The Day is Done

THE day is done, and the darkness

Falls from the wings of Night,

As a feather is wafted downward

From an eagle in his flight.

I see the lights of the village

Gleam through the rain and the mist,

And a feeling of sadness comes o'er me

That my soul cannot resist:

A feeling of sadness and longing,

That is not akin to pain,

And resembles sorrow only

As the mist resembles the rain.

Come, read to me some poem,

Some simple and heartfelt lay,

That shall soothe this restless feeling,

And banish the thoughts of day.

Not from the grand old masters,

Not from the bards sublime,

Whose distant footsteps echo

Through the corridors of Time,

For, like strains of martial music,

Their mighty thoughts suggest

Life's endless toil and endeavor;

And tonight I long for rest.

Read from some humbler poet,

Whose songs gushed from his heart,

As showers from the clouds of summer,

Or tears from the eyelids start;

Who, through long days of labor,

And nights devoid of ease,

Still heard in his soul the music

Of wonderful melodies.

Such songs have a power to quiet

The restless pulse of care,

And comes like the benediction

That follows after prayer.

Then read from the treasured volume

The poem of thy choice,

And lend to the rhyme of the poet

The beauty of thy voice.

And the night shall be filled with music,

And the cares, that infest the day,

Shall fold their tents, like the Arabs,

And as silently steal away.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Hiawatha's Departure

from The Song of Hiawatha

BY the shore of Gitchie Gumee,

By the shining Big-Sea-Water,

At the doorway of his wigwam,

In the pleasant Summer morning,

Hiawatha stood and waited.

All the air was full of freshness,

All the earth was bright and joyous,

And before him through the sunshine,

Westward toward the neighboring forest

Passed in golden swarms the Ahmo,

Passed the bees, the honey-makers,

Burning, singing in the sunshine.

Bright above him shown the heavens,

Level spread the lake before him;

From its bosom leaped the sturgeon,

Aparkling, flashing in the sunshine;

On its margin the great forest

Stood reflected in the water,

Every tree-top had its shadow,

Motionless beneath the water.

From the brow of Hiawatha

Gone was every trace of sorrow,

As the fog from off the water,

And the mist from off the meadow.

With a smile of joy and triumph,

With a look of exultation,

As of one who in a vision

Sees what is to be, but is not,

Stood and waited Hiawatha.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

The Reaper And The Flowers

THERE is a Reaper whose name is Death,

And, with his sickle keen,

He reaps the bearded grain at a breath,

And the flowers that grow between.

``Shall I have nought that is fair?'' saith he;

``Have nought but the bearded grain?

Though the breath of these flowers is sweet to me,

I will give them all back again.''

He gazed at the flowers with tearful eyes,

He kissed their drooping leaves;

It was for the Lord of Paradise

He bound them in his sheaves.

``My Lord has need of these flowerets gay,''

The Reaper said, and smiled;

``Dear tokens of the earth are they,

Where he was once a child.

``They shall all bloom in fields of light,

Transplanted by my care,

And saints, upon their garments white,

These sacred blossoms wear.''

And the mother gave, in tears and pain,

The flowers she most did love;

She knew she should find them all again

In the fields of light above.

O, not in cruelty, not in wrath,

The Reaper came that day;

'Twas an angel visited the green earth,

And took the flowers away.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Birds of Passage

BLACK shadows fall

From the lindens tall,

That lift aloft their massive wall

Against the southern sky;

And from the realms

Of the shadowy elms

A tide-like darkness overwhelms

The fields that round us lie.

But the night is fair,

And everywhere

A warm, soft vapor fills the air,

And distant sounds seem near;

And above, in the light

Of the star-lit night,

Swift birds of passage wing their flight

Through the dewy atmosphere.

I hear the beat

Of their pinions fleet,

As from the land of snow and sleet

They seek a southern lea.

I hear the cry

Of their voices high

Falling dreamily through the sky,

But their forms I cannot see.

Oh, say not so!

Those sounds that flow

In murmurs of delight and woe

Come not from wings of birds.

They are the throngs

Of the poet's songs,

Murmurs of pleasures, and pains, and wrongs,

The sound of winged words.

This is the cry

Of souls, that high

On toiling, beating pinions, fly,

Seeking a warmer clime.

From their distant flight

Through realms of light

It falls into our world of night,

With the murmuring sound of rhyme.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Something Left Undone

LABOR with what zeal we will,

Something still remains undone,

Something uncompleted still

Waits the rising of the sun.

By the bedside, on the stair,

At the threshhold, near the gates,

With its menace or its prayer,

Like a medicant it waits;

Waits, and will not go away;

Waits, and will not be gainsaid;

By the cares of yesterday

Each to-day is heavier made;

Till at length the burden seems

Greater than our strength can bear,

Heavy as the weight of dreams

Pressing on us everywhere.

And we stand from day to day,

Like the dwarfs of times gone by,

Who, as Northern legends say,

On their shoulders held the sky.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Snow-Flakes

OUT of the bosom of the Air

Out of the cloud-folds of her garments shaken,

Over the woodlands brown and bare,

Over the harvest-fields forsaken,

Silent, and soft, and slow

Descends the snow.

Even as our cloudy fancies take

Suddenly shape in some divine expression,

Even as the troubled heart doth make

In the white countenance confession

The troubled sky reveals

The grief it feels.

This is the poem of the air,

Slowly in silent syllables recorded;

This is the secret of despair,

Long in its cloudy bosom hoarded,

Now whispered and revealed

To wood and field.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Fata Morgana

O SWEET illusions of song

That tempt me everywhere,

In the lonely fields, and the throng

Of the crowded thoroughfare!

I approach and ye vanish away,

I grasp you, and ye are gone;

But ever by night and by day,

The melody soundeth on.

As the weary traveller sees

In desert or prairie vast,

Blue lakes, overhung with trees

That a pleasant shadow cast;

Fair towns with turrets high,

And shining roofs of gold,

That vanish as he draws nigh,

Like mists together rolled --

So I wander and wander along,

And forever before me gleams

The shining city of song,

In the beautiful land of dreams.

But when I would enter the gate

Of that golden atmosphere,

It is gone, and I wonder and wait

For the vision to reappear.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Changed

FROM the outskirts of the town,

Where of old the mile-stone stood,

Now a stranger, looking down

I behold the shadowy crown

Of the dark and haunted wood.

Is it changed, or am I changed?

Ah! the oaks are fresh and green,

But the friends with whom I ranged

Through their thickets are estranged

By the years that intervene.

Bright as ever flows the sea,

Bright as ever shines the sun,

But alas! they seem to me

Not the sun that used to be,

Not the tides that used to run.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

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.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

The Tide Rises, The Tide Falls

THE tide rises, the tide falls,

The twilight darkens, the curlew calls;

Along the sea-sands damp and brown

The traveller hastens toward the town

And the tide rises, the tide falls.

Darkness settles on the roofs and walls

But the sea, the sea in darkness calls;

The little waves, with their soft, white hands,

Efface the footprints in the sands

And the tide rises, the tide falls.

The morning breaks; the steeds in their stalls

Stamp and neigh, as the hostler calls;

The day returns, but nevermore

Returns the traveller to the shore,

And the tide rises, the tide falls.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Moonlight

AS a pale phantom with a lamp

Ascends some ruin's hainted stair,

So glides the moon along the damp

Mysterious chambers of the air.

Now hidden in cloud, and now revealed,

As if this phantom, full of pain,

Were by the crumbling walls concealed,

And at the windows seen again.

Until at last, serene and proud

In all the splendor of her light,

She walks the terraces of cloud,

Supreme as Empress of the Night.

I look, but recognize no more

Objects familiar to my view;

The very pathway to my door

Is an enchanted avenue.

All things are changed. One mass of shade,

The elm-trees drop their curtains down;

By palace, park, and colonnade

I walk as in a foreign town.

The very ground beneath my feet

Is clothed with a diviner air;

While marble paves the silent street

And glimmers in the empty square.

Illusion! Underneath there lies

The common life of every day;

Only the spirit glorifies

With its own tints the sober gray.

In vain we look, in vain uplift

Our eyes to heaven, if we are blind;

We see but what we have the gift

Of seeing; what we bring we find.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Sundown

THE summer sun is sinking low;

Only the tree-tops redden and glow:

Only the weathercock on the spire

Of the neighboring church is a flame of fire;

All is in shadow below.

O beautiful, awful summer day,

What hast thou given, what taken away?

Life and death, and love and hate,

Homes made happy or desolate,

Hearts made sad or gay!

On the road of life one mile-stone more!

In the book of life one leaf turned o'er!

Like a red seal is the setting sun

On the good and the evil men have done,--

Naught can to-day restore!

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Autumn Within

IT is autumn; not without

But within me is the cold.

Youth and spring are all about;

It is I that have grown old.

Birds are darting through the air,

Singing, building without rest;

Life is stirring everywhere,

Save within my lonely breast.

There is silence: the dead leaves

Fall and rustle and are still;

Beats no flail upon the sheaves,

Comes no murmur from the mill.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Memories

OFT I remember those I have known

In other days, to whom my heart was lead

As by a magnet, and who are not dead,

But absent, and their memories overgrown

With other thoughts and troubles of my own,

As graves with grasses are, and at their head

The stone with moss and lichens so o'er spread,

Nothing is legible but the name alone.

And is it so with them? After long years.

Do they remember me in the same way,

And is the memory pleasant as to me?

I fear to ask; yet wherefore are my fears?

Pleasures, like flowers, may wither and decay,

And yet the root perennial may be.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Loss and Gain

WHEN I compare

What I have lost with what I have gained,

What I have missed with what attained,

Little room do I find for pride.

I am aware

How many days have been idly spent;

How like an arrow the good intent

Has fallen short or been turned aside.

But who shall dare

To measure loss and gain in this wise?

Defeat may be victory in disguise;

The lowest ebb is the turn of the tide.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

A Fragment

AWAKE! arise! the hour is late!

Angels are knocking at thy door!

They are in haste and cannot wait,

And once departed come no more.

Awake! arise! the athlete's arm

Loses its strength by too much rest;

The fallow land, the untilled farm

Produces only weeds at best.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Hymn to the Night

I HEARD the trailing garments of the Night

Sweep through her marble halls!

I saw her sable skirts all fringed with light

From the celestial walls!

I felt her presence, by its spell of might,

Stoop o'er me from above;

The calm, majestic presence of the Night,

As of the one I love.

I heard the sounds of sorrow and delight,

The manifold, soft chimes,

That fill the haunted chambers of the Night,

Like some old poet's rhymes.

From the cool cisterns of the midnight air

My spirit drank repose;

The fountain of perpetual peace flows there,--

From those deep cisterns flows.

O holy Night! from thee I learn to bear

What man has borne before!

Thou layest thy finger on the lips of Care,

And thy complain no more.

Peace! Peace! Orestes-like I breathe this prayer!

Descend, with broad-winged flight,

The welcome, the thrice-prayed for, the most fair,

The best-beloved Night!

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

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!

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.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Aftermath

WHEN the summer fields are mown,

When the birds are fledged and flown,

And the dry leaves strew the path;

With the falling of the snow,

With the cawing of the crow,

Once again the fields we mow

And gather in the aftermath.

Not the sweet, new grass with flowers

Is this harvesting of ours;

Not the upland clover bloom;

But the rowan mixed with weeds,

Tangled tufts from marsh and meads,

Where the poppy drops its seeds

In the silence and the gloom.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

The Arrow and the Song

I SHOT an arrow into the air,

It fell to earth, I knew not where:

For so swiftly it flew, the sight

Could not follow it in its flight.

I breathed a song into the air,

It fell to earth I knew not where;

For who has sight so keen and strong,

That it can follow the flight of song?

Long, long afterward, in an oak,

I found the arrow still unbroke;

And the song, from beginning to end,

I found again in the heart of a friend.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

The Wreck of the Hesperus

IT was the schooner Hesperus

That sailed the wintry sea:

And the skipper had taken his little daughter,

To bear him company.

Blue were her eyes as the fairy-flax,

Her cheeks like the dawn of day,

And her bosom white as the hawthorn buds

The 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 tonight 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:

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,

O 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,

O say, what may it be?"

"Some ship in distress, that cannot live

In such an angry sea!"

"O father! I see a gleaming light,

O 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;

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

Towards 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 weary 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,

To see the form of a maiden fair

Lashed close to a drifting mast.

The salt sea was frozed on her breast,

The salt tears in her eyes;

And he saw her hair, like the brown sea-weed,

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!

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow