Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807-1882)

• Mezzo Cummin
• The Cross of Snow
• Milton
• The Poets
• Dante
• The Tides
• The Galaxy
• The Broken Oar
• Chimes
• Holidays
• The Two Rivers
• Venice
• The Sound of the Sea
• Nature
• Autumn

Divina Commedia

• I. "Oft have I seen at some cathedral door"
• II. "How strange the sculptures that adorn these towers"
• III. "I enter, and I see thee in the gloom"
• IV. "With snow-white veil and garments as of flame"
• V. "I lift mine eyes, and all the windows blaze"
• VI. "O star of morning and of liberty"

  ---

  ---

  Mezzo Cummin

  
  Half of my life is gone, and I have let
  The years slip from me and have not fulfilled
  The asperations of my youth, to build
  Some tower of song with lofty parapet.
  Not indolence, nor pleasure, nor the fret
  Of restless passions that would not be stilled,
  But sorrow, and a care that almost killed,
  Kept me from what I may accomplish yet;
  Though, half-way up the hill, I see the Past
  Lying beneath me with its sounds and sights,--
  A city in the twilight dim and vast,
  With smoking roofs, soft bells, and gleaming lights,--
  And hear above me on the autumnal blast
  The cataract of Death far thundering from the heights.

  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.
  There is a mountain in the distant West
  That, sun-defying, in its deap 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.

  Milton

  

  I pace the sounding sea-beach and behold
  How the voluminous billows roll and run,
  Upheaving and subsiding, while the sun
  Shines through their sheeted emerald far unrolled,
  And the ninth wave, slow gathering fold by fold
  All its loose-flowing garments into one,
  Plunges upon the shore, and floods the dun
  Pale reach of sands, and changes them to gold.
  So in majestic cadence rise and fall
  The mighty undulations of thy song,
  O sightless bard, England's Maeonides!
  And ever and anon, high over all
  Uplifted, a ninth wave superb and strong,
  Floods all the soul with its melodious seas.

  The Poets

  

  O ye dead Poets, who are living still
  Immortal in your verse, though life be fled,
  And ye, O living Poets, who are dead
  Though ye are living, if neglect can kill,
  Tell me if in the darkest hours of ill,
  With drops of anguish falling fast and red
  From the sharp crown of thorns upon your head,
  Ye were not glad your errand to fulfil?
  Yes; for the gift and ministry of Song
  Have something in them so divinely sweet,
  It can assuage the bitterness of wrong;
  Not in the clamor of the crowded street,
  Not in the shouts and plaudits of the throng,
  But in ourselves, are triumph and defeat.

  Dante

  

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

  The Tides

  

  I saw the long line of the vacant shore,
  The sea-weed and the shells upon the sand,
  And the brown rocks left bare on every hand
  As if the ebbing tide would flow no more.
  Then heard I, more distinctly than before,
  The ocean breathe and its great breast expand,
  And hurrying came on the defenseless land
  The insurgent waters with tumultuous roar.
  All thought and feeling and desire, I said,
  Love, laughter, and the exultant joy of song,
  Have ebbed from me for ever! Suddenly o'er me
  They swept again from their deep ocean bed,
  And in a tumult of delight, and strong
  As youth, and beautiful as youth, upbore me!

  The Galaxy

  

  Torrent of light and river of the air,
  Along whose bed the glimmering stars are seen
  Like gold and silver sands in some ravine
  Where mountain streams have left their channels bare!
  The Spaniard sees in thee the pathway, where
  His patron saint descended in the sheen
  Of his celestial armor, on serene
  And quiet nights, when all the heavens were fair.
  Not this I see, nor yet the ancient fable
  Of Phaeton's wild course, that scorched the skies
  Wherever the hoofs of his hot coursers trod;
  But the white drift of worlds o'er chasms of sable,
  The star-dust, that is whirled aloft and flies
  From the invisible chariot-wheels of God.

  The Broken Oar

  

  Once upon Iceland's solitary strand
  A poet wandered with his book and pen,
  Seeking some final word, some sweet Amen,
  Wherewith to close the volume in his hand.
  The billows rolled and plunged upon the sand,
  The circling sea-gulls swept beyond his ken,
  And from the parting cloud-rack now and then
  Flashed the red sunset over sea and land.
  Then by the billows at his feet was tossed
  A broken oar; and carved thereon he read,
  "Oft was I weary, when I toiled at thee;"
  And like a man, who findeth what was lost,
  He wrote the words, then lifted up his head,
  And flung his useless pen into the sea.

  Chimes

  

  Sweet chimes! that in the loneliness of night
  Salute the passing hour, and in the dark
  And silent chambers of the household mark
  The movements of the myriad orbs of light
  Through my close eyelids, by the inner sight,
  I see the constellations in the arc
  Of their great circles moving on, and hark!
  I almost hear them singing in their flight.
  Better than sleep it is to lie awake
  O'ercanopied by the vast starry dome
  Of the immeasurable sky; to feel
  The slumbering world sink under us, and make
  Hardly an eddy,--a mere rush of foam
  On the great sea beneath a sinking keel.

  Holidays

  

  The holiest of all holidays are those
  Kept by ourselves in silence and apart;
  The secret anniversaries of the heart,
  When the full river of feeling overflows;---
  The happy days unclouded to their close;
  The sudden joys that out of darkness start
  As flames from ashes; swift desires that dart
  Like swallows singing down each wind that blows.
  White as the gleam of a receding sail,
  White as a cloud that floats and fades in air,
  White as the whitest lily on the stream,
  These tender memories are;--a Fairy Tale
  Of some enchanted land we know not where,
  But lovely as a landscape in a dream.

  The Two Rivers

  

  Slowly the hour-hand of the clock moves round;
  So slowly that no human eye hath power
  To see it move! Slowly in shine or shower
  The painted ship above it, homeward bound,
  Sails, but seems motionless, as if aground;
  Yet both arrive at last; and in his tower
  The slumbrous watchman wakes and strikes the hour,
  A mellow, measured, melancholy sound.
  Midnight! the outpost of advancing day!
  The frontier town and citadel of night!
  The watershed of Time, from which the streams
  Of Yesterday and To-morrow take their way,
  One to the land of promise and of light,
  One to the land of darkness and of dreams.

  Venice

  

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

  The Sound of the Sea

  

  The sea awoke at midnight from its sleep,
  And round the pebbly beaches far and wide
  I heard the first wave of the rising tide
  Rush onward with uninterrupted sweep;
  A voice out of the silence of the deep,
  A sound mysteriously multiplied
  As of a cataract from the mountain's side,
  Or roar of winds upon a wooded steep.
  So comes to us at times, from the unknown
  And inaccessible solitudes of being,
  The rushing of the sea-tides of the soul:
  And inspirations that we deem our own,
  Are some divine foreshadowing and foreseeing
  Of things beyond our reason or control.

  Nature

  

  As a fond mother when the day is o'er
  Leads by the hand her little child to bed,
  Half willing, half reluctant to be led,
  And leave his broken playthings on the floor,
  Still gazing at them through the open door,
  Nor wholly reassured and comforted
  By promises of others in their stead
  Which, though more splendid, may not please him more.
  So Nature deals with us and takes away
  Our playthings one by one, and by the hand
  Leads us to rest so gently, that we go,
  Scarce knowing if we wished to go or stay,
  Being too full of sleep to understand
  How far the unknown transcends the what we know.

  Autumn

  

  Thou comest, Autumn, heralded by the rain,
  With banners, by great gales incessant fanned,
  Brighter than brightest silks of Samarcand,
  And stately oxen harnessed to thy wain!
  Thou standest, like imperial Charlemagne,
  Upon thy bridge of gold; thy royal hand
  Outstretched with benedictions o'er the land,
  Blessing the farms through all thy vast domain!
  Thy shield is the red harvest moon, suspended
  So long beneath the heaven's o'erhanging eaves;
  Thy steps are by the farmer's prayers attended;
  Like flames upon an altar shine the sheaves;
  And following thee, in thy ovation splendid,
  Thine Almoner, the wind, scatters thy golden leaves!

  Divina Commedia

  I

  

  Oft have I seen at some cathedral door
  A laborer, pausing in the dust and heat,
  Lay down his burden, and with reverent feet
  Enter, and cross himself, and on the floor
  Kneel to repeat his paternoster o'er;
  Far off the noises of the world retreat;
  The loud vociferations of the street
  Become an undistinguishable roar.
  So, as I enter here from day to day,
  And leave my burden at this minster gate,
  Kneeling in prayer, and not ashamed to pray,
  The tumult of the time disconsolate
  To inarticulate murmurs dies away,
  While the eternal ages watch and wait.

  II

  

  How strange the sculptures that adorn these towers!
  This crowd of statues, in whose folded sleeves
  Birds build their nests; while canopied with leaves
  Parvis and portal bloom like trellised bowers,
  And the vast minster seems a cross of flowers!
  But fiends and dragons on the gargoyled eaves
  Watch the dead Christ between the living thieves,
  And, underneath, the traitor Judas lowers!
  Ah! from what agonies of heart and brain,
  What exultations trampling on despair,
  What tenderness, what tears, what hate of wrong,
  What passionate outcry of a soul in pain,
  Uprose this poem of the earth and air,
  This mediaeval miracle of song!

  III

  

  I enter, and I see thee in the gloom
  Of the long aisles, O poet saturnine!
  And strive to make my steps keep pace with thine.
  The air is filled with some unknown perfume;
  The congregation of the dead make room
  For thee to pass; the votive tapers shine;
  Like rooks that haunt Ravenna's groves of pine
  The hovering echoes fly from tomb to tomb.
  From the confessionals I hear arise
  Rehearsals of forgotten tragedies,
  And lamentations from the crypts below;
  And then a voice celestial that begins
  With the pathetic words, "Although your sins
  As scarlet be," and ends with "as the snow."

  IV

  

  With snow-white veil and garments as of flame,
  She stands before thee, who so long ago
  Filled thy young heart with passion and the woe
  From which thy song and all its splendors came;
  And while with stern rebuke she speaks thy name,
  The ice about thy heart melts as the snow
  On mountain heights, and in swift overflow
  Comes gushing from thy lips in sobs of shame.
  Thou makest full confession; and a gleam,
  As of the dawn on some dark forest cast,
  Seems on thy lifted forehead to increase;
  Lethe and Eunoc--the remembered dream
  And the forgotten sorrow--bring at last
  That perfect pardon which is perfect peace.

  V

  

  I lift mine eyes, and all the windows blaze
  With forms of Saints and holy men who died,
  Here martyred and hereafter glorffied;
  And the great Rose upon its leaves displays
  Christ's Triumph, and the angelic roundelays,
  With splendor upon splendor multiplied;
  And Beatrice again at Dante's side
  No more rebukes, but smiles her words of praise.
  And then the organ sounds, and unseen choirs
  Sing the old Latin hymns of peace and love
  And benedictions of the Holy Ghost;
  And the melodious bells among the spires
  O'er all the house-tops and through heaven above
  Proclaim the elevation of the Host!

  VI

  

  O star of morning and of liberty!
  O bringer of the light, whose splendor shines
  Above the darkness of the Apennines,
  Forerunner of the day that is to be!
  The voices of the city and the sea,
  The voices of the mountains and the pines,
  Repeat thy song, till the familiar lines
  Are footpaths for the thought of Italy!
  Thy flame is blown abroad from all the heights,
  Through all the nations, and a sound is heard,
  As of a mighty wind, and men devout,
  Strangers of Rome, and the new proselytes,
  In their own language hear thy wondrous word,
  And many are amazed and many doubt.

  ---

  Glossed Words (Click on title to return to poem.)

  

  Mezzo Cummin

  Title, Italian for "Halfway [through life]"--a reference to the beginning of Dante's Inferno.