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 Allegra,

And Edith with golden hair.

They 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;

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 Biship 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 mustache 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!

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Excelsior

THE shades of night were falling fast,

As through an Alpine village passed

A youth, who bore, 'mid snow and ice,

A banner with the strange device--

Excelsior!

His brow was sad; his eye beneath

Flashed like a falchion from its sheath;

And like a silver clarion rung

The accents of that unknown tongue--

Excelsior!

In happy homes he saw the light

Of household fires gleam warm and bright,

Above,the spectral glaciers shone,

And from his lips escaped a groan--

Excelsior!

"Try not the pass," the old man said:

"Dark lowers the tempest overhead;

The roaring torrent is deep and wide."

And loud that clarion voice replied,

Excelsior!

"Oh, stay," the maiden said, "and rest

Thy weary head upon this breast!"

A tear stood in his bright blue eye,

But still he answered with a sigh,

Excelsior!

"Beware the pine-tree's withered branch!

Beware the awful avalanche!"

This was the peasant's last Good-night:

A voice replied, far up the height:

Excelsior!

At break of day, as heavenward

The pious monks of Saint Bernard

Uttered the oft-repeated prayer,

A voice cried through the startled air,

Excelsior!

A traveller, by the faithful hound,

Half-buried in the snow was found,

Still grasping in his hand of ice

That banner with the strange device,

Excelsior!

There in the twilight, cold and gray,

Lifeless, but beautiful, he lay,

And from the sky, serene and far,

A voice fell, like a falling star--

Excelsior!

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

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."

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 ships,

And the sea-tides tossing free;

And Spanish sailors with bearded lips,

And the beauty and mystery of the ships,

And the magic of the sea.

And the voice of that wayward song

Is singing and saying still:

"A boy's will is the wind's will,

And the thoughts of youth are long, long thoughts."

I remember the bulwarks by the shore,

And the fort upon the hill;

The sunrise gun, with its hollow roar,

The drum-beat repeated o'er and o'er,

And the bugle wild and shrill.

And the music of that old song

Throbs in my memory still:

"A boy's will is the wind's will,

And the thoughts of youth are long, long thoughts."

I remember the sea-fight far away,

How it thundered o'er the tide!

And the dead captains, as they lay

In their graves, o'erlooking 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

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,

The groves are repeating it still:

"A boy's will is the wind's will,

And the thoughts of youth are long, long thoughts."

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

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 a stream,

These tender memories are;--a fairy tale

Of some enchanted land we know not where,

But lovely as a landscape in a dream.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

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

Where'er 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.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

The Cumberland

AT anchor in Hampton Roads we lay,

    On board of the Cumberland, sloop-of-war;

And at times from the fortress across the bay

The alarum of drums swept past,

Or a bugle blast

    From the camp on the shore.

Then far away to the south uprose

    A little feather of snow-white smoke,

And we knew that the iron ship of our foes

Was steadily steering its course

To try the force

    Of our ribs of oak.

Down upon us heavily runs,

    Silent and sullen, the floating fort;

Then comes a puff of smoke from her guns,

And leaps the terrible death,

With fiery breath,

    From each open port.

We are not idle, but send her straight

    Defiance back in a full broadside!

As hail rebounds from a roof of slate,

Rebounds our heavier hail

From each iron scale

    Of the monster's hide.

"Strike your flag!" the rebel cries,

    In his arrogant old plantation strain.

"Never!" our gallant Morris replies;

"It is better to sink than to yield!"

And the whole air pealed

    With the cheers of our men.

Then, like a kraken huge and black,

    She crushed our ribs in her iron grasp!

Down went the Cumberland all a wrack,

With a sudden shudder of death,

And the cannon's breath

    For her dying gasp.

Next morn, as the sun rose over the bay,

    Still floated our flag at the mainmast head.

Lord, how beautiful was Thy day!

Every waft of the air

Was a whisper of prayer,

    Or a dirge for the dead.

Ho! brave hearts that went down in the seas

     Ye are at peace in the troubled stream;

Ho! brave land! with hearts like these,

Thy flag, that is rent in twain,

Shall be one again,

     And without a seam!

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow