Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

"In the elder days of Art, Builders wrought with greatest care Each minute and unseen part; For the gods see everywhere."

"God sent his Singers upon earth With songs of sadness and of mirth, That they might touch the hearts of men, And bring them back to heaven again."

"But the great Master said, "I see No best in kind, but in degree; I gave a various gift to each, To charm, to strengthen, and to teach."

"O holy trust! O endless sense of rest! Like the beloved John To lay his head upon the Saviour's breast, And thus to journey on!"

"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."

"There is no flock, however watched and tended, But one dead lamb is there! There is no fireside, howsoe'er defended, But has one vacant chair!"

"The air is full of farewells to the dying, And mournings for the dead."

"But oftentimes celestial benedictions Assume this dark disguise."

"What seem to us but sad, funereal tapers May be heaven's distant lamps."

"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."

"Safe from temptation, safe from sin's pollution, She lives whom we call dead."

"Build me straight, O worthy Master! Stanch and strong, a goodly vessel, That shall laugh at all disaster, And with wave and whirlwind wrestle!"

"For his heart was in his work, and the heart Giveth grace unto every Art."

"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!"

"Sail forth into the sea of life, O gentle, loving, trusting wife, And safe from all adversity Upon the bosom of that sea Thy comings and thy goings be! For gentleness and love and trust Prevail o'er angry wave and gust; And in the wreck of noble lives Something immortal still survives."

"And in the wreck of noble lives Something immortal still survives."

"Our hearts, our hopes, are all with thee, Our hearts, our hopes, our prayers, our tears, Our faith triumphant o'er our fears, Are all with thee,—are all with thee!"

"Time has laid his hand Upon my heart, gently, not smiting it, But as a harper lays his open palm Upon his harp, to deaden its vibrations."

"Ah, the souls of those that die Are but sunbeams lifted higher."

"The grave itself is but a covered bridge, Leading from light to light, through a brief darkness!"

"I think I have proved, by profound researches, The error of all those doctrines so vicious Of the old Areopagite Dyonisius, That are making such terrible work in the churches, By Michael the Stammerer sent from the East, And done into Latin by that Scottish beast, Erigena Johannes, who dares to maintain, In the face of the truth, the error infernal, That the universe is and must be eternal; At first laying down, as a fact fundamental, That nothing with God can be accidental; Then asserting that God before the creation Could not have existed, because it is plain That, had he existed, he would have created; Which is begging the question that should be debated, And moveth me less to anger than laughter. All nature, he holds, is a respiration Of the Spirit of God, who, in breathing hereafter Will inhale it into his bosom again, So that nothing but God alone will remain."

"Thus departed Hiawatha, Hiawatha the Beloved, In the glory of the sunset, In the purple mists of evening, To the regions of the home-wind, Of the Northwest-Wind, Keewaydin, To the Islands of the Blessed, To the Kingdom of Ponemah, To the Land of the Hereafter!"

"Don Quixote thought he could have made beautiful bird-cages and toothpicks if his brain had not been so full of ideas of chivalry. Most people would succeed in small things, if they were not troubled with great ambitions."

"A torn jacket is soon mended; but hard words bruise the heart of a child."

"Doubtless criticism was originally benignant, pointing out the beauties of a work, rather than its defects. The passions of men have made it malignant, as the bad heart of Procrustes turned the bed, the symbol of repose, into an instrument of torture."

"We often excuse our own want of philanthropy by giving the name of fanaticism to the more ardent zeal of others."

"Every great poem is in itself limited by necessity, — but in its suggestions unlimited and infinite."

"As turning the logs will make a dull fire burn, so change of studies a dull brain."

"The Laws of Nature are just, but terrible. There is no weak mercy in them. Cause and consequence are inseparable and inevitable. The elements have no forbearance. The fire burns, the water drowns, the air consumes, the earth buries. And perhaps it would be well for our race if the punishment of crimes against the Laws of Man were as inevitable as the punishment of crimes against the Laws of Nature, — were Man as unerring in his judgments as Nature."

"Round about what is, lies a whole mysterious world of might be, — a psychological romance of possibilities and things that do not happen. By going out a few minutes sooner or later, by stopping to speak with a friend at a corner, by meeting this man or that, or by turning down this street instead of the other, we may let slip some great occasion of good, or avoid some impending evil, by which the whole current of our lives would have been changed. There is no possible solution to the dark enigma but the one word, "Providence"."

""Let us build such a church, that those who come after us shall take us for madmen," said the old canon of Seville, when the great cathedral was planned. Perhaps through every mind passes some such thought, when it first entertains the design of a great and seemingly impossible action, the end of which it dimly foresees. This divine madness enters more or less into all our noblest undertakings."

"I feel a kind of reverence for the first books of young authors. There is so much aspiration in them, so much audacious hope and trembling fear, so much of the heart's history, that all errors and short-comings are for a while lost sight of in the amiable self-assertion of youth."

"Authors have a greater right than any copyright, though it is generally unacknowledged or disregarded. They have a right to the reader's civility. There are favorable hours for reading a book, as for writing it, and to these the author has a claim. Yet many people think that when they buy a book they buy with it the right to abuse the author."

"Love makes its record in deeper colors as we grow out of childhood into manhood; as the Emperors signed their names in green ink when under age, but when of age, in purple."

"When we reflect that all the aspects of Nature, all the emotions of the soul, and all the events of life, have been the subjects of poetry for hundreds and thousands of years, we can hardly wonder that there should be so many resemblances and coincidences of expression among poets, but rather that they are not more numerous and more striking."

"The first pressure of sorrow crushes out from our hearts the best wine; afterwards the constant weight of it brings forth bitterness, — the taste and stain from the lees of the vat."

"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!"

"The warriors that fought for their country, and bled, Have sunk to their rest; the damp earth is their bed; No stone tells the place where their ashes repose, Nor points out the spot from the graves of their foes. They died in their glory, surrounded by fame, And Victory's loud trump their death did proclaim; They are dead; but they live in each Patriot's breast, And their names are engraven on honor's bright crest."

"Music is the universal language of mankind — poetry their universal pastime and delight."

"Stars of the summer night! Far in yon azure deeps, Hide, hide your golden light! She sleeps! My lady sleeps!"

"Dreams of the summer night! Tell her, her lover keeps Watch! while in slumbers light She sleeps."

"She floats upon the river of his thoughts."

"Never here, forever there, Where all parting, pain, and care, And death, and time shall disappear,— Forever there, but never here! The horologe of Eternity Sayeth this incessantly,— "Forever — never! Never — forever!""

"I shot an arrow into the air, It fell to earth, I knew not where."

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

"In the valley of the Pegnitz, where, across broad meadow-lands, Rise the blue Franconian mountains, Nuremburg, the ancient, stands.Quaint old town of toil and traffic, quaint old town of art and song, Memories haunt thy pointed gables, like the rooks that round them throng."

"Emigravit is the inscription on the tomb-stone where he lies; Dead he is not, but departed, — for the artist never dies."

"Where'er a noble deed is wrought, Where'er is spoken a noble thought, Our hearts in glad surprise To higher levels rise."

"St. Augustine! well hast thou said, That of our vices we can frame A ladder, if we will but tread Beneath our feet each deed of shame!"

"The heights by great men reached and kept Were not attained by sudden flight, But they, while their companions slept, Were toiling upward in the night."