And the name their voices uttered
Was the name of Vogelweid.
Till at length the portly abbot
Murmured, “Why this waste of food?
Be it changed to loaves henceforward 35
For our fasting brotherhood.”
Then in vain o’er tower and turret,
From the walls and woodland nests,
When the minster bells rang noontide,
Gathered the unwelcome guests. 40
Then in vain, with cries discordant,
Clamorous round the Gothic spire,
Screamed the feathered Minnesingers
For the children of the choir.
Time has long effaced the inscriptions 45
On the cloister’s funeral stones,
And tradition only tells us
Where repose the poet’s bones.
But around the vast cathedral,
By sweet echoes multiplied, 50
Still the birds repeat the legend,
And the name of Vogelweid.
Drinking Song
Inscription for an Antique Pitcher
COME, old friend! sit down and listen!
From the pitcher, placed between us,
How the waters laugh and glisten
In the head of old Silenus!
Old Silenus, bloated, drunken, 5
Led by his inebriate Satyrs;
On his breast his head is sunken,
Vacantly he leers and chatters.
Fauns with youthful Bacchus follow;
Ivy crowns that brow supernal 10
As the forehead of Apollo,
And possessing youth eternal.
Round about him, fair Bacchantes,
Bearing cymbals, flutes, and thyrses,
Wild from Naxian groves, or Zante’s 15
Vineyards, sing delirious verses.
Thus he won, through all the nations,
Bloodless victories, and the farmer
Bore, as trophies and oblations,
Vines for banners, ploughs for armor. 20
Judged by no o’erzealous rigor,
Much this mystic throng expresses:
Bacchus was the type of vigor,
And Silenus of excesses.
These are ancient ethnic revels, 25
Of a faith long since forsaken;
Now the Satyrs, changed to devils,
Frighten mortals wine-o’ertaken.
Now to rivulets from the mountains
Point the rods of fortune-tellers; 30
Youth perpetual dwells in fountains, —
Not in flasks, and casks, and cellars.
Claudius, though he sang of flagons
And huge tankards filled with Rhenish,
From that fiery blood of dragons 35
Never would his own replenish.
Even Redi, though he chaunted
Bacchus in the Tuscan valleys,
Never drank the wine he vaunted
In his dithyrambic sallies. 40
Then with water fill the pitcher
Wreathed about with classic fables;
Ne’er Falernian threw a richer
Light upon Lucullus’ tables.
Come, old friend, sit down and listen! 45
As it passes thus between us,
How its wavelets laugh and glisten
In the head of old Silenus!
The Old Clock on the Stairs
The house commemorated in the poem is the Gold house, now known as the Plunkett mansion, in Pittsfield, Massachusetts, the homestead of Mrs. Longfellow’s maternal grandfather, whither Mr. Longfellow went after his marriage in the summer of 1843. The poem was not written, however, till November, 1845, when, under date of the 12th of the month, he wrote in his diary: “Began a poem on a clock, with the words ‘Forever, never,’ as the burden; suggested by the words of Bridaine, the old French missionary, who said of eternity, C’est une pendule dont le balancier dit et redit sans cesse ces deux mots seulement dans le silence des tombeaux, — Toujours, jamais! Jamais, toujours! Et pendant ces effrayables révolutions, un réprouvé s’ écrie, ‘Quelle heure est-il?’ et la voix d’un autre misérable lui répond, ‘L’Eternité.’”
SOMEWHAT back from the village street
Stands the old-fashioned country-seat.
Across its antique portico
Tall poplar-trees their shadows throw;
And from its station in the hall 5
An ancient timepiece says to all, —
“Forever — never!
Never — forever!”
Half-way up the stairs it stands,
And points and beckons with its hands 10
From its case of massive oak,
Like a monk, who, under his cloak,
Crosses himself, and sighs, alas!
With sorrowful voice to all who pass, —
“Forever — never! 15
Never — forever!”
By day its voice is low and light;
But in the silent dead of night,
Distinct as a passing footstep’s fall,
It echoes along the vacant hall, 20
Along the ceiling, along the floor,
And seems to say, at each chamber-door, —
“Forever — never!
Never — forever!”
Through days of sorrow and of mirth, 25
Through days of death and days of birth,
Through every swift vicissitude
Of changeful time, unchanged it has stood,
And as if, like God, it all things saw,
It calmly repeats those words of awe, — 30
“Forever — never!
Never — forever!”
In that mansion used to be
Free-hearted Hospitality;
His great fires up the chimney roared; 35
The stranger feasted at his board;
But, like the skeleton at the feast,
That warning timepiece never ceased, —
“Forever — never!
Never — forever!” 40
There groups of merry children played,
There youths and maidens dreaming strayed;
O precious hours! O golden prime,
And affluence of love and time!
Even as a miser counts his gold, 45
Those hours the ancient timepiece told, —
“Forever — never!
Never — forever!”
From that chamber, clothed in white,
The bride came forth on her wedding night; 50
There, in that silent room below,
The dead lay in his shroud of snow;
And in the hush that followed the prayer,
Was heard the old clock on the stair, —
“Forever — never! 55
Never — forever!”
All are scattered now and fled,
Some are married, some are dead;
And when I ask, with throbs of pain,
“Ah! when shall they all meet again?” 60
As in the days long since gone by,
The ancient timepiece makes reply, —
“Forever — never!
Never — forever!”
Never here, forever there, 65
Where all parting, pain, and care,
And death, and time shall disappear, —
Forever there, but never here!
The horologe of Eternity
Sayeth this incessantly, — 70
“Forever — never!
Never — forever!”
The Arrow and the Song
“October 16, 1845. Before church, wrote The Arrow and the Song, which came into my mind as I stood with my back to the fire, and glanced on to the paper with arrow’s speed. Literally an improvisation.”
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 so
ng into the air, 5
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; 10
And the song, from beginning to end,
I found again in the heart of a friend.
Mezzo Cammin
Written at Boppard on the Rhine, August 25, 1842, just before leaving for home.
HALF of my life is gone, and I have let
The years slip from me and have not fulfilled
The aspiration of my youth, to build
Some tower of song with lofty parapet.
Not indolence, nor pleasure, nor the fret 5
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, — 10
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 Evening Star
“October 30, 1845. The Indian summer still in its glory. Wrote the sonnet Hesperus in the rustic seat of the old apple-tree.” This sonnet, addressed to his wife, and afterward given its present title, “is noticeable,” says his biographer, “as being the only love-poem among Mr. Longfellow’s verses.”
LO! in the painted oriel of the West,
Whose panes the sunken sun incarnadines,
Like a fair lady at her casement, shines
The evening star, the star of love and rest!
And then anon she doth herself divest 5
Of all her radiant garments, and reclines
Behind the sombre screen of yonder pines,
With slumber and soft dreams of love oppressed.
O my beloved, my sweet Hesperus!
My morning and my evening star of love! 10
My best and gentlest lady! even thus,
As that fair planet in the sky above,
Dost thou retire unto thy rest at night,
And from thy darkened window fades the light.
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, 5
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; 10
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 the golden leaves!
Dante
TUSCAN, that wanderest through the realms of gloom,
With thoughtful pace, and sad, majestic eyes,
Stern thoughts and awful from thy soul arise,
Like Farinata from his fiery tomb.
Thy sacred song is like the trump of doom; 5
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, 10
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!”
Curfew
I
SOLEMNLY, mournfully,
Dealing its dole,
The Curfew Bell
Is beginning to toll.
Cover the embers, 5
And put out the light;
Toil comes with the morning,
And rest with the night.
Dark grow the windows,
And quenched is the fire; 10
Sound fades into silence, —
All footsteps retire.
No voice in the chambers,
No sound in the hall!
Sleep and oblivion 15
Reign over all!
II
The book is completed,
And closed, like the day;
And the hand that has written it
Lays it away. 20
Dim grow its fancies;
Forgotten they lie;
Like coals in the ashes,
They darken and die.
Song sinks into silence, 25
The story is told,
The windows are darkened,
The hearth-stone is cold.
Darker and darker
The black shadows fall; 30
Sleep and oblivion
Reign over all.
THE SPANISH STUDENT
A POETIC DRAMA
The first form of this comedy was serial publication in Graham’s Magazine, September, October, and November, 1842. It was afterward carefully revised and published in book form in 1843, with the following preface: —
“The subject of the following play is taken in part from the beautiful tale of Cervantes, La Gitanilla. To this source, however, I am indebted for the main incident only, the love of a Spanish student for a Gypsy Girl, and the name of the heroine, Preciosa. I have not followed the story in any of its details.
“In Spain this subject has been twice handled dramatically; first by Juan Perez de Montalvan, in La Gitanilla, and afterwards by Antonio de Solis y Rivadeneira in La Gitanilla de Madrid.
“The same subject has also been made use of by Thomas Middleton, an English dramatist of the seventeenth century. His play is called The Spanish Gypsy. The main plot is the same as in the Spanish pieces; but there runs through it a tragic underplot of the loves of Rodrigo and Doña Clara, which is taken from another tale of Cervantes, La Fuerza de la Sangre.
“The reader who is acquainted with La Gitanilla of Cervantes, and the plays of Montalvan, Solis, and Middleton will perceive that my treatment of the subject differs entirely from theirs.”
The book bore upon its title-page a motto from Burns: —
“What ‘s done we partly may compute,
But know not what ‘s resisted.”
It had been the poet’s intention at first to have the drama put on the stage, but this plan was abandoned. A German version was performed at the Ducal Court Theatre in Dessau, January 28, 1855.
CONTENTS
DRAMATIS PERSONÆ
ACT I
ACT II
ACT III
DRAMATIS PERSONÆ
VICTORIAN, HYPOLITO, Students of Alcalá.
THE COUNT OF LARA,
DON CARLOS, Gentlemen of Madrid.
THE ARCHBISHOP OF TOLEDO.
A CARDINAL.
BELTRAN CRUZADO, Count of the Gypsies.
BARTOLOMÉ ROMÁN, A young Gypsy.
THE PADRE CURA OF GUADARRAMA.
PEDRO CRESPO, Alcalde.
PANCHO, Alguacil.
FRANCISCO, Lara’s Servant.
CHISPA, Victorian’s Servant.
BALTASAR, Innkeeper.
PRECIOSA, A Gypsy Girl.
ANGELICA, A poor Girl.
MARTINA, The Padre Cura’s Niece.
DOLORES, Preciosa’s Maid.
Gypsies, Musicians, etc.
ACT I
SCENE I. — The COUNT OF LARA’S chambers. Night. The COUNT in his dressing-gown, smoking and conversing with DON CARLOS.
Lara. You were not at the play to-night,
Don Carlos;
How happened it?
Don C. I had engagements elsewhere. Pray who was there?
Lara. Why, all the town and court.
The house was crowded; and the busy fans
Among the gayly dressed and perfumed ladies
Fluttered like butterflies among the flowers. 5
There was the Countess of Medina Celi;
The Goblin Lady with her Phantom Lover,
Her Lindo Don Diego; Doña Sol,
And Doña Serafina, and her cousins.
Don C. What was the play?
Lara. It was a dull affair; 10
One of those comedies in which you see,
As Lope says, the history of the world
Brought down from Genesis to the day of Judgment.
There were three duels fought in the first act,
Three gentlemen receiving deadly wounds, 15
Laying their hands upon their hearts, and saying,
“Oh, I am dead!” a lover in a closet,
An old hidalgo, and a gay Don Juan,
A Doña Inez with a black mantilla,
Followed at twilight by an unknown lover, 20
Who looks intently where he knows she is not!
Don C. Of course, the Preciosa danced to-night?
Lara. And never better. Every footstep fell
As lightly as a sunbeam on the water.
I think the girl extremely beautiful. 25
Don C. Almost beyond the privilege of woman!
I saw her in the Prado yesterday.
Her step was royal, — queen-like, — and her face
As beautiful as a saint’s in Paradise.
Lara. May not a saint fall from her Paradise, 30
Delphi Complete Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (Delphi Poets Series Book 13) Page 16
