Enjoy the Spring of Love and Youth,
To some good angel leave the rest;
For Time will teach thee soon the truth,
There are no birds in last year’s nest!
The Rainy Day
Written at the old home in Portland.
THE DAY is cold, and dark, and dreary;
It rains, and the wind is never weary;
The vine still clings to the mouldering wall,
But at every gust the dead leaves fall,
And the day is dark and dreary. 5
My life is cold, and dark, and dreary;
It rains, and the wind is never weary;
My thoughts still cling to the mouldering Past,
But the hopes of youth fall thick in the blast,
And the days are dark and dreary. 10
Be still, sad heart! and cease repining;
Behind the clouds is the sun still shining;
Thy fate is the common fate of all,
Into each life some rain must fall,
Some days must be dark and dreary. 15
God’s-Acre
“I would like to be burned, not buried,” Mr. Longfellow notes, and in a letter to Mr. Ward, who had the poem in his hands for publication, he writes: “I here add a concluding stanza for God’s-Acre, which I think improves the piece and rounds it off more perfectly than before, — the thought no longer resting on the cold furrow, but on the waving harvest beyond: —
Green gate of Paradise! let in the sun!
Unclose thy portals, that we may behold
Those fields elysian, where bright rivers run,
And waving harvests bend like seas of gold.
The poem was published with this additional stanza in The Democratic Review for December, 1841, but when it came to be added to the volume the stanza was dropped.
I LIKE that ancient Saxon phrase, which calls
The burial-ground God’s-Acre! It is just;
It consecrates each grave within its walls,
And breathes a benison o’er the sleeping dust.
God’s-Acre! Yes, that blessed name imparts 5
Comfort to those who in the grave have sown
The seed that they had garnered in their hearts,
Their bread of life, alas! no more their own.
Into its furrows shall we all be cast,
In the sure faith, that we shall rise again 10
At the great harvest, when the archangel’s blast
Shall winnow, like a fan, the chaff and grain.
Then shall the good stand in immortal bloom,
In the fair gardens of that second birth;
And each bright blossom mingle its perfume 15
With that of flowers, which never bloomed on earth.
With thy rude ploughshare, Death, turn up the sod,
And spread the furrow for the seed we sow;
This is the field and Acre of our God,
This is the place where human harvests grow. 20
To the River Charles
The three friends hinted at in the eighth stanza were Charles Sumner, Charles Folsom, and Charles Amory.
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, 5
Half in rest, and half in strife,
I have seen thy waters stealing
Onward, like the stream of life
Thou hast taught me, Silent River!
Many a lesson, deep and long; 10
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 15
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. 20
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, 25
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, all true and tried; 30
And that name, like magic, binds me
Closer, closer to thy side.
Friends my soul with joy remembers!
How like quivering flames they start,
When I fan the living embers 35
On the hearth-stone of my heart!
T is for this, thou Silent River!
That my spirit leans to thee;
Thou hast been a generous giver,
Take this idle song from me. 40
Blind Bartimeus
Written November 3, 1841. Mr. Longfellow writes under that date to Mr. Ward: “I was reading this morning, just after breakfast, the tenth chapter of Mark, in Greek, the last seven verses of which contain the story of blind Bartimeus, and always seemed to me remarkable for their beauty. At once the whole scene presented itself to my mind in lively colors, — the walls of Jericho, the cold wind through the gateway, the ragged, blind beggar, his shrill cry, the tumultuous crowd, the serene Christ, the miracle; and these things took the form I have given them above, where, perforce, I have retained the striking Greek expressions of entreaty, comfort, and healing; though I am well aware that Greek was not spoken at Jericho.… I think I shall add to the title, ‘supposed to be written by a monk of the Middle Ages,’ as it is in the legend style.”
BLIND Bartimeus at the gates
Of Jericho in darkness waits;
He hears the crowd; — he hears a breath
Say, “It is Christ of Nazareth!”
And calls, in tones of agony, 5
The thronging multitudes increase;
Blind Bartimeus, hold thy peace!
But still, above the noisy crowd,
The beggar’s cry is shrill and loud; 10
Until they say, “He calleth thee!”
Then saith the Christ, as silent stands
The crowd, “What wilt thou at my hands?”
And he replies, “Oh, give me light! 15
Rabbi, restore the blind man’s sight.”
And Jesus answers,
Ye that have eyes, yet cannot see,
In darkness and in misery, 20
Recall those mighty Voices Three.
The Goblet of Life
Mr. Longfellow, writing to Mr. Ward, November 3, 1841, says: “I shall send him [Mr. Benjamin] a new poem, called simply Fennel, which I do not copy here on account of its length. It is as good, perhaps, as Excelsior. Hawthorne, who is passing the night with me, likes it better.” He afterward changed the title to that which the poem now bears.
FILLED is Life’s goblet to the brim;
And though my eyes with tears are dim,
I see its sparkling bubbles swim,
And chant a melancholy hymn
With solemn voice and slow. 5
No purple flowers, — no garlands green,
Conceal the goblet’s shade or sheen,
Nor maddening draughts of Hippocrene,
Like gleams of sunshine, flash between
Thick leaves of mistletoe. 10
This goblet, wrought with curious art,
Is filled with waters, that upstart,
When the deep fountains of the heart,
By strong convulsions rent apart,
Are running all to waste. 15
And as it mantling passes round,
With fennel is it wreathed and crowned,
Whose seed and foliage sun-imbrowned
Are in its waters steeped and drowned,
And give a
bitter taste. 20
Above the lowly plants it towers,
The fennel, with its yellow flowers,
And in an earlier age than ours
Was gifted with the wondrous powers,
Lost vision to restore. 25
It gave new strength, and fearless mood;
And gladiators, fierce and rude,
Mingled it in their daily food;
And he who battled and subdued,
A wreath of fennel wore. 30
Then in Life’s goblet freely press
The leaves that give it bitterness,
Nor prize the colored waters less,
For in thy darkness and distress
New light and strength they give! 35
And he who has not learned to know
How false its sparkling bubbles show,
How bitter are the drops of woe,
With which its brim may overflow,
He has not learned to live. 40
The prayer of Ajax was for light;
Through all that dark and desperate fight,
The blackness of that noonday night,
He asked but the return of sight,
To see his foeman’s face. 45
Let our unceasing, earnest prayer
Be, too, for light, — for strength to bear
Our portion of the weight of care,
That crushes into dumb despair
One half the human race. 50
O suffering, sad humanity!
O ye afflicted ones, who lie
Steeped to the lips in misery,
Longing, and yet afraid to die,
Patient, though sorely tried! 55
I pledge you in this cup of grief,
Where floats the fennel’s bitter leaf!
The Battle of our Life is brief,
The alarm, — the struggle, — the relief,
Then sleep we side by side. 60
Maidenhood
When writing to his father of the appearance of his new volume of poems, Mr. Longfellow said: “I think the last two pieces the best, — perhaps as good as anything I have written.” These pieces were the following and Excelsior.
MAIDEN! with the meek, brown eyes,
In whose orbs a shadow lies
Like the dusk in evening skies!
Thou whose locks outshine the sun,
Golden tresses, wreathed in one, 5
As the braided streamlets run!
Standing, with reluctant feet,
Where the brook and river meet,
Womanhood and childhood fleet!
Gazing, with a timid glance, 10
On the brooklet’s swift advance,
On the river’s broad expanse!
Deep and still, that gliding stream
Beautiful to thee must seem,
As the river of a dream. 15
Then why pause with indecision,
When bright angels in thy vision
Beckon thee to fields Elysian?
Seest thou shadows sailing by,
As the dove, with startled eye, 20
Sees the falcon’s shadow fly?
Hearest thou voices on the shore,
That our ears perceive no more,
Deafened by the cataract’s roar?
Oh, thou child of many prayers! 25
Life hath quicksands, — Life hath snares!
Care and age come unawares!
Like the swell of some sweet tune,
Morning rises into noon,
May glides onward into June. 30
Childhood is the bough, where slumbered
Birds and blossoms many-numbered; —
Age, that bough with snows encumbered.
Gather, then, each flower that grows,
When the young heart overflows, 35
To embalm that tent of snows.
Bear a lily in thy hand;
Gates of brass cannot withstand
One touch of that magic wand.
Bear through sorrow, wrong, and ruth, 40
In thy heart the dew of youth,
On thy lips the smile of truth.
Oh, that dew, like balm, shall steal
Into wounds that cannot heal,
Even as sleep our eyes doth seal; 45
And that smile, like sunshine, dart
Into many a sunless heart,
For a smile of God thou art.
Excelsior
The original manuscript of Excelsior, showing the several drafts and interlineations, is preserved in the library of Harvard University. It was written on the back of a note from Mr. Sumner, and is dated at the close: “September 28, 1841. Half past 3 o’clock, morning. Now to bed.” The suggestion of the poem came to Mr. Longfellow from a scrap of newspaper, a part of the heading of one of the New York journals, bearing the seal of the State, — a shield, with a rising sun, and the motto Excelsior. The intention of the poem was intimated in a letter from Mr. Longfellow written some time after to Mr. C. K. Tuckerman: —
“I have had the pleasure of receiving your note in regard to the poem Excelsior and very willingly give you my intention in writing it. This was no more than to display, in a series of pictures, the life of a man of genius, resisting all temptations, laying aside all fears, heedless of all warnings, and pressing right on to accomplish his purpose. His motto is Excelsior— ‘higher.’ He passes through the Alpine village — through the rough, cold paths of the world — where the peasants cannot understand him, and where his watch-word is in an ‘unknown tongue.’ He disregards the happiness of domestic peace and sees the glaciers — his fate — before him. He disregards the warning of the old man’s wisdom and the fascinations of woman’s love. He answers to all, ‘Higher yet!’ The monks of St. Bernard are the representatives of religious forms and ceremonies and with their oft-repeated prayer mingles the sound of his voice, telling them there is something higher than forms and ceremonies. Filled with these aspirations, he perishes; without having reached the perfection he longed for; and the voice heard in the air is the promise of immortality and progress ever upward. You will perceive that Excelsior, an adjective of the comparative degree, is used adverbially; a use justified by the best Latin writers.” This he afterwards found to be a mistake, and explained excelsior as the last word of the phrase Scopus meus est excelsior.
Five years after writing this poem, Mr. Longfellow made the following entry in his diary: “December 8, 1846. Looking over Brainard’s poems, I find, in a piece called The Mocking-Bird, this passage: —
Now his note
Mounts to the play-ground of the lark, high up
Quite to the sky. And then again it falls
As a lost star falls down into the marsh.
Now, when in Excelsior I said,
A voice fell, like a falling star,
Brainard’s poem was not in my mind, nor had I in all probability ever read it. Felton said at the time that the same image was in Euripides, or Pindar, I forget which. Of a truth, one cannot strike a spade into the soil of Parnassus, without disturbing the bones of some dead poet.”
Dr. Holmes remarks of Excelsior that “the repetition of the aspiring exclamation which gives its name to the poem, lifts every stanza a step higher than the one which preceded it.”
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! 5
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! 10
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! 15
“Try not the Pass!” the old man said;
“D
ark lowers the tempest overhead,
The roaring torrent is deep and wide!”
And loud that clarion voice replied,
Excelsior! 20
“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! 25
“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! 30
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! 35
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! 40
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! 45
POEMS ON SLAVERY
This small poetry collection was published in 1842 and was Longfellow’s first public support of abolitionism. Yet, as Longfellow himself wrote, the poems were “so mild that even a Slaveholder might read them without losing his appetite for breakfast”. A critic for The Dial agreed, calling the collection “the thinnest of all Mr. Longfellow’s thin books; spirited and polished like its forerunners; but the topic would warrant a deeper tone”. The New England Anti-Slavery Association, however, was satisfied with the collection, reprinting it for further distribution.
Delphi Complete Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (Delphi Poets Series Book 13) Page 7
