Henry Wadsworth Longfellow Quotes

And, (Lake) Como ! thou, a treasure whom the earth / Keeps to herself, confined as in a depth / Of Abyssinian privacy. I spake / Of thee, thy chestnut woods, and garden plots / Of Indian-corn tended by dark-eyed maids; / Thy lofty steeps, and pathways roofed with vines, / Winding from house to house, from town to town, / Sole link that binds them to each other ; walks, / League after league, and cloistral avenues, / Where silence dwells if music be not there: / While yet a youth undisciplined in verse, / Through fond ambition of that hour, I strove / To chant your praise ; nor can approach you now / Ungreeted by- a more melodious song, / Where tones of nature smoothed by learned art / May flow in lasting current. Like a breeze / Or sunbeam over your domain I passed / In motion without pause; but ye have left / Your beauty with me, a serene accord / Of forms and colors, passive, yet endowed / In their subinissivencss with power as sweet / And gracious, almost might I dare to say, / As virtue is, or goodness; sweet as love, / Or the remembrance of a generous deed, / Or mildest visitation of pure thought, / When God, the giver of all joy, is thanked / Religiously, in silent blessedness; / Sweet as this last herself, for such it is.

Then followed that beautiful season... Summer....
Filled was the air with a dreamy and magical light; and the landscape
Lay as if new created in all the freshness of childhood.

A noble type of good.
Heroic womanhood.

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!

Thus, seamed with many scars
Bursting these prison bars,
Up to its native stars
My soul ascended!
There from the flowing bowl
Deep drinks the warrior's soul,
Skoal! to the Northland! skoal!
—Thus the tale ended.

Still stands the forest primeval; but far away from its shadow,
Side by side, in their nameless graves, the lovers are sleeping.
Under the humble walls of the little catholic churchyard,
In the heart of the city, they lie, unknown and unnoticed;
Daily the tides of life go ebbing and flowing beside them,
Thousands of throbbing hearts, where theirs are at rest and forever,
Thousands of aching brains, where theirs no longer are busy,
Thousands of toiling hands, where theirs have ceased from their labors,
Thousands of weary feet, where theirs have completed their journey!

My soul is full of longing
For the secret of the Sea,
And the heart of the great ocean
Sends a thrilling pulse through me.

And see! she stirs!
She starts,—she moves,—she seems to feel
The thrill of life along her keel,
And, spurning with her foot the ground,
With one exulting, joyous bound,
She leaps into the ocean's arms!

Thou, too, sail on, O Ship of State!
Sail on, O Union, strong and great!
Humanity with all its fears,
With all the hopes of future years,
Is hanging breathless on thy fate!

Read from some humbler poet,
Whose songs gushed from his heart,
As showers from the clouds of summer,
Or tears from the eyelids start.

And when she was good she was very very good. But when she was bad she was horrid.

His brow is wet with honest sweat,
He earns whate'er he can,
And looks the whole world in the face,
For he owes not any man.

"Ah! this beautiful world!" said Flemming, with a smile. "Indeed, I know not what to think of it. Sometimes it is all gladness and sunshine, and Heaven itself lies not far off. And then it changes suddenly; and is dark and sorrowful, and clouds shut out the sky. In the lives of the saddest of us, there are bright days like this, when we feel as if we could take the great world in our arms and kiss it. Then come the gloomy hours, when the fire will neither burn on our hearths nor in our hearts; and all without and within is dismal, cold, and dark. Believe me, every heart has its secret sorrows, which the world knows not, and oftentimes we call a man cold, when he is only sad."

Look, then, into thine heart, and write!

There was an old belief that in the embers
Of all things their primordial form exists,
And cunning alchemists
Could re-create the rose with all its members
From its own ashes, but without the bloom,
Without the lost perfume
Ah me! what wonder-working, occult science
Can from the ashes in our hearts once more
The rose of youth restore?
What craft of alchemy can bid defiance
To time and change, and for a single hour
Renew this phantom-flower?