGHT (1839) . . 44 
 
 A PSALM OF LIFE (1838) 49 
 
 THE WRECK OF THE HESPERUS (1839) . . .50 
 
 THE VILLAGE BLACKSMITH (1839) ... 54 
 TO THE RIVER CHARLES (1841) . . .56 
 
 THE BRIDGE (1845) 58 
 
 THE ROPEWALK (1854) 61 
 
 A GLEAM OF SUNSHINE (1846) . . . . 63 
 
 TO A CHILD (1845) 66 
 
 THE OPEN WINDOW (1848) . . . . . 73 
 
 IN THE CHURCHYARD AT CAMBRIDGE (1851) . . 74 
 
 THE BURIAL OF THE POET (1879) < . . 75 
 THE TWO ANGELS (1855) . . . . .76 
 
 RESIGNATION (1848) 78 
 
 DEDICATION TO "SEASIDE AND FIRESIDE" (1849) 80 
 
 MY LOST YOUTH (1855) 82 
 
 [ vii ] 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 THE FIFTIETH BIRTHDAY OF AGASSIZ (1857) . . 86 
 
 HAWTHORNE (1864) . . . . 87 
 
 THREE FRIENDS OF MINE (1874) . . . .89 
 
 THE HERONS OF ELMWOOD (1876) . . . 92 
 
 THE CHILDREN'S HOUR (1859) . . . .94 
 
 TRAVELS BY THE FIRESIDE (1874) . . . 96 
 
 AMALFI (1875) . . . . . . .97 
 
 CASTLES IN SPAIN (1877) 101 
 
 FROM MY ARM-CHAIR (1879) .... 104 
 
 POSSIBILITIES (1882) . . . . . .107 
 
 THE CROSS OF SNOW (1879) 107 
 
 PALINGENESIS (1864) 108 
 
 MORITURI SALUTAMUS (1874) . . . .111 
 
HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW 
 A SKETCH OF HIS LIFE 
 
HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW 
 
 AT the beginning of the nineteenth century 
 New England was a good land in which to be 
 born. It was still sparsely settled. There were 
 no large towns. Boston, the largest, had scarcely 
 twenty-five thousand inhabitants. The people 
 were homogeneous, of unmixed English stock. 
 They were mainly farmers or seamen. They 
 were intelligent, industrious, and religious. 
 There was great equality of condition, none 
 were very rich, none very poor. Everybody 
 was well off, for the poorest were free from 
 the fear of oppression or starvation. The re- 
 lations between man and man were natural 
 and friendly. The general habits of life were 
 simple and frugal; but even in the smaller 
 towns there were often a few families which 
 maintained a traditional comparatively high 
 standard of refinement, of intellectual culture, 
 and of moderate though genuine elegance. 
 
 There was never a more truly democratic 
 community, nor one in which the advantages 
 
LONGFELLOW 
 
 and opportunities of a society based upon 
 democratic principles were more fully and 
 freely enjoyed. Its interests were, indeed, 
 comparatively narrow, for it had small share 
 in the great life of the world, it had little con- 
 sciousness of relation to the historic past even 
 of its own race, and it seemed to have in- 
 herited few of its burdens. It had separated 
 itself from the Old World, and was possessed 
 with the spirit of its own independence. It 
 was full of self-confidence, and looked forward 
 into the future with an unbounded hope, which 
 appeared even to the wisest not an illusion, but 
 to rest on a solid foundation of reason. Here 
 men held possession of a field in which to show 
 what they could do unhampered by hereditary 
 prescriptions and privileges, and here, in New 
 England especially, the new order of society, 
 based on justice and liberty, not only gave 
 promise of fairer results than had ever before 
 been achieved, but already exhibited actual 
 results in blessings which seemed but a fore- 
 taste of those which might be legitimately 
 anticipated. It is not strange that the whole 
 temper of the community became optimistic 
 [ 2 ] 
 
LONGFELLOW 
 
 and kindly; that the severities of the Calvin- 
 istie creed of earlier days were relaxed; and 
 that both this world and the next took on a 
 Utopian aspect. 
 
 The perils of prosperity, of unlimited demo- 
 cracy, of unchecked immigration, were not fore- 
 seen; they were gradually to manifest them- 
 selves. The generation which grew up before 
 1830 had neither the experience nor the dread 
 of them. 
 
 This condition of society in New England 
 deserves to be set forth in much greater detail, 
 not only as an exceptional, instructive, and 
 interesting passage in the history of mankind, 
 but also as accounting in large measure for 
 the spirit and form of the works of the poets 
 and men of letters who gave distinction to the 
 country in the middle of the century. It is 
 worth noting that all of them were born within 
 its first twenty years, and grew to manhood 
 before the problems which now perplex us had 
 begun to present themselves with the threaten- 
 ings of the Sphinx. 1 
 
 1 The list with its dates is curiously significant: Emerson, born 
 1803; Hawthorne, 1804 ; Longfellow and Whittier, 1807 ; Holmes. 
 
 [ 3 ] 
 
LONGFELLOW 
 
 One of the pleasantest towns in New Eng- 
 land at this time was Portland, now the chief 
 seaport of the State of Maine. It is an old town 
 according to the reckoning of the United States, 
 having been first settled in 1632; it is old 
 enough to have traditions, and to have known 
 many generations of seafaring men, and in 
 former days, when its commerce was of more 
 importance than it is now, its people gained 
 some sense, such as those of inland towns 
 seldom acquire, of the largeness of the world, 
 of the interest and romance of foreign lands, 
 and of the mystery and perils of the sea. Here 
 on the 27th of February, 1807, Henry Wads- 
 worth Longfellow was born. His parents were 
 of English stock, long settled in America. His 
 father was a lawyer, a man of pure, upright 
 character, a good heart, and an old-time 
 courtesy. He became one of the foremost 
 men in his community, honored for his public 
 spirit, sound judgment, integrity, and ability. 
 
 1809 ; Lowell, 1819. The general spirit and optimistic disposition of 
 the land had already found expression in Irving, born 1783, and in 
 Channing (1780), but the original characteristic New England quality, 
 the distinctive temper of a cultivated democracy, waited for its full 
 expression for the men of the succeeding generation. 
 
 [ 4 ] 
 
LONGFELLOW 
 
 "In his family," wrote his youngest son, "he 
 was at once kind and strict, bringing up his 
 children in habits of respect and obedience, 
 of unselfishness, the dread of debt, and the 
 faithful performance of duty." 1 The boy's 
 mother must have been a woman of uncom- 
 mon sweetness and charm. Her letters, of 
 which a few have been preserved, mainly to 
 her son, are evidences of her tenderness, re- 
 finement, and culture. She was a lover of 
 nature, and of the poets; she had a sincere 
 and cheerful piety; she was a kind neighbor 
 and a devoted mother. Her household of eight 
 children, four brothers and four sisters, was a 
 happy one. Henry was the second child. 
 
 To those who have not had the blessing of 
 knowing it, it may be difficult to give the true 
 impression of the pleasantness and wholesome- 
 ness of an old-time New England home. There 
 has never elsewhere been anything exactly like 
 it. The natural relations shaping the society of 
 which it was an element, the absence of arti- 
 
 1 I take this sentence from the excellent Life of the poet by his 
 brother, the late Rev. Samuel Longfellow. My obligations to this 
 authoritative biography are constant throughout the following sketch. 
 
 [ 5 ] 
 
LONGFELLOW 
 
 ficial distinctions, the universal sense of inde- 
 pendence and ease, the common kindliness and 
 good-nature which resulted from the general 
 well-being, all affected the intimate spirit of 
 the household. Domestic virtues flourish in 
 such an atmosphere. The union of simplicity 
 in modes of living and thinking with respect 
 and desire for culture showed itself in a love 
 of reading, by which the narrow outlook of 
 a somewhat primitive and provincial view of 
 the world was modified and enlarged. It was 
 through books that the household mainly felt 
 its connection with the wide life of mankind, 
 with the poetic and historic past. The books 
 were indeed comparatively few, but they were 
 for the most part those of which the worth 
 had been tested by the approval of many gen- 
 erations. Music, too, of a simple kind was one 
 of the common domestic pleasures. Manners 
 were carefully regarded; and though there was 
 little of the finer social art, there was often 
 much good talk to be heard around the hospi- 
 table table, or by the winter-evening fireside. 
 In fact, the old New England home at its best 
 was a happy place, with a special, if slender, 
 
LONGFELLOW 
 
 charm and grace of its own. There was, in- 
 deed, a lack of richness in the intellectual no 
 less than in the material life, and seldom a 
 sufficient variety of condition, or difficulty of 
 circumstance, or collision of interests to de- 
 velop the finer resources of the mind. The 
 land had not been settled long enough to pos- 
 sess a soil the product of the lives of count- 
 less generations of depth enough to afford 
 nourishment to the deepest reaching roots of 
 the imagination and intelligence. 
 
 Such a home as I have described was that of 
 the Longfellows, and its influence was strong 
 for good on a sensitive nature like that of the 
 boy Henry. He was a bright, pleasant boy, 
 active, industrious, ardent, and according to 
 his mother's report "remarkably solicitous 
 always to do right." When he was five years 
 old he was sent to a day-school, close by his 
 home, and a certificate from his master has 
 been preserved, given him when he was not 
 much over six, which shows how early the little 
 boy began to be what he always remained: 
 "Master Henry Longfellow is one of the best 
 boys we have in school. He spells and reads 
 
 t t ] 
 
LONGFELLOW 
 
 very well. He also can add and multiply num- 
 bers. His conduct last quarter was very correct 
 and amiable. June 30, 1813." 
 
 His taste for reading was early manifest. He 
 took delight in "Don Quixote" and in Ossian, 
 but, as he himself has recorded, the first book 
 which "fascinated his imagination, and ex- 
 cited and satisfied the desires of his mind," 
 was the "Sketch-Book" of Washington Irving. 
 "I was a schoolboy when it was published" 
 [the first number appeared in 1819], "and read 
 each succeeding number with ever increasing 
 wonder and delight." He had himself already 
 begun writing, and when he was thirteen years 
 old some verses of his were printed in the 
 local newspaper. They were of no special 
 promise, but they were not destitute of merit 
 in versification, and showed that the boy had 
 been reading Campbell and Scott. With these 
 verses his literary life began. 
 
 In 1822 he was sent to Bowdoin College 
 at Brunswick, then, as now, the chief college 
 in Maine, about thirty miles from Portland. 
 He entered it as a Sophomore, in a class of 
 which Hawthorne was a member. His college 
 I 8 ] 
 
LONGFELLOW 
 
 years were well spent; it was a period of rapid 
 maturing both of character and of powers. 
 Longfellow, as he had been at school, so here 
 was "one of the best boys." He had a charm- 
 ing social disposition, and was a general fa- 
 vorite; but, while he enjoyed the companion- 
 ship of his fellows, he had principles strong 
 enough to resist the temptations of college 
 life. He was a faithful and industrious student; 
 he became a wide reader; and he wrote much 
 prose and verse, some of which found accept- 
 ance in the " United States Literary Gazette," 
 published in Boston, to which he became, 
 during his last year in college, a frequent con- 
 tributor. The poems are mostly trial pieces. 
 They show a singularly sweet and pure nature; 
 but the poet had not yet found his true voice, 
 and what he wrote was often in the mood and 
 with the tone of elder poets, especially of 
 Bryant, whose grave and moral verse, the 
 expression of his New England temperament, 
 exercised a strong and acknowledged influence 
 upon his younger contemporary. The best 
 poetic fruit of his college years was not ga- 
 thered till fifty years later, when, on the anni- 
 [ 9 1 
 
LONGFELLOW 
 
 versary of the graduation of his Class, Long- 
 fellow read at Bowdoin his beautiful and 
 characteristic poem entitled Morituri Saluta- 
 mus, in which, beginning with tender recol- 
 lections of the days of youth, he went on with 
 a profoundly sweet and touching survey of 
 life, and closed with a noble assertion of the 
 significance and opportunities of old age. 
 
 Before he left college he had come to a 
 clear recognition of his true vocation in life. 
 "The fact is," he wrote to his father, "the 
 fact is, I most eagerly aspire after future 
 eminence in literature. . . . Nature has given 
 me a very strong predilection for literary pur- 
 suits." And in this he was not making the 
 mistake which young men so often make, of 
 supposing their powers to justify their pre- 
 dilection. He had a right to confidence in his 
 gifts, and Fortune smiled upon him with sur- 
 prising graciousness. At the very moment of 
 his graduation, in 1825, the Board of Trus- 
 tees of the college determined to establish a 
 Professorship of Modern Languages. The re- 
 sources of the college were narrow, and the 
 salary which it was proposed to attach to the 
 [ 10 ] 
 
LONGFELLOW 
 
 professorship was too small to allow the hope 
 that a scholar of established repute could be 
 induced to take the chair. " The eyes of the 
 trustees," says his brother, "turned upon 
 the young graduate, whose literary tastes and 
 attainments had attracted their attention and 
 gained him reputation." His character, no 
 less than his attainments, inspired confidence 
 in his ability, after due preparation, to fill 
 such a position with credit, and an informal 
 proposal was made to him that he should visit 
 Europe for a period of preparatory study, with 
 the understanding that on his return he should 
 be appointed to the professorship. There could 
 be no stronger evidence of the impression 
 which, though not yet nineteen years old, he 
 had already made as a youth, not merely of 
 uncommon promise, but of still more uncom- 
 mon desert. 
 
 The proposal was accepted with delight. 
 Nothing could have better favored his desires 
 and his projects. The opportunity of study in 
 Europe was an unhoped-for felicity, and he 
 embraced it with a serious resolve to get from 
 it the best that it could give. He left home 
 
LONGFELLOW 
 
 in May, 1826, and he remained abroad till 
 July, 1829. 
 
 Europe was then much more remote from 
 America than it is to-day. It was a month or 
 more distant, and it was a much fresher land 
 then than now to a young American. Its 
 paths had not yet been made dusty by Ameri- 
 can feet. In outward aspect, in social order, 
 in standards of life, in modes of thought, the 
 Old and the New World were far more dis- 
 tinct than they have since become. The great 
 advantage which an American still derives 
 from a visit to Europe, beside the enlarging 
 of his experience of life, is the quickening of 
 his imagination by the awakening of the sense 
 of his relation to the long historic life of his 
 race. Longfellow's youth and poetic tempera- 
 ment, as well as the literary culture which he 
 had already acquired, made him peculiarly 
 sensible to the strong and novel influence of a 
 residence in foreign lands. His first months 
 abroad were spent in France, and thence he 
 went in succession to Spain, Italy, and Ger- 
 many, ending his period of absence with a 
 brief stay in England. Everywhere on the Con- 
 [ 12 ] 
 
LONGFELLOW 
 
 tinent he devoted himself to acquiring the 
 languages of the different countries which he 
 visited, and to studying their literature. He 
 had an exceptional facility in learning a new 
 language, and his industry was great. He 
 mastered three of the four great foreign lan- 
 guages so thoroughly as to speak them with 
 facility and correctness, and to write them 
 with comparative ease, and he returned to 
 America fitted to discharge competently the 
 duties of the professorship to which he had 
 been called. But Europe had done much more 
 for him than merely make him an accom- 
 plished scholar. It had enlarged his view of 
 Me, fertilized his mind, and given him a social 
 cultivation which he could not have gained at 
 home. These three years abroad did much 
 to give color to his future. 
 
 To come back from the exciting interests 
 and delights of Paris, Madrid, and Rome, 
 and from the deep sources of intellectual life 
 at a German university, to the monotonous 
 routine of a teacher's existence within the 
 narrow limits of a small country college, was 
 a somewhat sharp test of character. Long- 
 [ 13 ] 
 
LONGFELLOW 
 
 fellow stood it well, for his rare gifts and ac- 
 complishments rested upon a solid basis of 
 manliness and common sense, and his long 
 residence abroad had not weakened his love 
 of home. He entered on his new duties with 
 zest, and with a high estimate of the respon- 
 sibilities and opportunities of his profession as 
 teacher. In a letter written in 1830, he was 
 then twenty-three years old, he describes the 
 course of his life: "I rise at six in the morn- 
 ing, and hear a French recitation immediately. 
 At seven I breakfast and am then master of 
 my time till eleven, when I hear a Spanish 
 lesson. After that I take a lunch, and at 
 twelve I go into the library " [he was the act- 
 ing librarian of the college], "where I remain 
 till one. I am then at leisure for the after- 
 noon till five, when I have a French recitation. 
 At six I take coffee, then walk and visit friends 
 till nine; study till twelve, and sleep till six, 
 when I begin the same round again. Such is 
 the daily routine of my life. The intervals of 
 college duty I fill up with my own studies. 
 Last term I was publishing text-books for the 
 use of my pupils, in whom I take a deep in- 
 [ 14 ] 
 
LONGFELLOW 
 
 terest. This term I am writing a course of 
 lectures on French, Spanish, and Italian litera- 
 tures. . . . I am delighted more and more with 
 the profession I have embraced. . . . Since my 
 return I have written one piece of poetry, but 
 have not published a line. ... If I ever pub- 
 lish a volume it will be many years first." 
 
 It was, indeed, nearly ten years before he 
 published his first slender volume of collected 
 poems. But these ten years were well filled 
 with literary work, mainly the result of his 
 travel and his professional studies. He wrote 
 numerous articles upon topics of mediaeval 
 and modern literature; he made many poeti- 
 cal translations; he published in 1833 a series 
 of sketches of tales and literary essays under 
 the title of "Outre Mer," and six years later, 
 after a second visit to Europe, appeared 
 "Hyperion," in which this later experience of 
 travel was presented in a more consecutive 
 form than that of his earlier book, and with 
 a deeper interest from the thread of romance 
 connecting its various episodes, as well as 
 from its riper expression of more personal and 
 intimate experience. 
 
 [ 15 ] 
 
LONGFELLOW 
 
 All this work has many excellent qualities; 
 it is the writing of a cultivated man of letters, 
 possessed of poetic sensibility, of a somewhat 
 romantic vein of sentiment, and of a sweet 
 nature, refined, gentle, and of high aims. It 
 is essentially the work of a man of letters, 
 who sees life not directly, but rather as it 
 comes reflected to him through books and 
 colored by literary associations. "Outre Mer" 
 is a lineal descendant of the " Sketch-Book; " 
 "Hyperion" traces back to Jean Paul. The 
 books have not the charm of primitive nature, 
 but they are full of the pleasantness of the 
 garden, with its abundance of sweet-scented 
 herbs and exotic flowers. 
 
 It was not strange that Longfellow was slow 
 in discovering his native vein of poetry and 
 in trusting to it. The intellectual conditions 
 of America did not give self-confidence to her 
 authors, and in his case the opening to him, 
 at the most sensitive period of youth, of the 
 treasures of the Continental literatures, trea- 
 sures much less familiar eighty years ago than 
 now, the excitement of what was practically 
 literary discovery, and the attractiveness of the 
 
LONGFELLOW 
 
 form no less than of the substance of this 
 newly revealed art, all tended at first to 
 choke the natural current of his poetic vein, 
 and to substitute for the direct expression of 
 himself the reproduction by transfusion or 
 translation of what was so delightful to him. 
 During these years, from 1827 to 1839, his 
 life had had a varied course. In 1831 he had 
 been married with every promise of happiness 
 to Miss Potter of Portland. In 1834, having 
 established his reputation as an accomplished 
 scholar and teacher, he was invited to succeed 
 Mr. Ticknor, as Professor of Belles-Lettres 
 at Harvard College. He accepted with satis- 
 faction the larger opportunities for study and 
 the wider social relations which a position 
 at the oldest and best equipped of American 
 colleges afforded; but before entering upon 
 his new duties, he went again to Europe for 
 further study, especially of the northern lan- 
 guages and literature. He was accompanied 
 by his wife, but they had been abroad hardly 
 more than six months before her health failed, 
 and she died at Rotterdam, in December, 
 1835. Longfellow returned home in the 
 [ 17 ] 
 
LONGFELLOW 
 
 autumn of 1836, and in December took up his 
 residence in Cambridge, where his home was 
 thenceforth to be till the end of life, a period of 
 more than forty-five years. 
 
 Cambridge in 1836 was a pleasant little 
 town, some of the characteristics of which 
 Mr. Lowell has preserved in his picturesque 
 essay, "Cambridge Thirty Years Ago." For 
 so small a town it contained an unusual num- 
 ber of people of considerable intellectual and 
 more or less social culture whom the college 
 brought together upon easy terms. It was a 
 very simple society, conservative in its general 
 spirit, but liberalized by its neighborhood to 
 Boston, which had long possessed an intellect- 
 ual leadership among the cities of America, and 
 which, as it grew in numbers and in wealth, did 
 not lose its traditional hospitality to thought. 
 The moment was one of moral and mental 
 ferment. The anti-slavery campaign had be- 
 gun in earnest, and the so-called "transcen- 
 dental" movement, to which Emerson was be- 
 ginning to give its best direction, was already, 
 in spite of many extravagances and absurdi- 
 ties, exercising a potent influence of intellectual 
 [ 18 ] 
 
LONGFELLOW 
 
 emancipation. Longfellow at once found him- 
 self at home in these wider conditions than 
 Bowdoin had afforded. He sympathized with 
 the prevailing liberal temper of his own gen- 
 eration, but he took no leading part in the de- 
 bates of the times. His disposition had nothing 
 controversial in it. His life soon settled into a 
 pleasant regularity. His college duties were 
 arduous and often irksome, but they left him 
 leisure for his favorite studies, and for the en- 
 joyment of friendly intercourse. 
 
 It was at this time that my own acquaintance 
 with Mr. Longfellow began. He was then 
 twenty-nine years old, and I was a boy some- 
 what more than twenty years younger. But 
 from the first he was a most kind and pleasant 
 friend to me. He was a frequent and familiar 
 visitor at my father's house, and the younger 
 members of the family were as glad as their 
 elders to see him. He entered into the interests 
 of our lives and added to their pleasures. I 
 should not speak of this were it not for the il- 
 lustration it affords of his nature, and of the 
 affection in which he was held by all, old or 
 young, with whom he was brought into famil- 
 [ 19 ] 
 
LONGFELLOW 
 
 iar relation. As life went on his kindness never 
 changed, and now, almost twenty-five years 
 after his death, I look back on the friendship 
 which he gave to me for forty-five years as 
 one of their great blessings. It still is one of 
 the lights of life. I wish I could give to others 
 the true image of him which remains in my 
 heart. It may be learned from his own sweet- 
 est verse, for no poet ever wrote with more 
 unconscious and complete sincerity of self- 
 expression. 
 
 No profession is at once more depressing 
 and more stimulating than that of the teacher 
 of youth just entering on manhood. The more 
 keenly he sympathizes with them and desires 
 to aid them, the more keenly he feels how far 
 the best that he can do for them falls short of 
 their needs and of his own ideal of service. He 
 would fain save them from errors of which by 
 experience he knows the harm, would fain not 
 only supply them with learning, but inspire 
 them with a love of it by instructing them in 
 its right use for the building of character, as 
 well as for the enlargement of those mental 
 resources which contribute to the permanent 
 
LONGFELLOW 
 
 enjoyment and utility of life. Longfellow's ex- 
 ample wrought upon his pupils no less than 
 his words. He stood before them as the pat- 
 tern of an accomplished man of letters, who 
 exhibited in his life the worth of his own 
 instructions. 
 
 His college duties, regular and constant as 
 they were, did not prevent him from carrying 
 on literary work of his own. In the summer 
 of 1839, as I have already mentioned, "Hy- 
 perion," begun a year before, was completed 
 and published. It was received with favor; it 
 appealed to the romantic sentiment of youth, 
 and it gratified the taste, natural to American 
 readers, for the varied resources and the poetic 
 suggestion of the Old World. 
 
 " Hyperion" marks the close of the first stage 
 of Longfellow's intellectual life, the stage of 
 youthful impressibility and experiment, of 
 uncertainty of aim, of the control of foreign 
 influence on the direction of his powers. The 
 foreign materials of his culture had now been 
 assimilated so as to become vital elements of 
 his genius, and the little volume of poems 
 published in the autumn of 1839 under the 
 [ 21 ] 
 
LONGFELLOW 
 
 title of "Voices of the Night" marks the 
 beginning of the stage in which that genius 
 was to find its full and free expression. The 
 Prelude with which the volume opens gives 
 evidence that the poet himself was conscious 
 of the change. He bids farewell to the visions 
 of childhood; no longer what is external shall 
 be his theme, but, adopting the noble injunc- 
 tion of Sidney's Muse, he says to himself, 
 "Look then into thy heart and write," and 
 thenceforth he spoke to the hearts of men. It 
 is not surprising that he had been so long 
 in acquiring trust in his own powers. His 
 modesty, his admiration for the work of con- 
 temporary poets in Europe, Goethe, Man- 
 zoni, Victor Hugo, had made him hesitate. 
 Moreover, in the life of New England there 
 was little to quicken the poetic imagination; 
 its experience was of homespun quality, the 
 element of passion was scanty in the tempera- 
 ment of its people, there was no great oppor- 
 tunity in their relations and habits for marked 
 variety of sentiment and emotion. Our best 
 poetry had been patterned on foreign models. 
 Such fresh and original voices as had tried to 
 [ 2* ] 
 
LONGFELLOW 
 
 make themselves heard, had had for the most 
 part but a faint tone, and had been listened 
 to without popular approval. The prevailing 
 spirit was of critical distrust of native powers, 
 a spirit unfavorable for the discovery of a poet 
 either by himself or by others. 
 
 But in "Voices of the Night" were poems 
 which appealed at once to the consciousness 
 of the public as expressions of its own hitherto 
 unexpressed interior moods, and dimly recog- 
 nized ideals. The "Psalm of Life," a voice, 
 as the poet called it, from his inmost heart, 
 proved to be the voice of many hearts. It be- 
 came instantly popular. Its moral lesson, con- 
 veyed in simple but musical verse, was accepted 
 by its readers as the teaching of their own ex- 
 perience which they had failed to formulate 
 for themselves. It was a help and encourage- 
 ment to depressed souls, a stimulus to the am- 
 bitious and the hopeful. The world cares more 
 for morality than for poetry, but it likes to 
 have its moral sentiment expressed in poetic 
 form. Perhaps no verses of the century have 
 had wider acceptance than these. But it was 
 not only their moral tone which secured for 
 [ 23 ] 
 
LONGFELLOW 
 
 this and other poems in the volume an imme- 
 diate cordial reception, but also their beauty 
 of form. His long preparatory studies had 
 made Longfellow such a master of versifica- 
 tion as America had not before known, and 
 his art gave a rare charm to his words. 
 
 From this time forth Longfellow wrote lit- 
 tle prose for publication, his only subsequent 
 prose work being the brief tale of "Kavanagh," 
 a pretty, semi-romantic, semi-realistic story, 
 brightened by touches of humor, and suffused 
 with delicate sentiment. It embodied many 
 fancies and reflections which had long been 
 gathered in -his note-books or loosely floating 
 in his brain, but it has no great significance in 
 the record of his intellectual life. 
 
 Two years after the publication of the 
 "Voices of the Night," he gathered into an- 
 other volume the pieces which he had written 
 in the interval, some of which, such as "The 
 Wreck of the Hesperus" and "The Village 
 Blacksmith," became at once and have con- 
 tinued to be favorites of the great public. 
 
 In 1842 the regular current of his life was 
 interrupted by a third visit to Europe, under- 
 
LONGFELLOW 
 
 taken for the benefit of his health. The sum- 
 mer was spent at Marienberg, near Boppard 
 on the Rhine. While here he made acquaint- 
 ance, which ripened into a cordial and per- 
 manent friendship, with Ferdinand Freili- 
 grath, then one of the most distinguished of 
 the younger German poets. In October, on 
 his way home, he went to London, where he 
 spent the last weeks of his stay abroad with 
 Dickens, always a most genial and sympa- 
 thetic host. Dickens was just bringing out 
 his "American Notes," and Longfellow wrote 
 to Sumner of it, " You will read it with delight 
 and, for the most part, approbation. He has 
 a grand chapter on Slavery." 
 
 The topic was perilous for a man of letters; 
 the debate upon it had become too hot. Yet 
 Longfellow, on his homeward voyage, wrote 
 a number of poems on Slavery, which he pub- 
 lished in a pamphlet soon after his return. 
 They brought upon him harsh denunciation. 
 He was charged with being an Abolitionist, 
 and his popularity as a poet suffered diminu- 
 tion at the North as well as in the slavehold- 
 ing community. By these poems Longfellow 
 [ 25 ] 
 
LONGFELLOW 
 
 had ranged himself in line with his intimate 
 friend, Charles Sumner, then at the beginning 
 of his great anti-slavery career, and he readily 
 accepted such measure of obloquy and of un- 
 popularity as the taking of this position might 
 bring to him. 
 
 In 1843, the happiness of his life was re- 
 newed and confirmed by his marriage to Miss 
 Frances Appleton, a woman worthy to be a 
 poet's wife. She had great beauty, and a pre- 
 sence of dignity and distinction, the true image 
 of a beautiful nature. He had met her first in 
 Switzerland, six years before, when she was a 
 girl of nineteen, and something of her as she 
 then was, is embodied in the Mary Ashburton 
 of "Hyperion." She brought him abundant 
 means as well as happiness. 
 
 Craigie House in Cambridge, a fine old colo- 
 nial mansion, which had been Washington's 
 headquarters for some months after he took 
 command of the Continental Army in 1775, 
 and in which Longfellow, almost ever since 
 his first coming to Cambridge had had his 
 abode, now became their permanent home. 
 The traditions, the associations, the surround- 
 [ 26 1 
 
LONGFELLOW 
 
 ings of the house well befitted its aspect, while 
 the view upon which it looked toward the 
 southwest across open fields to the Charles, 
 and beyond the river and its marshes to the 
 pleasant hills of Brighton and Brookline, af- 
 forded it the setting of an appropriate land- 
 scape. Thus fortunate in all externals, the 
 home within was exceptionally happy. The 
 joys of domestic life, the pleasures of social 
 life, found their pattern and example here. 
 
 The rare social gifts with which Nature had 
 endowed him, cultivated by his experience in 
 Europe, made Longfellow a delightful host, 
 or guest, or companion. He possessed the first 
 requisite of all fine social art, a real desire 
 to give pleasure; he was quite free from van- 
 ity, and while he was master of large resources 
 in conversation, he did not use them for dis- 
 play, but with the light touch and the kindly 
 humor which give ease and grace to talk. He 
 never uttered a bitter or cynical word. No 
 one enjoyed more than he the beauty and ele- 
 gance which contribute, nay, which are es- 
 sential, to the charm of society at its best, and 
 without extravagance or ostentation he se- 
 [ 27 ] 
 
LONGFELLOW 
 
 cured them so far as possible in his own sur- 
 roundings. Like the scholar in the Prelude to 
 the "Tales of a Wayside Inn," he was 
 
 "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." 
 
 It was, indeed, the best company that 
 Longfellow gathered round the hospitable 
 Craigie House table, and pleasanter dinners 
 or suppers were never given than those over 
 which, for many years, Mrs. Longfellow 
 presided with sweet, gracious dignity, and at 
 which the familiar guests were not unworthy 
 of their hosts. Among the most familiar were 
 Lowell, the near neighbor and constant friend; 
 Tom Appleton, the brother of Mrs. Longfel- 
 low, the wit, the humorist, possessed, as he 
 with but partial truth complained, of the 
 temperament of genius without the genius; 
 Agassiz, with his fine amplitude of person, 
 intelligence, and sympathy; Felton, the most 
 genial and jovial of professors of Greek; 
 George W. Greene of Rhode Island, a friend 
 from the old days of Longfellow's first visit 
 
LONGFELLOW 
 
 to Rome in 1827; while rarer but always wel- 
 come guests were Emerson, Hawthorne, Sum- 
 ner, Fields, Howells, and now and then Child 
 and George William Curtis, two of the plea- 
 santest and most lovable of men. Strangers 
 of distinction, foreign or native born, found 
 place at a table which culture and good-breed- 
 ing made cosmopolitan. Longfellow kept his 
 friendships in excellent repair; even those 
 which might seem to an outsider to cost more 
 than they were worth. He was true to what 
 had been ; remembrance maintained life in the 
 ashes of the old affection, and he never made 
 his own fame or his many occupations an excuse 
 for disregarding the claims of a dull acquaint- 
 ance, or of one fallen in the world. 
 
 In the peaceful warmth and light of domes- 
 tic joys and social pleasures, the genius 
 of the poet found its true atmosphere. His 
 voice took on a fuller tone, the range of his 
 expression became wider and its mode more 
 confident, and when in 1847 he published 
 " Evangeline," a longer and more elaborate 
 composition than he had hitherto attempted, 
 his reputation was largely enhanced, and his 
 [ 29 ] 
 
LONGFELLOW 
 
 position as the most popular poet of his gener- 
 ation was assured. The picturesque charm, 
 the tender sentiment, the imaginative sympa- 
 thy, the purity of tone of this sweetest of idyllic 
 poems, are known to all readers of English 
 poetry. 
 
 Happy at home, conscious of the ripening 
 of his own powers, in the enjoyment of well- 
 deserved fame, the course of Longfellow's 
 life ran smoothly on. His college duties gave 
 a regular routine to his days, but left him time 
 for his poetic pursuits, and for those occu- 
 pations and interests to which his disposition 
 most strongly inclined, and in which the fine 
 qualities of his nature were most attractively 
 displayed. He had his share in the common 
 experience of trials and sorrows. The death 
 of one of his little children touched his heart 
 deeply; but now as in the later time of abid- 
 ing sorrow, as Lowell truly said, 
 
 "the more 
 
 Fate tried his bastions, she but forced a door 
 Leading to sweeter manhood and more sound." 
 
 His journal, printed in the "Life" by his 
 brother, contains the record of the events of 
 [ 30 ] 
 
LONGFELLOW 
 
 these fortunate years, while the poems which 
 appeared in 1849 under the title of "The 
 Seaside and the Fireside" reveal the course of 
 his spiritual experience. In the beautiful 
 verses of " Dedication, " with which this little 
 volume begins, he addressed the multitude 
 of his known and unknown readers with such 
 frank and cordial recognition of his relation 
 to them as to make them more than ever his 
 friends, and in the noble poem of "The Build- 
 ing of the Ship," which immediately follows 
 the "Dedication," he rendered a great public 
 service, in appealing to the national sentiment 
 of his people with such an inspiring passion 
 of patriotic fervor as quickened faith and 
 strengthened confidence in the already threat- 
 ened union of the States. 
 
 No living poet had now so wide a circle of 
 readers, and his readers could not but enter- 
 tain for him a sentiment more personal and 
 affectionate than that which any other poet 
 awakened. It was not by depth or novelty 
 of thought that he interested them, nor did he 
 move them by passionate intensity of emotion, 
 or by profound spiritual insight, or by power 
 [ 31 ] 
 
LONGFELLOW 
 
 of dramatic representation and interpretation 
 of life. He set himself neither to propound 
 nor to solve the enigmas of existence. No, the 
 briefer poems by which he won and held the 
 hearts of his readers were the expression of 
 simple feeling, of natural emotion, not of ex- 
 ceptional spiritual experience, but of such as is 
 common to men of good intent. In exquisitely 
 modulated verse he continued to give form to 
 their vague ideals, and utterance to their 
 stammering aspirations. In revealing his own 
 pure and sincere nature, he helped others to 
 recognize their own better selves. The strength 
 and simplicity of his moral sentiment made his 
 poems the more attractive and helpful to the 
 mass of men, who care, as I have said, rather 
 for the ethical significance than for the art of 
 poetry; but the beauty of his verse enforced 
 its teaching, and the melody of its form was 
 consonant with the sweetness of its spirit. In 
 the series of delightful stories which year after 
 year he told in the successive parts of "The 
 Wayside Inn," there were few which did not 
 have for motive some wise lesson of life, some 
 doctrine of charity, gentleness, and faith. The 
 [ 32 ] 
 
LONGFELLOW 
 
 spirit of humanity, of large hope, of cheerful 
 confidence in good, this spirit into which he 
 was born, and of which his own nature was 
 one of the fairest outcomes, this spirit of the 
 New England of the early nineteenth century, 
 is embodied in his verse. 
 
 And the charm which his verse exercised 
 over its readers, especially over its American 
 readers, continued to be enhanced by the 
 variety and abundance of its sources. From 
 Sicily to Norway, from the castles of Spain to 
 the vineyards of France, from the strongholds 
 of the Rhine to the convents of Italy, the poet 
 was everywhere at home, not as a passing 
 guest, but as an intimate familiar with the 
 landscape, the life, and the legends of the land. 
 He begins one of his poems, 
 
 "Sweet the memory is to me 
 Of a land beyond the sea," 
 
 and he made his readers sharers in the sweet- 
 ness. In thus enlarging the field of vision for 
 his readers, in stimulating their historic imagi- 
 nation, and in quickening their sympathies 
 with their fellows of other lands, Longfellow 
 was unrivalled. His poems were a large con- 
 [ 33 ] 
 
LONGFELLOW 
 
 tribution to that world-literature, on which 
 Goethe set such store as the means of bring- 
 ing the nations into closer relations with each 
 other, by the increase of their mutual under- 
 standing and of their common sentiments. 
 
 Gratefully as the worth and beauty of his 
 work were generally recognized, Longfellow 
 did not escape from the penalties of success. 
 He had critics who. blinding themselves to the 
 essentially characteristic individuality of his 
 poetry, denied to him the possession of gen- 
 uine original powers, and sought to discover 
 defects alike in the substance and in the form 
 of his verse. His modest and sensitive nature 
 was hurt by their attacks, but his serenity 
 was little disturbed. The verdict of the more 
 competent judges, no less than that of the 
 uncritical public, went against them, and by 
 degrees the voices of depreciation and de- 
 traction became faint and silent. 
 
 "The Golden Legend," "The Song of 
 Hiawatha," "The Courtship of Miles Stand- 
 ish," were written and published between 1850 
 and 1860, and the peaceful, genial, hospitable 
 life ran on in its sunny and prosperous course, 
 [ 34 ] 
 
LONGFELLOW 
 
 for the greater part of each year at Craigie 
 House, and during the summer at Newport or 
 Nahant. In 1854 Longfellow resigned his 
 professorship, but happy domestic cares, the 
 frequent company of friends, many social en- 
 gagements, the ever fresh companionship of 
 books, the writing of poetry, filled the days with 
 various interests and abundant occupation. 
 
 On a day in June, 1861, he wrote in his 
 Journal: "A delicious summer-day. Stroll 
 in the sunshine, thanking God." The words 
 are, as it were, the summary of his happy life, 
 and mark its close. On the ninth of July 
 Mrs. Longfellow was in the library with her 
 two little girls, engaged in amusing them by 
 sealing up small packages of their curls which 
 she had just cut off. The windows were open, 
 and the summer air was blowing through the 
 room. A drop of the sealing-wax fell on her 
 light muslin dress and set it on fire. To save 
 her children she fled from them to the hall. 
 Her husband sped from his study to her help. 
 He succeeded in extinguishing the flames but 
 he was severely burned, and for her there was 
 no recovery. The next morning she died. 
 [ 35 ] 
 
LONGFELLOW 
 
 Calmly and resolutely Longfellow took up 
 the burden of life. He bore his grief with 
 manliness and silence. The admirable quali- 
 ties of his nature were never more apparent. 
 By degrees he resumed so far as was possible 
 his old habits of life, but with an ennobled 
 bearing, and unaffected serenity. In Febru- 
 ary, 1862, he writes in his journal: "The days 
 pass in dull monotony, and having nothing 
 to record I record nothing. A newspaper, a 
 novel, a vain attempt at more serious study, 
 and weariness that is all." But a week later 
 comes the entry "Translated the beautiful 
 Canto XXV of the Paradiso," and there could 
 not have been a more appropriate or more 
 healing task. For the next five years the trans- 
 lation of the "Divine Comedy" was to be his 
 chief occupation, and the main restorative of 
 health. In May, 1867, the work was finished, 
 and on its publication it at once took its place, 
 a place which it is likely to hold, as the most 
 faithful and scholarly of the metrical versions 
 of the poem. 
 
 As the years went on Longfellow became to 
 all outward seeming cheerful as of old, and 
 [ 36 ] 
 
LONGFELLOW 
 
 with perfect simplicity took his customary 
 delightful part in the society of his friends. 
 Again the life at Craigie House flowed on 
 in a peaceful current, but it was no longer a 
 summer stream. The light upon it was that 
 of the autumnal sun. Longfellow's fame was 
 steadily widening, and brought with it an 
 ever increasing burden of demands made upon 
 his time and strength by the visits or the let- 
 ters of a numberless host of strangers. The 
 penalty had its humorous side, but it was none 
 the less a penalty, exacted of the poet by the 
 great democracy of America and England 
 whose hearts he had touched, and who as- 
 sumed that the notoriety of his works justified 
 the treatment of their author as a public char- 
 acter. His courtesy and kindness were unfail- 
 ing, and his imaginative sympathy often led 
 him to make sacrifice of his time and strength 
 for the sake of giving pleasure to others. I 
 have told the story before, but it is worth re- 
 peating as an illustration of his invincible con- 
 siderateness for the feelings of men whom the 
 world is apt to rebuff, how one day when I 
 ventured to remonstrate with him for permit- 
 [ 37 ] 
 
LONGFELLOW 
 
 ting the devastation of his hours by one of the 
 most pertinacious and undeserving of habitual 
 visitors, he listened with a humorous smile, and 
 then rebuked me by saying, "Why, Charles, 
 who will be kind to him if I am not ? " 
 
 In 1868, in company with his daughters 
 and other friends, he once more, after an in- 
 terval of twenty-six years, visited Europe. He 
 was everywhere received with the heartiest 
 welcome, and as a guest of the highest distinc- 
 tion. The universities of Cambridge and of 
 Oxford each gave to him an honorary degree; 
 the Queen summoned him to Windsor; he 
 spent "two happy days with Tennyson;' 5 he 
 made a short visit to Dickens at Gadshill. 
 Expressions of regard and affection flowed in 
 upon him from high and low, and not only in 
 England, but on the Continent as well, he met 
 with constant evidence of honor and regard. 
 He returned to America in the autumn of 1869, 
 and speedily resumed the old habits of life at 
 home. "It is pleasant to get back to it," he 
 wrote, "and yet sad." 
 
 He had enjoyed the experience of fame, but 
 adulation and the knowledge of the admira- 
 [ 38 ] 
 
LONGFELLOW 
 
 tion in which he was held abroad as well as at 
 home, had not the least effect to quicken van- 
 ity or self -consciousness. The essential quali- 
 ties of his nature preserved him from all evil 
 consequences of flattery. He remained un- 
 touched by them, as simple in manner as in 
 heart, intrinsically modest and sound-minded. 
 He was "a man not to be spoiled by prosperity." 
 
 The approach of old age did not chill Long- 
 fellow's heart or diminish his poetic impulse 
 and skill. The poems in the little volume of 
 "Ultima Thule," published in 1880, bore wit- 
 ness that the prayer of the motto from Horace 
 on the title-page had been granted, the 
 prayer for an old age with unimpaired mind, 
 not without honor nor lacking song. 
 
 Attended by all that should accompany old 
 age, life drew to its close. In the autumn of 
 1881 he had an attack of illness, which left 
 him in a condition of nervous prostration and 
 suffering. Neither pain nor sleeplessness could 
 overcome his patience ; the serenity of his soul 
 was unclouded, but his desire for death was 
 strong. In March, 1882, a chill caught in an 
 afternoon walk on his veranda brought on a 
 [ 39 ] 
 
LONGFELLOW 
 
 sharp attack of illness, his strength failed 
 rapidly, and after five days, on Friday, the 24th 
 of March, he died. Never had a poet been so 
 widely loved, never was the death of a poet 
 so widely mourned. 
 
 At the burial, Mr. Emerson, whose own 
 death was to follow in less than five weeks, 
 and whose powers of memory were already 
 shattered, standing near the grave, said to his 
 companion, "I cannot recall the name of our 
 friend, but he was a good man." Longfellow's 
 poetry is the image of his goodness. Its music, 
 the harmony of its verse and thought, the sim- 
 plicity of its expression, the sincerity of its sen- 
 timent, are all traits of character no less than 
 of genius. Like most other poets he doubt- 
 less wrote much that will not last, and as his 
 barque floats down the current of time there 
 will be jettison of part of the cargo. But what 
 remains will be dear to future generations 
 as to ours, and the lovers of the poetry will 
 then, as now, be lovers of the poet. 
 
AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL POEMS 
 
THE BATTLE OF LOVELL'S POND 1 
 
 COLD, cold is the north wind and rude is the blast 
 
 That sweeps like a hurricane loudly and fast, 
 
 As it moans through the tall waving pines lone and 
 
 drear, 
 Sighs a requiem sad o'er the warrior's bier. 
 
 The war-whoop is still, and the savage's yell 
 
 Has sunk into silence along the wild dell; 
 
 The din of the battle, the tumult, is o'er, 
 
 And the war-clarion's voice is now heard no more. 
 
 1 These verses were written by Longfellow in his fourteenth year, 
 and have interest as the first of his writing to appear in print. They 
 were published in the Portland Gazette November 17, 1820. 
 
 The battle to which they refer was famous in the annals of 
 Maine and New Hampshire, and the story of it was fitted to touch 
 a boy's fancy. It was one in the long series of unhappy fights be- 
 tween the settlers in the wild border region of Maine and the Indians 
 whom they dispossessed and maltreated. In the spring of 1724 a 
 volunteer company of forty-six men, under the command of Captain 
 John Lovewell, who in the preceding winter had conducted two suc- 
 cessful expeditions against the Indians, set out to attack the Indian 
 villages on the upper part of the Saco River. On the third of May, 
 near a large pond, they met a considerable body of Indians and en- 
 gaged in a battle in which Lovewell and more than thirty of his men 
 were killed. It was the last serious fight with the Indians in this 
 part of the country. 
 
 In 1825 the hundredth anniversary of the battle was commemorated 
 at Fryeburg, Maine, and the still youthful poet wrote an Ode for the 
 occasion. 
 
PRELUDE TO 
 
 The warriors that fought for their country, and bled, 
 Have sunk to their rest; the damp earth is their bed; 
 No stone tells the place where their ashes repose, 
 Nor points out the spot from the graves of their foes. 
 
 They died in their glory, surrounded by fame, 
 And Victory's loud trump their death did proclaim; 
 They are dead; but they live in each Patriot's breast, 
 And their names are engraven on honor's bright crest. 
 
 PRELUDE TO VOICES OF THE NIGHT 
 
 PLEASANT it was, when woods were green 
 
 And winds were soft and low, 
 To lie amid some sylvan scene, 
 Where, the long drooping boughs between, 
 Shadows dark and sunlight sheen 
 Alternate come and go; 
 
 Or where the denser grove receives 
 
 No sunlight from above, 
 But the dark foliage interweaves 
 In one unbroken roof of leaves, 
 Underneath whose sloping eaves 
 
 The shadows hardly move. 
 
 Beneath some patriarchal tree 
 
 I lay upon the ground; 
 His hoary arms uplifted he, 
 And all the broad leaves over me 
 [ 44 ] 
 
VOICES OF THE NIGHT 
 
 Clapped their little hands in glee, 
 With one continuous sound; 
 
 A slumberous sound, a sound that brings 
 
 The feelings of a dream, 
 As of innumerable wings, 
 As, when a bell no longer swings, 
 Faint the hollow murmur rings 
 
 O'er meadow, lake, and stream. 
 
 And dreams of that which cannot die, 
 
 Bright visions, came to me, 
 As lapped in thought I used to lie, 
 And gaze into the summer sky, 
 Where the sailing clouds went by, 
 
 Like ships upon the sea; 
 
 Dreams that the soul of youth engage 
 
 Ere Fancy has been quelled; 
 Old legends of the monkish page, 
 Traditions of the saint and sage, 
 Tales that have the rime of age, 
 
 And chronicles of eld. 
 
 And, loving still these quaint old themes, 
 
 Even in the city's throng 
 I feel the freshness of the streams, 
 That, crossed by shades and sunny gleams, 
 Water the green land of dreams, 
 
 The holy land of song. 
 
PRELUDE TO 
 
 Therefore, at Pentecost, which brings 
 The Spring, clothed like a bride, 
 
 When nestling buds unfold their wings, 
 
 And bishop's-caps have golden rings, 
 
 Musing upon many things, 
 I sought the woodlands wide. 
 
 The green trees whispered low and mild; 
 
 It was a sound of joy! 
 They were my playmates when a child, 
 And rocked me in their arms so wild! 
 Still they looked at me and smiled, 
 
 As if I were a boy; 
 
 And ever whispered, mild and low, 
 "Come, be a child once more!" 
 
 And waved their long arms to and fro, 
 
 And beckoned solemnly and slow; 
 
 Oh, I could not choose but go 
 Into the woodlands hoar, 
 
 Into the blithe and breathing air, 
 
 Into the solemn wood, 
 Solemn and silent everywhere! 
 Nature with folded hands seemed there. 
 Kneeling at her evening prayer! 
 
 Like one in prayer I stood. 
 
 Before me rose an avenue 
 Of tall and sombrous pines; 
 [ 46 ] 
 
VOICES OF THE NIGHT 
 
 Abroad their fan-like branches grew, 
 And, where the sunshine darted through, 
 Spread a vapor soft and blue, 
 In long and sloping lines. 
 
 And, falling on my weary brain, 
 
 Like a fast-falling shower, 
 The dreams of youth came back again, 
 Low lispings of the summer rain, 
 Dropping on the ripened grain, 
 
 As once upon the flower. 
 
 Visions of childhood! Stay, oh, stay! 
 
 Ye were so sweet and wild! 
 And distant voices seemed to say, 
 "It cannot be! They pass away! 
 Other themes demand thy lay; 
 
 Thou art no more a child! 
 
 " The land of Song within thee lies, 
 
 Watered by living springs; 
 The lids of Fancy's sleepless eyes 
 Are gates unto that Paradise; 
 Holy thoughts, like stars, arise; 
 Its clouds are angels' wings. 
 
 "Learn, that henceforth thy song shall be, 
 
 Not mountains capped with snow, 
 Nor forests sounding like the sea, 
 Nor rivers flowing ceaselessly, 
 [ 47 ] 
 
VOICES OF THE NIGHT 
 
 Where the woodlands bend to see 
 The bending heavens below. 
 
 * There is a forest where the din 
 
 Of iron branches sounds; 
 A mighty river roars between, 
 And whosoever looks therein 
 Sees the heavens all black with sin, 
 
 Sees not its depths nor bounds. 
 
 "Athwart the swinging branches cast, 
 
 Soft rays of sunshine pour; 
 Then comes the fearful wintry blast; 
 Our hopes, like withered leaves, fall fast; 
 Pallid lips say, 'It is past! 
 
 We can return no more!' 
 
 "Look, then, into thy heart, and write! 
 
 Yes, into life's deep stream! 
 All forms of sorrow and delight, 
 All solemn Voices of the Night, 
 That can soothe thee, or affright, 
 
 Be these henceforth thy theme." 
 
 [ 48 ] 
 
A PSALM OF LIFE 
 
 A PSALM OF LIFE 
 
 WHAT 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; 
 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 marches to the grave. 
 
 In the world's broad field of battle, 
 
 In the bivouac of Life, 
 Be not like dumb, driven cattle! 
 
 Be a hero in the strife! 
 
WRECK OF THE HESPERUS 
 
 Trust no Future, howe'er pleasant! 
 
 Let the dead Past bury its dead ! 
 Act, act in the living Present ! 
 
 Heart within, and God o'erhead! 
 
 Lives 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. 
 
 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, 
 [ 50 ] 
 
WRECK OF THE HESPERUS 
 
 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. 
 
 " Last night, the moon had a golden ring, 
 
 And to-night no moon we see ! " 
 The skipper, he blew a whiff from his pipe, 
 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 steed, 
 
 Then leaped her cable's length. 
 
 " Come hither ! come hither ! my little daughter, 
 And do not tremble so; 
 [ 51 ] 
 
WRECK OF THE HESPERUS 
 
 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 ? " 
 "'Tis 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 ? " 
 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; 
 [ 52 ] 
 
WRECK OF THE HESPERUS 
 
 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; 
 
 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, 
 [ 53 ] 
 
THE VILLAGE BLACKSMITH 
 
 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! 
 
 THE VILLAGE BLACKSMITH 1 
 
 UNDER a spreading chestnut-tree 
 
 The village smithy stands; 
 The smith, a mighty man is he, 
 
 With large and sinewy hands; 
 And the muscles of his brawny arms 
 
 Are strong as iron bands. 
 
 His hair is crisp, and black, and long, 
 His face is like the tan; 
 
 1 The suggestion of this 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 pro- 
 tests of Mr. Longfellow and others, was removed in 1876, on the 
 ground that it took up too much of the road. 
 E 54 ] 
 
THE VILLAGE BLACKSMITH 
 
 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. 
 
 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 watch 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. 
 
 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; 
 [ 65 ] 
 
TO THE RIVER CHARLES 
 
 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 ! 
 
 Thus at the flaming forge of life 
 Our fortunes must be wrought; 
 
 Thus on its sounding anvil shaped 
 Each burning deed and thought. 
 
 TO THE RIVER CHARLES 
 
 RIVER! that in silence windest 
 
 Through the meadows, bright and free, 
 
 Till at length thy rest thou findest 
 In the bosom of the sea! 
 
 Four long years of mingled feeling, 
 Half in rest, and half in strife, 
 
 I have seen thy waters stealing 
 Onward, like the stream of life. 1 
 
 1 The river Charles flows in view of Craigie House, which Mr. 
 Longfellow began to occupy in the summer of 1837. 
 [ 56 ] 
 
TO THE RIVER CHARLES 
 
 Thou hast taught me, Silent River! 
 
 Many a lesson, deep and long; 
 Thou hast been a generous giver; 
 
 I can give thee but a song. 
 
 Oft in sadness and in illness, 
 
 I have watched thy current glide, 
 
 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. 
 
 1 These three friends were Charles Sumner, Charles Folsom, and 
 Charles Amory. 
 
 [ 57 ] 
 
THE BRIDGE 
 
 Friends my soul with joy remembers ! 
 
 How like quivering flames they start, 
 When I fan the living embers 
 
 On the hearthstone of my heart ! 
 
 'Tis for this, thou Silent River! 
 
 That my spirit leans to thee; 
 Thou hast been a generous giver, 
 
 Take this idle song from me. 
 
 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, 
 
 1 The poem when first published in 1845 was entitled The Bridge 
 over the Charles, the river which separates Cambridge from Boston. 
 The old wooden bridge has now, 1906, given place to one of stone. 
 The " flaming furnace " referred to in the third stanza was that of 
 an iron foundry on the so-called Milldam between Boston and 
 Brookline. 
 
THE BRIDGE 
 
 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. 
 
 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! 
 
 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, 
 [ 69 ] 
 
THE BRIDGE 
 
 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. 
 
 I see the long procession 
 
 Still passing to and fro, 
 The young heart hot and restless, 
 
 And the old subdued and slow! 
 
 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. 
 [ 60 ] 
 
THE ROPEWALK 
 
 THE ROPEWALK. 1 
 
 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 so thin 
 
 Dropping, each a hempen bulk. 
 
 At the end, an open door; 
 Squares of sunshine on the floor 
 
 Light the long and dusky lane; 
 And the whirring of a wheel, 
 Dull and drowsy, makes me feel 
 
 All its spokes are 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 
 
 1 The Ropewalk stood on the further end of the open tract, of 
 *hieh the greater part is now, 1906, known as the Soldiers' Field 
 [ 61 ] 
 
THE ROPEWALK 
 
 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 mounts apace, 
 With it mounts her own fair face, 
 
 As at some magician's spell. 
 
 Then an old man in a tower, 
 Ringing 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; 
 Ah ! it is the gallows-tree ! 
 Breath of Christian charity, 
 
 Blow, and sweep it from the earth ! 
 [ 62 ] 
 
A GLEAM OF SUNSHINE 
 
 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. 
 
 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, 
 [ 63 ] 
 
A GLEAM OF SUNSHINE 
 
 Like footprints hidden by a brook, 
 But seen on either side. 
 
 Here runs the highway to the town; 
 
 There the green lane descends, 
 Through which I walked to church with thee, 
 
 O gentlest of my friends ! 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: 
 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. 
 
 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 barberries and wild vines 
 clustering over the old stone walls." 
 
 [ 64 ] 
 
A GLEAM OF SUNSHINE 
 
 Through the closed blinds the golden sun 
 
 Poured in a dusty beam, 
 Like the celestial ladder seen 
 
 By Jacob in his dream. 
 
 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; 
 [ 65 ] 
 
TO A CHILD 
 
 This memory brightens o'er the past, 
 As when the sun, concealed 
 
 Behind some cloud that near us hangs, 
 Shines on a distant field. 
 
 TO A CHILD 
 
 DEAR Child ! how radiant on thy mother's knee, 
 
 With merry-making eyes and jocund smiles, 
 
 Thou gazest at the painted tiles, 
 
 Whose figures grace, 
 
 With many a grotesque form and face, 
 
 The ancient chimney of thy nursery! 
 
 The lady with the gay macaw, 
 
 The dancing girl, the brave bashaw 
 
 With bearded lip and chin; 
 
 And, leaning idly o'er his gate, 
 
 Beneath the imperial fan of state, 
 
 The Chinese mandarin. 
 
 With what a look of proud command 
 Thou shakest in thy little hand 
 The coral rattle with its silver bells, 
 Making a merry tune ! 
 Thousands of years in Indian seas 
 That coral grew, by slow degrees, 
 Until some deadly and wild monsoon 
 Dashed it on Coromandel's sand ! 
 Those silver bells 
 
 t 66 ] 
 
TO A CHILD 
 
 Reposed of yore, 
 
 As shapeless ore, 
 
 Far down in the deep-sunken wells 
 
 Of darksome mines, 
 
 In some obscure and sunless place, 
 
 Beneath huge Chimborazo's base, 
 
 Or Potosi's o'erhanging pines! 
 
 And thus for thee, O little child, 
 
 Through many a danger and escape, 
 
 The tall ships passed the stormy cape; 
 
 For thee in foreign lands remote, 
 
 Beneath a burning, tropic clime, 
 
 The Indian peasant, chasing the wild goat, 
 
 Himself as swift and wild, 
 
 In falling, clutched the frail arbute, 
 
 The fibres of whose shallow root, 
 
 Uplifted from the soil, betrayed 
 
 The silver veins beneath it laid, 
 
 The buried treasures of the miser, Time. 
 
 But, lo! thy door is left ajar; 
 Thou hearest footsteps from afar; 
 And, at the sound, 
 Thou turnest round 
 With quick and questioning eyes, 
 Like one who, in a foreign land, 
 Beholds on every hand 
 Some source of wonder and surprise! 
 And, restlessly, impatiently, 
 Thou strivest, strugglest, to be free. 
 [ 67 ] 
 
TO A CHILD 
 
 The four walls of thy nursery 
 
 Are now like prison walls to thee. 
 
 No more thy mother's smiles, 
 
 No more the painted tiles, 
 
 Delight thee, nor the playthings on the floor, 
 
 That won thy little, beating heart before; 
 
 Thou strugglest for the open door. 
 
 Through these once solitary halls 
 
 Thy pattering footstep falls. 
 
 The sound of thy merry voice 
 
 Makes the old walls 
 
 Jubilant, and they rejoice 
 
 With the joy of thy young heart, 
 
 O'er the light of whose gladness 
 
 No shadows of sadness 
 
 From the sombre background of memory start 
 
 Once, ah! once, within these walls, 
 One whom memory oft recalls, 
 The Father of his Country, dwelt. 
 And yonder meadows broad and damp 
 The fires of the besieging camp 
 Encircled with a burning belt. 
 Up and down these echoing stairs, 
 Heavy with the weight of cares, 
 Sounded his majestic tread; 
 Yes! within this very room 
 Sat he in those hours of gloom, 
 Weary both in heart and head. 
 [ 68 ] 
 
TO A CHILD 
 
 But what are these grave thoughts to thee ? 
 
 Out, out! into the open air! 
 
 Thy only dream is liberty, 
 
 Thou carest little how or where. 
 
 I see thee eager at thy play, 
 
 Now shouting to the apples on the tree, 
 
 With cheeks as round and red as they; 
 
 And now among the yellow stalks, 
 
 Among the flowering shrubs and plants, 
 
 As restless as the bee. 
 
 Along the garden walks, 
 
 The tracks of thy small carriage-wheels I trace; 
 
 And see at every turn how they efface 
 
 Whole villages of sand-roofed tents, 
 
 That rise like golden domes 
 
 Above the cavernous and secret homes 
 
 Of wandering and nomadic tribes of ants. 
 
 Ah, cruel little Tamerlane, 
 
 Who, with thy dreadful reign, 
 
 Dost persecute and overwhelm 
 
 These hapless Troglodytes of thy realm! 
 
 What ! tired already ! with those suppliant looks, 
 And voice more beautiful than a poet's books 
 Or murmuring sound of water as it flows, 
 Thou comest back to parley with repose! 
 This rustic seat in the old apple-tree, 
 With its o'erhanging golden canopy 
 Of leaves illuminate with autumnal hues, 
 And shining with the argent light of dews, 
 [ 69 ] 
 
TO A CHILD 
 
 Shall for a season be our place of rest. 
 Beneath us, like an oriole's pendent nest, 
 From which the laughing birds have taken wing, 
 By thee abandoned, hangs thy vacant swing. 
 Dream-like the waters of the river gleam; 
 A sailless vessel drops adown the stream, 
 And like it, to a sea as wide and deep, 
 Thou driftest gently down the tides of sleep. 
 
 child! O new-born denizen 
 Of life's great city ! on thy head 
 The glory of the morn is shed, 
 Like a celestial benison! 
 
 Here at the portal thou dost stand, 
 And with thy little hand 
 Thou openest the mysterious gate 
 Into the future's undiscovered land. 
 
 1 see its valves expand, 
 As at the touch of Fate ! 
 
 Into those realms of love and hate, 
 
 Into that darkness blank and drear, 
 
 By some prophetic feeling taught, 
 
 I launch the bold, adventurous thought, 
 
 Freighted with hope and fear; 
 
 As upon subterranean streams, 
 
 In caverns unexplored and dark, 
 
 Men sometimes launch a fragile bark, 
 
 Laden with flickering fire, 
 
 And watch its swift receding beams, 
 
 [ 70 ] 
 
TO A CHILD 
 
 Until at length they disappear, 
 And in the distant dark expire. 
 
 By what astrology of fear or hope 
 
 Dare I to cast thy horoscope ! 
 
 Like the new moon thy life appears; 
 
 A little strip of silver light, 
 
 And widening outward into night 
 
 The shadowy disk of future years; 
 
 And yet upon its outer rim, 
 
 A luminous circle, faint and dim, 
 
 And scarcely visible to us here, 
 
 Rounds and completes the perfect sphere; 
 
 A prophecy and intimation, 
 
 A pale and feeble adumbration, 
 
 Of the great world of light, that lies 
 
 Behind all human destinies. 
 
 Ah! if thy fate, with anguish fraught, 
 Should be to wet the dusty soil 
 With the hot tears and sweat of toil, 
 To struggle with imperious thought, 
 Until the overburdened brain, 
 Weary with labor, faint with pain, 
 Like a jarred pendulum, retain 
 Only its motion, not its power, 
 Remember, in that perilous hour, 
 When most afflicted and oppressed, 
 From labor there shall come forth rest. 
 
 [ 71 ] 
 
TO A CHILD 
 
 And if a more auspicious fate 
 
 On thy advancing steps await, 
 
 Still let it ever be" thy pride 
 
 To linger by the laborer's side; 
 
 With words of sympathy or song 
 
 To cheer the dreary march along 
 
 Of the great army of the poor, 
 
 O'er desert sand, o'er dangerous moor. 
 
 Nor to thyself the task shall be 
 
 Without reward; for thou shalt learn 
 
 The wisdom early to discern 
 
 True beauty in utility; 
 
 As great Pythagoras of yore, 
 
 Standing beside the blacksmith's door, 
 
 And hearing the hammers, as they smote 
 
 The anvils with a different note, 
 
 Stole from the varying tones, that hung 
 
 Vibrant on every iron tongue, 
 
 The secret of the sounding wire, 
 
 And formed the seven-chorded lyre. 
 
 Enough! I will not play the Seer; 
 I will no longer strive to ope 
 The mystic volume, where appear 
 The herald Hope, forerunning Fear, 
 And Fear, the pursuivant of Hope. 
 Thy destiny remains untold; 
 For, like Acestes* shaft of old, 
 The swift thought kindles as it flies, 
 And burns to ashes in the skies. 
 I 72 ] 
 
THE OPEN WINDOW 
 
 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. 
 
 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; 
 
 1 The old house by the lindens is what was known as the Lechmere 
 house which stood on Brattle Street, at the corner 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 shown on which the Baroness wrote her name with a 
 diamond. 
 
 [ 73 ] 
 
CHURCHYARD AT CAMBRIDGE 
 
 But the voices of the children 
 Will be heard in dreams alone ! 
 
 And the boy that walked beside me, 
 
 He could not understand 
 Why closer in mine, ah ! closer, 
 
 I pressed his warm, soft hand ! 
 
 IN THE CHURCHYARD AT CAMBRIDGE 
 
 IN the village churchyard she lies, 
 Dust is in her beautiful eyes, 
 
 No more she breathes, nor feels, nor stirs; 
 At her feet and at her head 
 Lies a slave to attend the dead, 
 
 But their dust is white as hers. 
 
 Was she, a lady of high degree, 
 So much in love with the vanity 
 
 And foolish pomp of this world of ours ? 
 Or was it Christian charity, 
 And lowliness and humility, 
 
 The richest and rarest of all dowers ? 
 
 Who shall tell us ? No one speaks ; 
 No color shoots into those cheeks, 
 
 Either of anger or of pride, 
 At the rude question we have asked; 
 Nor will the mystery be unmasked 
 
 By those who are sleeping at her side. 
 [ 74 ] 
 
THE BURIAL OF THE POET 
 
 Hereafter ? And do you think to look 
 On the terrible pages of that Book 
 
 To find her failings, faults, and errors ? 
 Ah, you will then have other cares, 
 In your own shortcomings and despairs, 
 
 In your own secret sins and terrors ! 
 
 THE BURIAL OF THE POET 1 
 
 IN the old churchyard of his native town, 
 And in the ancestral tomb beside the wall, 
 We laid him in the sleep that comes to all, 
 And left him to his rest and his renown. 
 
 The snow was falling, as if Heaven dropped down 
 White flowers of Paradise to strew his pall ; 
 The dead around him seemed to wake, and call 
 His name, as worthy of so white a crown. 
 
 And now the moon is shining on the scene, 
 And the broad sheet of snow is written o'er 
 With shadows cruciform of leafless trees, 
 
 As once the winding-sheet of Saladin 
 
 With chapters of the Koran ; but, ah ! more 
 Mysterious and triumphant signs are these. 
 
 1 The Poet was Richard Henry Dana, author of "The Buccaneer' 
 and other memorable poems. He died in 1879. 
 
THE TWO ANGELS 
 
 THE TWO ANGELS 1 
 
 Two angels, one of Life and one of Death, 
 Passed o'er our village as the morning broke; 
 
 The dawn was on their faces, and beneath, 
 
 The sombre houses hearsed with plumes of smoke. 
 
 Their attitude and aspect were the same, 
 Alike their features and their robes of white; 
 
 But one was crowned with amaranth, as with flame, 
 And one with asphodels, like flakes of light. 
 
 I saw them pause on their celestial way; 
 
 Then said I, with deep fear and doubt oppressed, 
 " Beat not so loud, my heart, lest thou betray 
 The place where thy beloved are at rest!" 
 
 And he who wore the crown of asphodels, 
 Descending, at my door began to knock, 
 
 And my soul sank within me, as in wells 
 
 The waters sink before an earthquake's shock. 
 
 I recognized the nameless agony, 
 
 The terror and the tremor and the pain, 
 
 That oft before had filled or haunted me, 
 
 And now returned with threefold strength again. 
 
 1 This poem was written, as Mr. Longfellow told in a letter, " on 
 the birth of my younger daughter, and the death of the young and 
 beautiful wife of my neighbor and friend, the poet Lowell." The 
 date was the twenty-seventh of October, 1853. 
 
 [ 76 ] 
 
THE TWO ANGELS 
 
 The door I opened to my heavenly guest, 
 
 And listened, for I thought I heard God's voice; 
 
 And, knowing whatsoe'er he sent was best, 
 Dared neither to lament nor to rejoice. 
 
 Then with a smile, that filled the house with light, 
 "My errand is not Death, but Life," he said; 
 
 And ere I answered, passing out of sight, 
 On his celestial embassy he sped. 
 
 'T was at thy door, O friend ! and not at mine, 
 The angel with the amaranthine wreath, 
 
 Pausing, descended, and with voice divine 
 
 Whispered a word that had a sound like Death. 
 
 Then fell upon the house a sudden gloom, 
 A shadow on those features fair and thin; 
 
 And softly, from that hushed and darkened room, 
 Two angels issued, where but one went in. 
 
 All is of God ! If he but wave his hand, 
 
 The mists collect, the rain falls thick and loud, 
 
 Till, with a smile of light on sea and land, 
 Lo! he looks back from the departing cloud. 
 
 Angels of Life and Death alike are his; 
 
 Without his leave they pass no threshold o'er; 
 Who, then, would wish or dare, believing this, 
 
 Against his messengers to shut the door? 
 [ 77 ] 
 
RESIGNATION 
 
 RESIGNATION * 
 
 THERE is no flock, however watched and tended, 
 
 But one dead lamb is there! 
 There is no fireside, howsoe'er defended, 
 
 But has one vacant chair! 
 
 The air is full of farewells to the dying, 
 
 And mournings for the dead; 
 The heart of Rachel, for her children crying, 
 
 Will not be comforted! 
 
 Let us be patient! These severe afflictions 
 
 Not from the ground arise, 
 But oftentimes celestial benedictions 
 
 Assume this dark disguise. 
 
 We see but dimly through the mists and vapors; 
 
 Amid these earthly damps 
 What seem to us but sad, funereal tapers 
 
 May be heaven's distant lamps. 
 
 There is no Death ! What seems so is transition ; 
 
 This life of mortal breath 
 Is but a suburb of the life elysian, 
 
 Whose portal we call Death. 
 
 1 Written in the autumn of 1848, after the death of his little daughter 
 Fanny. There is a passage in the poet's diary, under date of Novem- 
 ber 12, in which he says: "I feel very sad to-day. I miss very much 
 my dear little Fanny. An inappeasable longing to see her comes over 
 me at times, which I can hardly control." 
 
 [ 78 ] 
 
RESIGNATION 
 
 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. 
 
 Day after day we think what she is doing 
 
 In those bright realms of air; 
 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; 
 
 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. 
 [ 79 ] 
 
SEASIDE AND FIRESIDE 
 
 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. 
 
 DEDICATION TO THE VOLUME ENTITLED 
 THE SEASIDE AND THE FIRESIDE " 
 
 As one who, walking in the twilight gloom, 
 Hears round about him voices as it darkens, 
 
 And seeing not the forms from which they come, 
 Pauses from time to time, and turns and hearkens ; 
 
 So walking here in twilight, O my friends ! 
 
 I hear your voices, softened by the distance, 
 And pause, and turn to listen, as each sends 
 
 His words of friendship, comfort, and assistance. 
 
 If any thought of mine, or sung or told, 
 Has ever given delight or consolation, 
 
 Ye have repaid me back a thousand-fold, 
 By every friendly sign and salutation. 
 
 Thanks for the sympathies that ye have shown! 
 Thanks for each kindly word, each silent token, 
 [ 80 ] 
 
SEASIDE AND FIRESIDE 
 
 That teaches me, when seeming most alone, 
 
 Friends are around us, though no word be spoken. 
 
 Kind messages, that pass from land to land; 
 
 Kind letters, that betray the heart's deep history, 
 In which we feel the pressure of a hand, 
 
 One touch of fire, and all the rest is mystery! 
 
 The pleasant books, that silently among 
 
 Our household treasures take familiar places, 
 
 And are to us as if a living tongue 
 
 Spake from the printed leaves or pictured faces! 
 
 Perhaps on earth I never shall behold, 
 
 With eye of sense, your outward form and semblance; 
 Therefore to me ye never will grow old, 
 
 But live forever young in my remembrance ! 
 
 Never grow old, nor change, nor pass away! 
 
 Your gentle voices will flow on forever, 
 When life grows bare and tarnished with decay, 
 
 As through a leafless landscape flows a river. 
 
 Not chance of birth or place has made us friends, 
 Being oftentimes of different tongues and nations, 
 
 But the endeavor for the selfsame ends, 
 
 With the same hopes, and fears, and aspirations. 
 
 Therefore I hope to join your seaside walk, 
 Saddened, and mostly silent, with emotion; 
 [ 81 ] 
 
MY LOST YOUTH 
 
 Not interrupting with intrusive talk 
 
 The grand, majestic symphonies of ocean. 
 
 Therefore I hope, as no unwelcome guest, 
 
 At your warm fireside, when the lamps are lighted, 
 
 To have my place reserved among the rest, 
 Nor stand as one unsought and uninvited ! 
 
 MY LOST YOUTH 
 
 OFTEN I think of the beautiful town 
 
 That is seated by the sea; * 
 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 Under the date of March 29, 1855, Longfellow notes in his Diary: 
 M At night, as I lie in bed, a poem comes into my mind a memory 
 of Portland, my native town, the city by the sea." And the next day 
 he makes the following entry: "Wrote the poem, and am rather 
 pleased with the bringing in of the two lines of the old Lapland song 
 
 A boy's will is the wind's will 
 
 And the thoughts of youth are long, long thoughts." 
 
 The lines are to be found in a Latin treatise entitled Lapponea, 
 published in 1674, being a description of Lapland and its people, 
 by Johannes Scheffer, Professor at Upsala. Chapter xxv relates to 
 the marriage customs of the Lapps, and a nuptial song is given in 
 the original Lappish in which the words occur that are translated as 
 follows: "Puerorum voluntas, voluntas venti, juvenum cogitationes, 
 k>ngae cogitationes." 
 
 [ 82 ] 
 
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 83 ] 
 
MY LOST YOUTH 
 
 I remember the sea-fight l far away, 
 
 How it thundered o'er the tide! 
 And 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, 
 And 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 
 
 1 In 1813, when Longfellow was a boy of six, there was an engage- 
 ment off the harbor of Portland between the American brig Enter- 
 prise 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 Boxer with her. 
 t 84 ] 
 
MY LOST YOUTH 
 
 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; 
 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." 
 
 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, 
 [ 85 ] 
 
BIRTHDAY OF AGASSIZ 
 
 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 FIFTIETH BIRTHDAY OF AGASSIZ 1 
 
 MAY 28, 1857. 
 IT was fifty years ago 
 
 In the pleasant month of May, 
 In the beautiful Pays de Vaud, 
 
 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." 
 
 And he wandered away and away 
 With Nature, the dear old nurse, 
 
 Who sang to him night and day 
 The rhymes of the universe. 
 
 1 Louis John Rudolph Agassiz, the great naturalist and teacher, 
 was born in Switzerland, May 28, 1807, and died at Cambridge, 
 Massachusetts, December 14, 1873. 
 
 [ 86 ] 
 
HAWTHORNE 
 
 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 of old, 
 And the rush of mountain streams 
 
 From glaciers clear and cold; 
 
 And the mother at home says, "Hark! 
 
 For his voice I listen and yearn; 
 It is growing late and dark, 
 
 And my boy does not return!" 
 
 HAWTHORNE 
 
 MAY 23, 1864. 1 
 
 How beautiful it was, that one bright day 
 In the long week of rain! 
 
 1 The date is that of the burial of Hawthorne. The poem was writ- 
 ten just a month later. Mr. Longfellow wrote to Mr. Fields : "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." 
 
 [ 87 ] 
 
HAWTHORNE 
 
 Though all its splendor could not chase away 
 The omnipresent pain. 
 
 The lovely town was white with apple-blooms, 
 
 And the great elms overhead 
 Dark shadows wove on their aerial looms 
 
 Shot through with golden thread. 
 
 Across the meadows, by the gray old manse, 
 
 The historic river flowed: 
 I was as one who wanders in a trance, 
 
 Unconscious of his road. 
 
 The faces of familiar friends seemed strange; 
 
 Their voices I could hear, 
 And yet the words they uttered seemed to change 
 
 Their meaning to my ear. 
 
 For the one face I looked for was not there, 
 
 The one low voice was mute; 
 Only an unseen presence filled the air, 
 
 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, 
 [ 88 ] 
 
THREE FRIENDS OF MINE 
 
 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! 
 
 THREE FRIENDS OF MINE 
 
 WHEN 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; 
 
 1 These sonnets record the poet's friendship with Cornelius Con- 
 way Felton, once Professor of Greek, afterward President of Harvard 
 College, Louis Agassiz and Charles Sumner. The second and third 
 sonnets were written at Nahant, where both Longfellow and Agassiz 
 had cottages. 
 
 [ 89 ] 
 
THREE FRIENDS OF MINE 
 
 I cannot find them. Nothing now is left 
 But a majestic memory. They meanwhile 
 Wander 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, 
 So wholly Greek wast thou in thy serene 
 
 And childlike joy of life, O Philhellene! 
 
 Around thee would have swarmed the Attic bees; 
 Homer had been thy friend, or Socrates, 
 And Plato welcomed thee to his demesne. 
 
 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 ! 
 
 in 
 
 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; 
 [ 90 ] 
 
THREE FRIENDS OF MINE 
 
 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 ? 
 
 IV 
 
 River, 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 
 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. 
 
 v 
 
 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, 
 1 Mount Auburn Cemetery lies near the river bank. 
 
THE HERONS OF ELMWOOD 
 
 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. 
 
 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 Elmwood 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. 
 
 1 Elmwood, a short distance from Ixmgfellow's house, was the 
 home of his brother poet and friend, James Russell Lowell. 
 
 [ 92 ] 
 
THE HERONS OF ELMWOOD 
 
 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 ; 
 
 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 better. 
 
 Sing to him, say to him, here at his gate, 
 
 Where the boughs of the stately elms are meeting, 
 
 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. 
 [ 93 ] 
 
THE CHILDREN'S HOUR 
 
 THE CHILDREN'S HOUR 
 
 BETWEEN the dark and the daylight, 
 When the night is beginning to lower, 
 
 Comes 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 AUegra, 
 And Edith with golden hair. 
 
 A whisper, and then a silence: 
 Yet I know by their merry eyes, 
 
 They are plotting and planning together 
 To take me by surprise. 
 
 A sudden rush from the stairway, 
 A sudden raid from the hall! 
 
 By three doors left unguarded 
 They enter my castle wall! 
 
 They climb up into my turret, 
 
 O'er the arms and back of my chair; 
 [ 94 ] 
 
THE CHILDREN'S HOUR 
 
 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! 
 
 Do you think, O blue-eyed banditti, 
 Because you have scaled the wall, 
 
 Such an old moustache 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! 
 
 1 Near Bingen on the Rhine is a little square Mouse-Tower, so 
 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 Hatto, who had 
 been cruel to the people, was attacked in the tower by a great army 
 of rats and mice. See Souther's famous poem, Bishop Hatto. 
 
 [ 95 ] 
 
TRAVELS BY THE FIRESIDE 
 
 TRAVELS BY THE FIRESIDE 
 
 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. 
 
 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, 
 [ 96 ] 
 
AMALFI 
 
 Through fields with poppies all on fire, 
 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. 
 
 AMALFI 
 
 SWEET the memory is to me 
 
 Of a land beyond the sea, 
 
 Where the waves and mountains meet, 
 
 Where amid her mulberry-trees 
 
 Sits Amalfi in the heat, 
 
 Bathing ever her white feet 
 
 In the tideless summer seas. 
 
 In the middle of the town, 
 From its fountains in the hills, 
 
AMALFI 
 
 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, 
 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. 
 
 [ 98 ] 
 
AMALFI 
 
 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! 
 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; 
 Hidden from all mortal eyes 
 Deep the sunken city lies: 
 Even cities have their graves! 
 
 This is an enchanted land! 
 Round the headlands far away 
 Sweeps the blue Salernian bay 
 
 [ 99 ] 
 
AMALFI 
 
 With its sickle of white sand: 
 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! 
 
 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, 
 
 t 100 ] 
 
,CASTLES IN SPAIN 
 
 Comes this vision unto me 
 
 Of a long-lost Paradise 
 
 In the land beyond the sea. 
 
 CASTLES IN SPAIN 
 
 How much of my young heart, O Spain, 
 Went out to thee in days of yore! 
 
 What dreams romantic filled my brain, 
 
 And summoned back to life again 
 
 The Paladins of Charlemagne, 
 The Cid Campeador! 
 
 And shapes more shadowy than these, 
 
 In the dim twilight half revealed; 
 Phoenician galleys on the seas, 
 The Roman camps like hives of bees, 
 The Goth uplifting from his knees 
 Pelayo on his shield. 
 
 It was these memories perchance, 
 From annals of remotest eld, 
 
 That lent the colors of romance 
 
 To every trivial circumstance, 
 
 And changed the form and countenance 
 Of all that I beheld. 
 
 Old towns, whose history lies hid 
 In monkish chronicle or rhyme, 
 
 [ 101 ] 
 
CASTLES IN SPAIN 
 
 Burgos, the birthplace of the Cid, 
 Zamora and Valladolid, 
 Toledo, built and walled amid 
 The wars of Wamba's time; 
 
 The long, straight line of the highway, 
 The distant town that seems so near, 
 The peasants in the fields, that stay 
 Their toil to cross themselves and pray, 
 When from the belfry at midday 
 The Angelus they hear; 
 
 White crosses in the mountain pass, 
 
 Mules gay with tassels, the loud din 
 Of muleteers, the tethered ass 
 That crops the dusty wayside grass, 
 And cavaliers with spurs of brass 
 Alighting at the inn; 
 
 White hamlets hidden in fields of wheat, 
 
 White cities slumbering by the sea, 
 White sunshine flooding square and street, 
 Dark mountain ranges, at whose feet 
 The river beds are dry with heat, 
 All was a dream to me. 
 
 Yet something sombre and severe 
 
 O'er the enchanted landscape reigned; 
 A terror in the atmosphere 
 As if King Philip listened near, 
 [ 102 ] 
 
CASTLES IN SPAIN 
 
 Or Torquemada, the austere, 
 His ghostly sway maintained. 
 
 The softer Andalusian skies 
 
 Dispelled the sadness and the gloom; 
 There Cadiz by the seaside lies, 
 And Seville's orange-orchards rise, 
 Making the land a paradise 
 
 Of beauty and of bloom. 
 
 There Cordova is hidden among 
 
 The palm, the olive, and the vine; 
 Gem of the South, by poets sung, 
 And in whose mosque Almanzor hung 
 As lamps the bells that once had rung 
 At Compostella's shrine. 
 
 But over all the rest supreme, 
 
 The star of stars, the cynosure, 
 The artist's and the poet's theme, 
 The young man's vision, the old man's dream, 
 Granada by its winding stream, 
 
 The city of the Moor! 
 
 And there the Alhambra still recalls 
 
 Aladdin's palace of delight: 
 Allah il Allah! through its halls 
 Whispers the fountain as it falls, 
 The Darro darts beneath its walls, 
 
 The hills with snow are white. 
 [ 103 ] 
 
FROM MY ARM-CHAIR 
 
 Ah yes, the hills are white with snow, 
 And cold with blasts that bite and freeze; 
 
 But in the happy vale below 
 
 The orange and pomegranate grow, 
 
 And wafts of air toss to and fro 
 The blossoming almond trees. 
 
 The Vega cleft by the Xenil, 
 
 The fascination and allure 
 Of the sweet landscape chains the will; 
 The traveller lingers on the hill, 
 His parted lips are breathing still 
 
 The last sigh of the Moor. 
 
 How like a ruin overgrown 
 
 With flowers that hide the rents of time, 
 Stands now the Past that I have known; 
 Castles in Spain, not built of stone 
 But of white summer clouds, and blown 
 
 Into this little mist of rhyme ! 
 
 FROM MY ARM-CHAIR 
 
 TO THE CHILDREN OF CAMBRIDGE 
 
 WHO PRESENTED TO ME, ON MY SEVENTY-SECOND BHITHDAY, FEB- 
 RUARY 27, 1879, THIS CHAIR MADE FROM THE WOOD OF THE VIL- 
 LAGE BLACKSMITH'S CHESTNUT-TREE 
 
 AM I a king, that I should call my own 
 This splendid ebon throne ? 
 [ 104 ] 
 
FROM MY ARM-CHAIR 
 
 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; 
 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 cavern 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, 
 
 [ 105 ] 
 
FROM MY ARM-CHAIR 
 
 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. 
 
 I see the smithy with its fires aglow, 
 
 I hear the bellows blow, 
 And the shrill hammers on the anvil beat 
 
 The iron white with heat! 
 
 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, 
 
 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. 
 
 [ 106 ] 
 
POSSIBILITIES-CROSS OF SNOW 
 
 POSSIBILITIES 
 
 WHERE are the Poets, unto whom belong 
 
 The Olympian heights; whose singing shafts were 
 
 sent 
 
 Straight to the mark, and not from bows half bent 
 But with the utmost tension of the thong ? 
 
 Where are the stately argosies of song, 
 
 Whose rushing keels made music as they went 
 Sailing in search of some new continent, 
 With all sail set, and steady winds and strong ? 
 
 Perhaps there lives some dreamy boy, untaught 
 In schools, some graduate of the field or street 
 Who shall become a master of the art, 
 
 An admiral sailing the high seas of thought, 
 Fearless and first, and steering with his fleet 
 For lands not yet laid down in any chart. 
 
 THE CROSS OF SNOW 
 
 IN the long, sleepless watches of the night, 
 A gentle face the face of one long dead 
 Looks at me from the wall, where round its head 
 The night-lamp casts a halo of pale light. 
 
 Here in this room she died; and soul more white 
 Never through martyrdom of fire was led 
 To its repose; nor can in books be read 
 The legend of a life more benedight. 
 [ 107 ] 
 
PALINGENESIS 
 
 There is a mountain in the distant West 
 That, sun-defying, in its deep ravines 
 Displays a cross of snow upon its side. 
 
 Such is the cross I wear upon my breast 
 
 These eighteen years, through all the changing scenes 
 And seasons, changeless since the day she died. 
 
 PALINGENESIS 
 
 I LAY upon the headland-height, and listened 
 To the incessant sobbing of the sea 
 
 In caverns under me, 
 
 And watched the waves, that tossed and fled and glis- 
 tened, 
 Until the rolling meadows of amethyst 
 
 Melted away in mist. 
 
 Then suddenly, as one from sleep, I started; 
 For round about me all the sunny capes 
 
 Seemed peopled with the shapes 
 Of those whom I had known in days departed, 
 Apparelled in the loveliness which gleams 
 
 On faces seen in dreams. 
 
 A moment only, and the light and glory 
 Faded away, and the disconsolate shore 
 
 Stood lonely as before; 
 And the wild-roses of the promontory 
 Around me shuddered in the wind, and shed 
 
 Their petals of pale red. 
 
 [ 108 ] 
 
PALINGENESIS 
 
 There was an old belief that in the embers 
 Of all things their primordial form exists, 
 
 And cunning alchemists 
 
 Could re-create the rose with all its members 
 From its own ashes, but without the bloom, 
 
 Without the lost perfume. 
 
 Ah me! what wonder-working, occult science 
 Can from the ashes in our hearts once more 
 
 The rose of youth restore ? 
 What craft of alchemy can bid defiance 
 To time and change, and for a single hour 
 
 Renew this phantom-flower? 
 
 "Oh, give me back," I cried, "the vanished splendors, 
 The breath of morn, and the exultant strife, 
 
 When the swift stream of life 
 Bounds o'er its rock} 7 channel, and surrenders 
 The pond, with all its lilies, for the leap 
 
 Into the unknown deep!" 
 
 And the sea answered, with a lamentation, 
 Like some old prophet wailing, and it said, 
 
 " Alas ! thy youth is dead ! 
 It breathes no more, its heart has no pulsation; 
 In the dark places with the dead of old 
 
 It lies forever cold!" 
 
 Then said I, "From its consecrated cerements 
 I will not drag this sacred dust again, 
 Only to give me pain; 
 
 t 109 ] 
 
PALINGENESIS 
 
 But, still remembering all the lost endearments, 
 Go on my way, like one who looks before, 
 And turns to weep no more." 
 
 Into what land of harvests, what plantations 
 Bright with autumnal foliage and the glow 
 
 Of sunsets burning low; 
 
 Beneath what midnight skies, whose constellations 
 Light up the spacious avenues between 
 
 This world and the unseen; 
 
 Amid what friendly greetings and caresses, 
 What households, though not alien, yet not mine, 
 
 What bowers of rest divine; 
 To what temptations in lone wildernesses, 
 What famine of the heart, what pain and loss, 
 
 The bearing of what cross, 
 
 I do not know; nor will I vainly question 
 Those pages of the mystic book which hold 
 
 The story still untold, 
 But without rash conjecture or suggestion 
 Turn its last leaves in reverence and good heed, 
 
 Until "The End "I read. 
 
MORITURI SALUTAMUS 
 
 MORITURI SALUTAMUS 
 
 POEM FOR THE FIFTIETH ANNIVERSARY OF THE 
 CLASS OF 1825 IN BOWDOIN COLLEGE 
 
 " O CAESAR, we who are about to die 
 Salute you!" was the gladiators' cry 
 In the arena, standing face to face 
 With death and with the Roman populace. 
 
 O ye familiar scenes, ye groves of pine, 
 That once were mine and are no longer mine, 
 Thou river, widening through the meadows green 
 To the vast sea, so near and yet unseen, 
 Ye halls, in whose seclusion and repose 
 Phantoms of fame, like exhalations, rose 
 And vanished, we who are about to die 
 Salute you; earth and air and sea and sky, 
 And the Imperial Sun that scatters down 
 His sovereign splendors upon grove and town. 
 
 Ye do not answer us! ye do not hear! 
 We are forgotten; and in your austere 
 And calm indifference, ye little care 
 Whether we come or go, or whence or where. 
 What passing generations fill these halls, 
 What passing voices echo from these walls, 
 Ye heed not; we are only as the blast, 
 A moment heard, and then forever past. 
 
MORITURI SALUTAMUS 
 
 Not so the teachers who in earlier days 
 
 Led our bewildered feet through learning's maze; 
 
 They answer us alas ! what have I said ? 
 
 What greetings come there from the voiceless dead ? 
 
 What salutation, welcome, or reply ? 
 
 What pressure from the hands that lifeless lie ? 
 
 They are no longer here; they all are gone 
 
 Into the land of shadows, all save one. 
 
 Honor and reverence, and the good repute 
 
 That follows faithful service as its fruit, 
 
 Be unto him, whom living we salute. 
 
 The great Italian poet, when he made 
 His dreadful journey to the realms of shade, 
 Met there the old instructor of his youth, 
 And cried in tones of pity and of ruth : 
 " Oh, never from the memory of my heart 
 Your dear, paternal image shall depart, 
 Who while on earth, ere yet by death surprised, 
 Taught me how mortals are immortalized; 
 How grateful am I for that patient care 
 All my life long my language shall declare." 
 
 To-day we make the poet's words our own, 
 
 And utter them in plaintive undertone; 
 
 Nor to the living only be they said, 
 
 But to the other living called the dead, 
 
 Whose dear, paternal images appear 
 
 Not wrapped in gloom, but robed in sunshine here; 
 
 f 
 
MORITURI SALUTAMUS 
 
 Whose simple lives, complete and without flaw, 
 
 Were part and parcel of great Nature's law; 
 
 Who said not to their Lord, as if afraid, 
 : 'Here is thy talent in a napkin laid," 
 
 But labored in their sphere, as men who live 
 
 In the delight that work alone can give. 
 
 Peace be to them ! eternal peace and rest, 
 
 And the fulfilment of the great behest: 
 "Ye have been faithful over a few things, 
 
 Over ten cities shall ye reign as kings." 
 
 And ye who fill the places we once filled, 
 And follow in the furrows that we tilled, 
 Young men, whose generous hearts are beating high, 
 We who are old, and are about to die, 
 Salute you; hail you; take your hands in ours, 
 And crown you with our welcome as with flowers! 
 How beautiful is youth ! how bright it gleams 
 With its illusions, aspirations, dreams ! 
 Book of Beginnings, Story without End, 
 Each maid a heroine, and each man a friend! 
 Aladdin's Lamp, and Fortunatus' Purse 
 That holds the treasures of the universe! 
 All possibilities are in its hands, 
 No danger daunts it, and no foe withstands; 
 In its sublime audacity of faith, 
 :< Be thou removed ! " it to the mountain saith, 
 And with ambitious feet, secure and proud, 
 Ascends the ladder leaning on the cloud! 
 
MORITURI SALUTAMUS 
 
 As ancient Priam at the Scsean gate 
 
 Sat on the walls of Troy in regal state 
 
 With the old men, too old and weak to fight, 
 
 Chirping like grasshoppers in their delight 
 
 To see the embattled hosts, with spear and shield, 
 
 Of Trojans and Achaians in the field; 
 
 So from the snowy summits of our years 
 
 We see you in the plain, as each appears, 
 
 And question of you ; asking, " Who is he 
 
 That towers above the others ? Which may be 
 
 Atreides, Menelaus, Odysseus, 
 
 Ajax the great, or bold Idomeneus ? " 
 
 Let him not boast who puts his armor on 
 As he who puts it off, the battle done. 
 Study yourselves; and most of all note well 
 Wherein kind Nature meant you to excel. 
 Not every blossom ripens into fruit; 
 Minerva, the inventress of the flute, 
 Flung it aside, when she her face surveyed 
 Distorted in a fountain as she played; 
 The unlucky Marsyas found it, and his fate 
 Was one to make the bravest hesitate. 
 
 Write on your doors the saying wise and old, 
 'Be bold! be bold!" and everywhere, "Be bold; 
 Be not too bold ! " Yet better the excess 
 Than the defect; better the more than less; 
 Better like Hector in the field to die, 
 Than like a perfumed Paris turn and fly. 
 [ "4 ] 
 
MORITURI SALUTAMUS 
 
 And now, my classmates; ye remaining few 
 That number not the hah* of those we knew, 
 Ye, against whose familiar names not yet 
 The fatal asterisk of death is set, 
 Ye I salute! The horologe of Time 
 Strikes the half-century with a solemn chime, 
 And summons us together once again, 
 The joy of meeting not unmixed with pain. 
 
 Where are the others ? Voices from the deep 
 
 Caverns of darkness answer me : " They sleep ! " 
 
 I name no names; instinctively I feel 
 
 Each at some well-remembered grave will kneel, 
 
 And from the inscription wipe the weeds and moss, 
 
 For every heart best knoweth its own loss. 
 
 I see their scattered gravestones gleaming white 
 
 Through the pale dusk of the impending night; 
 
 O'er all alike the impartial sunset throws 
 
 Its golden lilies mingled with the rose; 
 
 We give to each a tender thought, and pass 
 
 Out of the graveyards with their tangled grass, 
 
 Unto these scenes frequented by our feet 
 
 When we were young, and life was fresh and sweet. 
 
 What shall I say to you ? What can I say 
 Better than silence is ? When I survey 
 This throng of faces turned to meet my own, 
 Friendly and fair, and yet to me unknown, 
 Transformed the very landscape seems to be; 
 It is the same, yet not the same to me. 
 
MORITURI SALUTAMUS 
 
 So many memories crowd upon my brain, 
 So many ghosts are in the wooded plain, 
 I fain would steal away, with noiseless tread, 
 As from a house where some one lieth dead. 
 I cannot go ; I pause ; I hesitate ; 
 My feet reluctant linger at the gate; 
 As one who struggles in a troubled dream 
 To speak and cannot, to myself I seem. 
 
 Vanish the dream! Vanish the idle fears! 
 
 Vanish the rolling mists of fifty years ! 
 
 Whatever time or space may intervene, 
 
 I will not be a stranger in this scene. 
 
 Here every doubt, all indecision, ends; 
 
 Hail, my companions, comrades, classmates, friends ! 
 
 Ah me! the fifty years since last we met 
 Seem to me fifty folios bound and set 
 By Time, the great transcriber, on his shelves, 
 Wherein are written the histories of ourselves. 
 What tragedies, what comedies, are there; 
 What joy and grief, what rapture and despair! 
 What chronicles of triumph and defeat, 
 Of struggle, and temptation, and retreat! 
 What records of regrets, and doubts, and fears! 
 What pages blotted, blistered by our tears ! 
 What lovely landscapes on the margin shine, 
 What sweet, angelic faces, what divine 
 And holy images of love and trust, 
 Undimmed by age, unsoiled by damp or dust! 
 
MORITURI SALUTAMUS 
 
 Whose hand shall dare to open and explore 
 These volumes, closed and clasped forevennore ? 
 Not mine. With reverential feet I pass; 
 I hear a voice that cries, " Alas ! alas ! 
 Whatever hath been written shall remain, 
 Nor be erased nor written o'er again; 
 The unwritten only still belongs to thee: 
 Take heed, and ponder well what that shall be." 
 
 As children frightened by a thunder-cloud 
 
 Are reassured if some one reads aloud 
 
 A tale of wonder, with enchantment fraught, 
 
 Or wild adventure, that diverts their thought, 
 
 Let me endeavor with a tale to chase 
 
 The gathering shadows of the time and place, 
 
 And banish what we all too deeply feel 
 
 Wholly to say, or wholly to conceal. 
 
 In mediaeval Rome, I know not where, 
 There stood an image with its arm in air, 
 And on its lifted finger, shining clear, 
 A golden ring with the device, " Strike here ! " 
 Greatly the people wondered, though none guessed 
 The meaning that these words but half expressed, 
 Until a learned clerk, who at noonday 
 With downcast eye was passing on his way, 
 Paused, and observed the spot, and marked it well, 
 Whereon the shadow of the finger fell; 
 And, coming back at midnight, delved, and found 
 A secret stairway leading under ground. 
 [ 117 ] 
 
MORITURI SALUTAMUS 
 
 Down this he passed into a spacious hall, 
 
 Lit by a flaming jewel on the wall; 
 
 And opposite, in threatening attitude, 
 
 With bow and shaft a brazen statue stood. 
 
 Upon its forehead, like a coronet, 
 
 Were these mysterious words of menace set: 
 
 That which I am, I am; my fatal aim 
 
 None can escape, not even yon luminous flame!" 
 
 Midway the hall was a fair table placed, 
 
 With cloth of gold, and golden cups enchased 
 
 With rubies, and the plates and knives were gold, 
 
 And gold the bread and viands manifold. 
 
 Around it, silent, motionless, and sad, 
 
 Were seated gallant knights in armor clad, 
 
 And ladies beautiful with plume and zone, 
 
 But they were stone, their hearts within were stone; 
 
 And the vast hall was filled in every part 
 
 With silent crowds, stony in face and heart. 
 
 Long at the scene, bewildered and amazed, 
 The trembling clerk in speechless wonder gazed ; 
 Then from the table, by his greed made bold, 
 He seized a goblet and a knife of gold, 
 And suddenly from their seats the guests upsprang, 
 The vaulted ceiling with loud clamors rang, 
 The archer sped his arrow, at their call, 
 Shattering the lambent jewel on the wall, 
 And all was dark around and overhead ; 
 Stark on the floor the luckless clerk lay dead! 
 [ 118 ] 
 
MORITURI SALUTAMUS 
 
 The writer of this legend then records 
 Its ghostly application in these words: 
 The image is the Adversary old, 
 Whose beckoning finger points to realms of gold; 
 Our lusts and passions are the downward stair 
 That leads the soul from a diviner air; 
 The archer, Death; the flaming jewel, Life; 
 Terrestrial goods, the goblet and the knife; 
 The knights and ladies, all whose flesh and bone 
 By avarice have been hardened into stone; 
 The clerk, the scholar whom the love of pelf 
 Tempts from his books and from his nobler self. 
 
 The scholar and the world! The endless strife, 
 
 The discord in the harmonies of life! 
 
 The love of learning, the sequestered nooks, 
 
 And all the sweet serenity of books! 
 
 The market-place, the eager love of gain, 
 
 Whose aim is vanity, and whose end is pain! 
 
 But why, you ask me, should this tale be told 
 To men grown old, or who are growing old ? 
 It is too late! Ah, nothing is too late 
 Till the tired heart shall cease to palpitate. 
 Cato learned Greek at eighty; Sophocles 
 Wrote his grand (Edipus, and Simonides 
 Bore off the prize of verse from his compeers, 
 When each had numbered more than fourscore years, 
 And Theophrastus at fourscore and ten, 
 Had but begun his Characters of Men. 
 [ 119 ] 
 
MORITURI SALUTAMUS 
 
 Chaucer, at Woodstock with the nightingales, 
 At sixty wrote the Canterbury Tales; 
 Goethe at Weimar, toiling to the last, 
 Completed Faust when eighty years were past. 
 These are indeed exceptions; but they show 
 How far the gulf-stream of our youth may flow 
 Into the arctic regions of our lives, 
 Where little else than life itself survives. 
 
 As the barometer foretells the storm 
 
 While still the skies are clear, the weather warm, 
 
 So something in us, as old age draws near, 
 
 Betrays the pressure of the atmosphere. 
 
 The nimble mercury, ere we are aware, 
 
 Descends the elastic ladder of the air; 
 
 The telltale blood in artery and vein 
 
 Sinks from its higher levels in the brain; 
 
 Whatever poet, orator, or sage 
 
 May say of it, old age is still old age. 
 
 It is the waning, not the crescent moon; 
 
 The dusk of evening, not the blaze of noon; 
 
 It is not strength, but weakness; not desire, 
 
 But its surcease ; not the fierce heat of fire, 
 
 The burning and consuming element, 
 
 But that of ashes and of embers spent, 
 
 In which some living sparks we still discern, 
 
 Enough to warm, but not enough to burn. 
 
 What then ? Shall we sit idly down and say 
 The night hath come ; it is no longer day ? 
 [ 120 ] 
 
MORITURI SALUTAMUS 
 
 The night hath not yet come; we are not quite 
 Cut off from labor by the failing light; 
 Something remains for us to do or dare; 
 Even the oldest tree some fruit may bear; 
 Not CEdipus Coloneus, or Greek Ode, 
 Or tales of pilgrims that one morning rode 
 Out of the gateway of the Tabard Inn, 
 But other something, would we but begin; 
 For age is opportunity, no less 
 Than youth itself, though in another dress, 
 And as the evening twilight fades away 
 The sky is filled with stars, invisible by day. 
 
Electrotype* and printed by H, O. Houghton & Co. 
 Cambridge, Mass, U. S. A.