The Poetical Works of H.W. Longfellow

DAYLIGHT AND MOONLIGHT.

IN broad daylight, and at noon,
Yesterday I saw the moon

Sailing high, but faint and white,
As a school-boy's paper kite.

In broad daylight, yesterday,
I read a Poet's mystic lay:
And it seemed to me at most
As a phanton, or a ghost.
But at length the feverish day
Like a passion died away,
And the night, serene and still,
Fell on the village, vale, and hill,

Then the moon in all her pride,
Like a spirit glorified,

Filled and overflowed the night
With revelations of her light.

And the Poet's song again

Passed like music through my brain;
Night interpreted to me

All its grace and mystery.

THE JEWISHI CEMETERY AT NEWPORT. How strange it seems! These Hebrews in their graves,

Close by the street of this fair seapart town, Silent beside the never-silent waves,

At rest in all this moving up and down!

The trees are white with dust, that o'er their sleep

Wave their broad curtains in the south-wind's
breath,

While underneath such leafy tents they keep
The long, mysterious Exodus of Death.
And these sepulchral stones, so old and brown,
That pave with level flags their burial place,"
Seem like the tablets of the Law, thrown down
And broken by Moses at the mountain's base.
The very names recorded here are strange,
Of foreign accent, and of different climes;
Alvares and Rivera interchange

With Abraham and Jacob of old times.
"Blessed be God! for He created Death!"

The mourners said, "and Death is rest and peace;"

Then added, in the certainty of faith,

"And giveth Life that never more shall cease.'

Closed are the portals of their Synagogue,

No Psalms of David now the silence break,
No Rabbi reads the ancient Decalogue,

In the grand dialect the Prophets spoke.
Gone are the living, but the dead remain,
And not neglected; for a hand unseen,
Scattering its bounty like a summer rain,
Still keeps their graves and their remembrance
green.

How came they here? What burst of Christian
hate,

What persecution, merciless and blind,
Drove o'er the sea-that desert desolate-
These Ishmaels and Hagars of mankind?

They lived in narrow streets and lanes obscure,
Ghetto and Judenstrass, in mirk and mire;
Taught in the school of patience to endure
The life of anguish and the death of fire.

All their lives long, with the unleavened bread
And bitter herbs of exile and its fears,
The wasting famine of the heart they fed,
And slaked its thirst with marah of their tears.

Anathema maranatha! was the cry

That rang from town to town, from street to street;

At every gate the accursed Mordecai

Was mocked and jeered, and spurned by
Christian feet.

Pride and humiliation hand in hand

Walked with them through the world where'er
they went;

Trampled and beaten were they as the sand,
And yet unshaken as the continent.

For in the background figures vague and vast
Of patriarchs and of prophets rose sublime,
And all the great traditions of the Past
They saw reflected in the coming time.

And thus forever with reverted look

The mystic volume of the world they read.
Spelling it backward, like a Hebrew book,
Till life became a Legend of the Dead.

But ah! what once has been shall be no more'
The groaning earth in travail and in pain
Brings forth its races, but does not restore
And the dead nations never rise again.

OLIVER BASSELIN.

IN the Valley of the Vire
Still is seen an ancient mill,
With its gables quaint and queer,
And beneath the window-sill,

On the stone,

These words alone:
"Oliver Basselin lived here."
Far above it, on the steep,
Ruined stands the old Château
Nothing but the donjon-keep
Left for shelter or for show.
Its vacant eyes

Stare at the skies,
Stare at the valley green and deep.
Once a convent, old and brown,

Looked, but ah! it looks no more,
From the neighbouring hillside down
On the rushing and the roar
Of the stream

Whose sunny gleam
Cheers the little Norman town.

In that darksome mill of stone,
To the water's dash and din,
Careless, humble, and unknown,
Sang the poet Basselin,
Songs that fill

That ancient mill

With a splendour of its own.

Never feeling of unrest

Broke the pleasant dream he dreamed; Only made to be his nest,

All the lovely valley seemed:

No desire

Of soaring higher

Stirred or fluttered in his breast.

True, his songs were not divine;
Were not songs of that high art,
Which as winds do in the pine,
Find an answer in each heart;
But the mirth

Of this green carth
Laughed and revelled in his line
From the alehouse and the inn,
Opening on the narrow street,
Came the loud, convivial din,
Singing and applause of feet,
The laughing lays

That in those days
Sang the poet Basselin.

In the castle, cased in steel,
Knights, who fought in Agincourt,
Watched and waited spur on heel;
But the poet sang for sport
Songs that rang
Another clang,

Songs that lowlier hearts could feel.

In the convent, clad in gray,

Sat the monks in lonely cells, Paced the cloisters, knelt to pray, And the poet heard their bells; But his rhymes

Found other chymes, Nearer to the earth than they.

Gone are all the barons bold.

Gone are all the knights and squires, Gone the abbot stern and cold, And the brotherhood of friars;

MY LOST YOUTH.

OFTEN I think of the beautiful town
That is seated by the sea!

Often in thought go up and down

The pleasant streets of that dear old town,
And my youth comes back to me.
And a verse of a Lapland song
Is haunting my memory still:
"A boy's will is the wind's will,
And the thoughts of youth are long, long
thougths.

I can see the shadowy lines of its trees,
And catch, in sudden gleams,

The sheen of the far-surrounding seas,
And islands that were the Hesperides
Of all my boyish dreams.

And the burden of that old song
It murmurs and listens still:
"A boy's will is the wind's will,

And the thoughts of youth are long, long thoughts.'

1 remember the black wharves and the slips,
And the sea-tides tossing free;
And Spanish sailors with bearded lips,
And the beauty and mystery of the ships,
And the magic of the sea.

And the voice of that wayward song

Is singing and saying still:

"A boy's will is the wind's will,

And the thoughts of youth are long, long thoughts.

I remember the bulwarks by the shore,
And the fort upon the hill;

The sun-rise gun, with its hollow roar,
The drum-beat repeated o'er and o'er,
And the bugle wild and shrill,

And the music of that old song
Throbs in the memory still:
"A boy's will is the wind's will,

And the thoughts of youth are long, long thoughts.'

I remember the sea-fight far away,
How it thundered o'er the tide!
And the dead captains, as they lay

In their graves, o'erlooking the tranquil bay,
Where they in battle died.

And the sound of that mournful song

Goes through me with a thrill:

"A boy's will is the wind's will,

And the thoughts of youth are long, long thoughts.

I can see the breezy dome of groves,
The shadows of Deering's Woods;

And the friendships old and the early loves
Come back with a Sabbath sound, as of doves
In quiet neighbourhoods.

And the verse of that sweet old song

It flutters and murmurs still: "A boy's will is the wind's will,

And the thoughts of youth are long, long thoughts.'

I remember the gleams and glooms that dart
Across the schoolboy's brain :

The song and the silence in the heart,

That in part are prophecies, and in part
Are longings wild and vain.

And the voice of that fitful song

Sings on, and is never still: "A boy's will is the wind's will,

And the thoughts of youth are long, long thoughts.'

There are things of which I may not speak;
There are dreams that cannot die;

There are thoughts that make the strong heart

weak,

And bring a pallor into the cheek,
And a mist before the eye.

And the words of that fatal song
Come over me like a chill:

"A boy's will is the wind's will,

And the thoughts of youth are long, long thoughts."

Strange to me now are the forms I meet

When I visit the dear old town;

But the native air is pure and sweet,

And the trees that o'ershadow each well-known street,

As they balance up and down,

Are singing the beautiful song Are sighing and whispering still: "A boy's will is the wind's will,

And the thoughts of youth are long, long thoughts.

And Deering's Woods are fresh and fair,
And with joy that is almost pain,

My heart goes back to wander their,

And among the dreams of the days that were
I find my lost youth again.

And the strange and beautiful song,
The groves are repeating it still.

"A boy's will is the wid's will,

Then a homestead among farms,
And a woman with bare arms
Drawing water from a well;
As the bucket mounts apace,
With it mounts her own fair face,
As at some magician's spell.

Then an old man in a tower,
Ringing loud the noontide hour,
While the rope coils round and round
Like a serpent at his feet,
And again, in swift retreat,

Nearly lifts him from the ground.

Then within a prison-yard,
Faces fixed, and stern, and hard,
Laughter and indecent mirth;
Ah! it is the gallows-tree;
Breath of Christian charity.

Blow, and sweep it from the earth!
Then a schoolboy, with his kite
Gleaming in a sky of light,

And an eager, upward look;

Steeds pursued through lane and field;
Fowlers with their snares concealed;
And an angler by a brook.

Ships rejoicing in the breeze,
Wrecks that float o'er unknown seas,
Anchors dragged through faithless sand;
Sea-fog drifting overhead,

And, with lessening line and lead,
Sailors feeling for the land

All these scenes do I behold,
These, and many left untold,

In that building long and low;
While the wheel goes round and round,
With a drowsy dreamy sound,
All the spinners backward go.

THE GOLDEN MILESTONE. LEAFLESS are the trees; their purple branches Spread themselves abroad, like reefs of coral, Rising silent

In the Red Sea of the Winter sunset.

And the thoughts of a youth are long, long From the hundred chimneys of the village, thoughts."

THE ROPEWALK.

IN that building, long and low,

With its windows all a-row,

Like the port-holes of a hulk, Human spiders spin and spin, Backward down their thread so thin Drooping, each a hempen bulk.

At the end, an open door;
Squares of sunshine on the floor
Light the long and dusty lane;
And the whirring of a wheel,
Dull and drowsy, makes me feel
All its spokes are in my brain.
As the spinners to the end
Downward go and re-ascend,
Gleam the long threads in the sun;
While within this brain of mine
Cobwebs brighter and more fine

By the busy wheel are spun.
Two fair maidens in a swing,
Like white doves upon the wing,
First before my vision pass;
Laughing, as their gentle hands
Closely clasped the twisted strands,
At their shadow on the grass.
Then a booth of mountebanks,
With its smell of tan and planks,
And a girl poised high in air
On a cord, in spangled dress.
With a faded loveliness,

And a weary look of care.

Like the Afreet in the Arabian story,
Smoky columns

Tower aloft into the air of amber.

At the window winks the flickering fire-light;
Here and there the lamps of evening glimmer,
Social watch-fires

Answering one another through the darkness.
On the earth the lighted logs are glowing,
And like Ariel in the cloven pine-tree,
For its freedom

Groans and sighs the air imprisoned in them.
By the fireside there are old men seated,
Seeing ruined cities in the ashes,

Asking sadly

Of the past what it can ne'er restore them.
By the fireside there are youthful dreamers,
Building castles fair, with stately stairways,
Asking blindly

Of the Future what it cannot give them.
By the fireside tragedies are acted,
In whose scenes appear two actors only,
Wife and husband,

And above them God the sole spectator.
By the fireside there are peace and comfort,
Wives and children, with fair thoughtful faces,
Waiting, watching

For a well-known footstep in the passage.
Each man's chimney is his Golden Milestone;
Is the central point, from which he measures
Every distance

Through the gateways of the world around him.

It is not a song

Of the Scuppernong,

From warm Carolinian valleys,
Nor the Isabel

And the muscadel

That bask in our garden alleys.

Nor the red Mustang,
Whose clusters hang
O'er the waves of the Colorado,
And the fiery flood

Of whose purple blood

Has a dash of Spanish bravado.

For richest and best

Is the wine of the West,

That grows by the Beautiful River;
Whose sweet perfume
Fills all the room

With a benison on the giver.

And as hollow trees

Are the haunts of bees,

For ever going and coming.

So this crystal hive

Is all alive

With a swarming and buzzing and humming.

And this Song of the Vine,
This greeting of mine,

The winds and the birds shall deliver
To the Queen of the West,
In her garlands dressed,

On the banks of the Beautiful River.

SANA FILOMENA.

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

The tidal wave of deeper souls
Into our inmost being rolls,

And lifts us unawares

Out of all meaner cares.

Honour to those whose words or deeds
Thus help us in our daily needs,
And by their overflow

Raise us from what is low!
Thus thought I, as by night I read
Of the great army of the dead,
The trenches cold and damp,
The starved and frozen camp,-
The wounded from the battle-plain,
In dreary hospitals of pain,
The cheerless corridors,
The cold and stony floors.
Lo! in that house of misery,
A lady with a lamp I see

Pass through the glimmering gloom,
And flit from room to room.

And slow as in a dream of bliss,
The speechless sufferer turns to kiss
Her shadow, as it falls

Upon the darkening walls.

As if a door in heaven should be
Opened and then closed suddenly,
The vision came and went,

The light shone and was spent.
On England's annals through the long
Hereafter of her speech and song,

That light its rays shall cast
From portals of the past.

A Lady with a lamp shall stand
In the great history of the land,
A noble type of good,
Heroic womanhood.

Nor even shall be wanting here
The palm, the lily, and the spear,
The symbols that of yore
Saint Filomena bore.

THE DISCOVERER OF THE NORTH CAPE.

A LEAF FROM KING ALFRED'S OROSIUS.

OTHERE, the old sea captain,
Who dwelt in Helgoland,

To King Alfred, the Lover of Truth
Brought a snow-white walrus-tooth,
Which he held in his brown right hand.

His figure was tall and stately,
Like a boy's his eye appeared;
His hair was yellow as hay,
But threads of silvery gray
Gleamed in his tawny beard.

Hearty and hale was Othere,

His cheek had the colour of oak; With a kind of Laugh in his speech, Like the sea-tide on a beach,

As unto the King he spoke,

And Alfred, King of the Saxons,
Had a book upon his knees,

And wrote down the wondrous tale
Of him who was first to sail
Into the Arctic seas.

"So far I live to the northward,
No man lives north of me;

To the east are wild mountain-chains,
And beyond them meres and plains;
To the westward all is sea.

"So far I live to the northward,
From the harbour of Skeringes-hale,
If you only sailed by day,
With a fair wind all the way,

More than a month you would sail. "I own six hundred reindeer,

With sheep and swine beside;
1 have tribute from the Finns,
Whalebone and reindeer skins,
And ropes of walrus-hide.

"I ploughed the land with horses,
But my heart was ill at ease,
For the old seafaring men
Came to me now and then,

With their sagas of the seas;-
"Of Iceland and of Greenland,
And the stormy Hebrides,
And the undiscovered deep;-
I could not eat nor sleep

For thinking of those seas.

"To the northward stretched the desert, How far I fain would know;

So at last I sallied forth,
And three days sailed due north,

As far as the whale-ships go.

"To the west of me was the ocean,
To the right the desolate shore,
But did not slacken sail
For the walrus or the whale,

Till after three days more.
"The days grew longer and longer,
Till they became as one,
And southward through the haze
I saw the sullen blaze

Of the red midnight sun.
"And then uprose before me,
Upon the water's edge,
The huge and haggard shape
Of that unknown North Cape,
Whose form is like a wedge.
"The sea was rough and stormy,
The tempest howled and wailed,
And the sea-fog, like a ghost,
Haunted that dreary coast,

But onward still I sailed.
"Four days I steered to eastward,
Four days without a night:

Round in a fiery ring
Went the great sun, O King,
With red and lurid light.'
Here Alfred, King of the Saxons,
Ceased writing for a while;
And raised his eyes from his book,
With a strange and puzzled look,
And an incredulous smile.
But Othere, the old sea-captain,
He neither paused nor stirred,
Till the King listened, and then
Once more took up his pen,

And wrote down every word.
"And now the land," said Othere,
"Bent southward suddenly,

And I followed the curving shore,
And ever southward bore

Into a nameless sea.

"And there we hunted the walrus,

The narwhale and the seal;

Ha! 'twas a noble game!
And like the lightning's flame
Flew our harpoons of steel.
"There were six of us all together
Norsemen of Helgoland;

In two days and no more
We killed of them three score,
And dragged them to the strand.
Here Alfred the Truth-Teller
Suddenly closed his book,
And lifted his blue eyes,
With doubt and strange surmise
Depicted in their look.

And Othere, the old sea-captain
Stared at him wild and weir'd,
Then smiled, till his shining teeth
Gleamed white from underneath
His tawny, quivering beard.

And to the King of the Saxons,
In witness of the truth,
Raising his noble head,

He stretched his brown hand, and said, "Behold this walrus-tooth!"

DAYBREAK.

A WIND came up out of the sea,

And said, "O mists, make room for me."
It hailed the ships, and cried, "Sail on,
Ye mariners, the night is gone."
And hurried landward far away.
Crying, "Awake! it is the day."

It said unto the the forest, "Shout!
Hang all your leafy banners out!"
It touched the wood-bird's folded wing,
And said, "O bird, awake and sing."
And o'er the farms, "O chanticleer,
Your clarion blow! the day is near.'

It whispered to the fields of corn,
"Bow down, and hail the coming morn."
It shouted through the belfry-tower,
"Awake, O bell! proclaim the hour.'
It crossed the church-yard with a sigh,
And said, Not yet! in quiet lie."

THE FIFTIETH BIRTHDAY OF AGASSIZ. MAY 28, 1857.

IT was fifty years ago

In the pleasant month of May.
In the beautiful Pays de Vaud,
A child in its cradle lay.

And Nature, the old nurse, took
The child upon her knee,
Saying: "Here's a story-book
Thy Father has written for thee."
"Come wander with me," she said,
"Into regions yet untrod;
And read what is still unread
In the manuscripts of God."
And he wandered away and away
With Nature, the dear old nurse,
Who sang to him night and day
The rhymes of the universe.
And whenever the way seemed long,
Or his heart began to fail,

She would sing a more wonderful song,
Or tell a more marvellous tale.

« Anterior Continuar »

Libros