The Poetical Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

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George Routledge and sons, Broadway, Ludgate hill., 1866 - 367 pages

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Page 142 - 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 unbroke ; And the song, from beginning to end, I found again in the heart of a friend.
Page 107 - 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 ! 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!
Page 158 - 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 ! We know what Master laid thy keel, What Workmen wrought thy ribs of steel, Who made each mast, and sail, and rope, What anvils rang, what hammers beat, In what a forge and what a heat Were shaped the anchors of thy hope ! Fear not each sudden sound and shock, 'Tis of the wave and not the rock; 'Tis but the flapping of the sail,...
Page 167 - There is no Death ! what seems so is transition ; This life of mortal breath Is but a suburb of the life elysian, Whose portal we call Death.
Page 33 - Tell me not, in mournful numbers, Life is but an empty dream! — For the soul is dead that slumbers, And things are not what they seem. Life is real! Life is earnest! And the grave is not its goal; Dust thou art, to dust returnest, Was not spoken of the soul.
Page 578 - BETWEEN the dark and the daylight, When the night is beginning to lower, Comes a pause in the day's occupations, That is known as the Children's Hour. I hear in the chamber above me The patter of little feet, The sound of a door that is opened, And voices soft and sweet. From my study I see in the lamplight, Descending the broad hall stair, Grave Alice, and laughing Allegra, And Edith with golden hair. A whisper, and then a silence : Yet I know by their merry eyes They are plotting and planning together...
Page 85 - But the father answered never a word, A frozen corpse was he. Lashed to the helm, all stiff and stark, With his face turned to the skies, The lantern gleamed through the gleaming snow On his fixed and glassy eyes. Then the maiden clasped her hands and prayed That saved she might be : And she thought of Christ who stilled the wave, On the Lake of Galilee.
Page 34 - Art is long, and time is fleeting, And our hearts, though stout and brave, Still, like muffled drums, are beating Funeral marches to the grave.
Page 135 - 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...
Page 46 - Came sweetly to the echo-giving hills ; And the wild horn, whose voice the woodland fills, Was ringing to the merry shout, That faint and far the glen- sent out, Where, answering to the sudden shot, thin smoke, Through thick-leaved branches, from the dingle broke. If thou art worn and hard beset With sorrows, that thou wouldst forget, If thou wouldst read a lesson, that will keep Thy heart from fainting and thy soul from sleep, Go to the woods and hills ! No tears Dim the sweet look that Nature wears.

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