As youth, and beautiful as youth, upbore me.
A Shadow
I SAID unto myself, if I were dead,
What would befall these children? What would be
Their fate, who now are looking up to me
For help and furtherance? Their lives, I said,
Would be a volume wherein I have read 5
But the first chapters, and no longer see
To read the rest of their dear history,
So full of beauty and so full of dread.
Be comforted; the world is very old,
And generations pass, as they have passed, 10
A troop of shadows moving with the sun;
Thousands of times has the old tale been told;
The world belongs to those who come the last,
They will find hope and strength as we have done.
A Nameless Grave
A newspaper description of a burying ground in Newport News, where, on the head-board of a soldier were the words, “A Union Soldier mustered out,” was sent to Mr. Longfellow in 1864. Ten years passed before the poet used the incident, for he wrote the sonnet November 30, 1874.
“A SOLDIER of the Union mustered out,”
Is the inscription on an unknown grave
At Newport News, beside the salt-sea wave,
Nameless and dateless; sentinel or scout
Shot down in skirmish, or disastrous rout 5
Of battle, when the loud artillery drave
Its iron wedges through the ranks of brave
And doomed battalions, storming the redoubt.
Thou unknown hero sleeping by the sea
In thy forgotten grave! with secret shame 10
I feel my pulses beat, my forehead burn,
When I remember thou hast given for me
All that thou hadst, thy life, thy very name,
And I can give thee nothing in return.
Sleep
LULL me to sleep, ye winds, whose fitful sound
Seems from some faint Æolian harpstring caught;
Seal up the hundred wakeful eyes of thought
As Hermes with his lyre in sleep profound
The hundred wakeful eyes of Argus bound; 5
For I am weary, and am overwrought
With too much toil, with too much care distraught,
And with the iron crown of anguish crowned.
Lay thy soft hand upon my brow and cheek,
O peaceful Sleep! until from pain released 10
I breathe again uninterrupted breath!
Ah, with what subtle meaning did the Greek
Call thee the lesser mystery at the feast
Whereof the greater mystery is death!
The Old Bridge at Florence
TADDEO GADDI built me. I am old,
Five centuries old. I plant my foot of stone
Upon the Arno, as St. Michael’s own
Was planted on the dragon. Fold by fold
Beneath me as it struggles, I behold 5
Its glistening scales. Twice hath it overthrown
My kindred and companions. Me alone
It moveth not, but is by me controlled.
I can remember when the Medici
Were driven from Florence; longer still ago 10
The final wars of Ghibelline and Guelf.
Florence adorns me with her jewelry;
And when I think that Michael Angelo
Hath leaned on me, I glory in myself.
Il Ponte Vecchio di Firenze
GADDI mi fece; il Ponte Vecchio sono;
Cinquecent’ anni già sull’ Arno pianto
Il piede, come il suo Michele Santo
Piantò sul draco. Mentre ch’ io ragiono
Lo vedo torcere con flebil suono 5
Le rilucenti scaglie. Ha questi affranto
Due volte i miei maggior. Me solo intanto
Neppure muove, ed io non l’ abbandono.
Io mi rammento quando fur cacciati
I Medici; pur quando Ghibellino 10
E Guelfo fecer pace mi rammento.
Fiorenza i suoi giojelli m’ ha prestati;
E quando penso ch’ Agnolo il divino
Su me posava, insuperbir mi sento.
Birds of Passage: Flight the Fourth.
Charles Sumner
The first draft of the first poem was made March 30, 1874. It did not satisfy the poet, for he wrote, April 2: “I have been trying to write something about Sumner, but to little purpose. I cannot collect my faculties.”
GARLANDS upon his grave
And flowers upon his hearse,
And to the tender heart and brave
The tribute of this verse.
His was the troubled life, 5
The conflict and the pain,
The grief, the bitterness of strife,
The honor without stain.
Like Winkelried, he took
Into his manly breast 10
The sheaf of hostile spears, and broke
A path for the oppressed.
Then from the fatal field
Upon a nation’s heart
Borne like a warrior on his shield! — 15
So should the brave depart.
Death takes us by surprise,
And stays our hurrying feet;
The great design unfinished lies,
Our lives are incomplete. 20
But in the dark unknown
Perfect their circles seem,
Even as a bridge’s arch of stone
Is rounded in the stream.
Alike are life and death, 25
When life in death survives,
And the uninterrupted breath
Inspires a thousand lives.
Were a star quenched on high,
For ages would its light, 30
Still travelling downward from the sky,
Shine on our mortal sight.
So when a great man dies,
For years beyond our ken,
The light he leaves behind him lies 35
Upon the paths of men.
Travels by the Fireside
Written October 7, 1874, as introduction to the series of volumes, Poems of Places, edited by Mr. Longfellow.
THE CEASELESS rain is falling fast,
And yonder gilded vane,
Immovable for three days past,
Points to the misty main.
It drives me in upon myself 5
And to the fireside gleams,
To pleasant books that crowd my shelf,
And still more pleasant dreams.
I read whatever bards have sung
Of lands beyond the sea, 10
And the bright days when I was young
Come thronging back to me.
In fancy I can hear again
The Alpine torrent’s roar,
The mule-bells on the hills of Spain, 15
The sea at Elsinore.
I see the convent’s gleaming wall
Rise from its groves of pine,
And towers of old cathedrals tall,
And castles by the Rhine. 20
I journey on by park and spire,
Beneath centennial trees,
Through fields with poppies all on fire,
And gleams of distant seas.
I fear no more the dust and heat, 25
No more I feel fatigue,
While journeying with another’s feet
O’er many a lengthening league.
Let others traverse sea and land,
And toil through various climes, 30
I turn the world round with my hand
Reading these poets’ rhymes.
From them I learn whatever lies
Beneath each changing zone,
And see, when looking with their eyes, 35
Better than with mine own.
Cadenabbia
Lake of Como
NO sound of wheels or hoof-beat breaks
The silence of the summer day,
As by the loveliest of all lakes
I while the idle hours away.
I pace the leafy colonnade, 5
Where level branches of the plane
Above me weave a roof of shade
Impervious to the sun and rain.
At times a sudden rush of air
Flutters the lazy leaves o’erhead, 10
And gleams of sunshine toss and flare
Like torches down the path I tread.
By Somariva’s garden gate
I make the marble stairs my seat,
And hear the water, as I wait, 15
Lapping the steps beneath my feet.
The undulation sinks and swells
Along the stony parapets,
And far away the floating bells
Tinkle upon the fisher’s nets. 20
Silent and slow, by tower and town
The freighted barges come and go,
Their pendent shadows gliding down
By town and tower submerged below.
The hills sweep upward from the shore, 25
With villas scattered one by one
Upon their wooded spurs, and lower
Bellaggio blazing in the sun.
And dimly seen, a tangled mass
Of walls and woods, of light and shade, 30
Stands, beckoning up the Stelvio Pass,
Varenna with its white cascade.
I ask myself, Is this a dream?
Will it all vanish into air?
Is there a land of such supreme 35
And perfect beauty anywhere?
Sweet vision! Do not fade away:
Linger, until my heart shall take
Into itself the summer day,
And all the beauty of the lake; 40
Linger, until upon my brain
Is stamped an image of the scene;
Then fade into the air again,
And be as if thou hadst not been.
Monte Cassino
Terra di Lavoro
BEAUTIFUL valley! through whose verdant meads
Unheard the Garigliano glides along; —
The Liris, nurse of rushes and of reeds,
The river taciturn of classic song.
The Land of Labor and the Land of Rest, 5
Where mediæval towns are white on all
The hillsides, and where every mountain’s crest
Is an Etrurian or a Roman wall.
There is Alagna, where Pope Boniface
Was dragged with contumely from his throne; 10
Sciarra Colonna, was that day’s disgrace
The Pontiff’s only, or in part thine own?
There is Ceprano, where a renegade
Was each Apulian, as great Dante saith,
When Manfred by his men-at-arms betrayed 15
Spurred on to Benevento and to death.
There is Aquinum, the old Volscian town,
Where Juvenal was born, whose lurid light
Still hovers o’er his birthplace like the crown
Of splendor seen o’er cities in the night. 20
Doubled the splendor is, that in its streets
The Angelic Doctor as a school-boy played,
And dreamed perhaps the dreams, that he repeats
In ponderous folios for scholastics made.
And there, uplifted, like a passing cloud 25
That pauses on a mountain summit high,
Monte Cassino’s convent rears its proud
And venerable walls against the sky.
Well I remember how on foot I climbed
The stony pathway leading to its gate; 30
Above, the convent bells for vespers chimed,
Below, the darkening town grew desolate.
Well I remember the low arch and dark,
The courtyard with its well, the terrace wide,
From which, far down, the valley like a park, 35
Veiled in the evening mists, was dim descried.
The day was dying, and with feeble hands
Caressed the mountain-tops; the vales between
Darkened; the river in the meadow-lands
Sheathed itself as a sword, and was not seen. 40
The silence of the place was like a sleep,
So full of rest it seemed; each passing tread
Was a reverberation from the deep
Recesses of the ages that are dead.
For, more than thirteen centuries ago, 45
Benedict fleeing from the gates of Rome,
A youth disgusted with its vice and woe,
Sought in these mountain solitudes a home.
He founded here his Convent and his Rule
Of prayer and work, and counted work as prayer; 50
The pen became a clarion, and his school
Flamed like a beacon in the midnight air.
What though Boccaccio, in his reckless way,
Mocking the lazy brotherhood, deplores
The illuminated manuscripts, that lay 55
Torn and neglected on the dusty floors?
Boccaccio was a novelist, a child
Of fancy and of fiction at the best!
This the urbane librarian said, and smiled
Incredulous, as at some idle jest. 60
Upon such themes as these, with one young friar
I sat conversing late into the night,
Till in its cavernous chimney the wood-fire
Had burnt its heart out like an anchorite.
And then translated, in my convent cell, 65
Myself yet not myself, in dreams I lay,
And, as a monk who hears the matin bell,
Started from sleep; — already it was day.
From the high window I beheld the scene
On which Saint Benedict so oft had gazed, — 70
The mountains and the valley in the sheen
Of the bright sun, — and stood as one amazed.
Gray mists were rolling, rising, vanishing;
The woodlands glistened with their jewelled crowns;
Far off the mellow bells began to ring 75
For matins in the half-awakened towns.
The conflict of the Present and the Past,
The ideal and the actual in our life,
As on a field of battle held me fast,
Where this world and the next world were at strife. 80
For, as the valley from its sleep awoke,
I saw the iron horses of the steam
Toss to the morning air their plumes of smoke,
And woke, as one awaketh from a dream.
Amalfi
SWEET the memory is to me
Of a land beyond the sea,
Where the waves and mountains meet,
Where amid her mulberry-trees
Sits Amalfi in the heat, 5
Bathing ever her white feet
In the tideless summer seas.
In the middle of the town,
From its fountains in the hills,
Tumbling through the narrow gorge, 10
The Canneto rushes down,
Turns the great wheels of the mills,
Lifts the hammers of the forge.
‘T is a stairway, not a street,
That ascends the deep ravine, 15
Where the torrent leaps between
Rocky walls that almost meet.
Toiling up from stair to stair
Peasant girls their burdens bear;
Sunburnt daughters of the soil, 20
Stately figures tall and straight,
What inexorable fate
Dooms them to this life of toil?
Lord of vineyards and of lands,
Far above the convent stands. 25
On its terraced walk aloof
Leans a monk with folded hands.
Placid, satisfied, serene,
Looking down upon the scene
Over wall and red-tiled roof; 30
Wondering unto what good end
All this
toil and traffic tend,
And why all men cannot be
Free from care and free from pain,
And the sordid love of gain, 35
And as indolent as he.
Where are now the freighted barks
From the marts of east and west?
Where the knights in iron sarks
Journeying to the Holy Land, 40
Glove of steel upon the hand,
Cross of crimson on the breast?
Where the pomp of camp and court?
Where the pilgrims with their prayers?
Where the merchants with their wares, 45
And their gallant brigantines
Sailing safely into port
Chased by corsair Algerines?
Vanished like a fleet of cloud,
Like a passing trumpet-blast, 50
Are those splendors of the past,
And the commerce and the crowd!
Fathoms deep beneath the seas
Lie the ancient wharves and quays,
Swallowed by the engulfing waves; 55
Silent streets and vacant halls,
Ruined roofs and towers and walls;
Hidden from all mortal eyes
Deep the sunken city lies:
Even cities have their graves! 60
This is an enchanted land!
Round the headlands far away
Sweeps the blue Salernian bay
With its sickle of white sand:
Further still and furthermost 65
On the dim discovered coast
Pæstum with its ruins lies,
And its roses all in bloom
Seem to tinge the fatal skies
Of that lonely land of doom. 70
On his terrace, high in air,
Delphi Complete Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (Delphi Poets Series Book 13) Page 78
