Read More Poetry: The Henry Wadsworth Longfellow Edition

As we continue to encourage the world to read more poetry, today, we’d like to highlight one American poet in particular whose work did much to shape the landscape of U.S. thought and history. Indeed, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow is remembered for the sincerity with which he wrote. He was firmly entrenched in the American story he was living, and his poetry helped to preserve it for the future.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s work demonstrates an unmatched knack for writing within a historical context. Indeed, he brought to life Paul Revere, told the story of Evangeline and the Acadian people, among countless other historical depictions. In doing so with such vigor and success, his poems are timeless treasures.

Longfellow lived from 1807-1882 making him a contemporary of other literary figureheads including novelists Charles Dickens and Nathaniel Hawthorne. Like Dickens and Hawthorne, Longfellow must still be read today. Let’s start now.

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 despair,
Long in its cloudy bosom hoarded,
Now whispered and revealed
To wood and field.

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
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,—
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 Day is Done

…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 to-night 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 eyelids start;
Who, through long days of labour,
                And nights devoid of ease,
Still heard in his soul the music
                Of wonderful melodies.
Such songs have power to quiet
                The restless pulse of care,
And come 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.

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 unbroken;
And the song, from beginning to end,
I found again in the heart of a friend.

Killed at the Ford

He is dead, the beautiful youth,
The heart of honour, the tongue of truth,
He, the life and light of us all,
Whose voice was blithe as a bugle-call,
Whom all eyes followed with one consent,
The cheer of whose laugh, and whose pleasant word,
Hushed all murmurs of discontent.

Only last night, as we rode along,
Down the dark of the mountain gap,
To visit the picket-guard at the ford,
Little dreaming of any mishap,
He was humming the words of some old song:
‘Two red roses he had on his cap,
And another he bore at the point of his sword.’

Sudden and swift a whistling ball
Came out of a wood, and the voice was still;
Something I heard in the darkness fall,
And for a moment my blood grew chill;
I spake in a whisper, as he who speaks
In a room where some one is lying dead;
But he made no answer to what I said.

We lifted him up to his saddle again,
And through the mire and the mist and the rain
Carried him back to the silent camp,
And laid him as if asleep on his bed;
And I saw by the light of the surgeon’s lamp
Two white roses upon his cheeks,
And one, just over his heart, blood-red!

And I saw in a vision how far and fleet
That fatal bullet went speeding forth,
Till it reached a town in the distant North,
Till it reached a house in a sunny street,
Till it reached a heart that ceased to beat
Without a murmur, without a cry;
And a bell was tolled, in that far-off town,
For one who had passed from cross to crown,
And the neighbours wondered that she should die.