The Poetical Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

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J.R. Osgood and Company, 1878 - American poetry - 375 pages

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Page 1 - 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 140 - We see but dimly through the mists and vapours ; Amid these earthly damps, 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.
Page 355 - The belfry tower of the Old North Church, As it rose above the graves on the hill, Lonely and spectral and sombre and still. And lo! as he looks, on the belfry's height A glimmer, and then a gleam of light! He springs to the saddle, the bridle he turns, But lingers and gazes, till full on his sight A second lamp in the belfry burns!
Page 355 - It was twelve by the village clock When he crossed the bridge into Medford town. He heard the crowing of the' cock, And the barking of the farmer's dog, And felt the damp of the river fog, That rises after the sun goes down. It was one by the village clock, When he galloped into Lexington.
Page 39 - The day is done, and the darkness Falls from the wings of Night, ' As a feather is wafted downward From an eagle in his flight. I see the lights of the village Gleam through the rain and the mist, And a feeling of sadness comes o'er me, That my soul cannot resist: A feeling of sadness and longing, That is not akin to pain, 10 And resembles sorrow only As the mist resembles the rain.
Page 135 - 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...
Page 4 - In the cottage of the rudest peasant, In ancestral homes, whose crumbling towers, Speaking of the Past unto the Present, Tell us of the ancient Games of Flowers ; In all places, then, and in all seasons, Flowers expand their light and soul-like wings, Teaching us, by most persuasive reasons, How akin they are to human things. And with childlike, credulous affection We behold their tender buds expand ; Emblems of our own great resurrection, Emblems of the bright and better land.
Page 20 - Were half the power that fills the world with terror, Were half the wealth bestowed on camps and courts, Given to redeem the human mind from error, There were no need of arsenals or forts!
Page 355 - It was one by the village clock when he galloped into Lexington. He saw the gilded weathercock swim in the moonlight as he passed, and the meeting-house windows...
Page 1 - Trust no Future, howe'er pleasant! Let the dead Past bury its dead! Act, — act in the living Present! Heart within, and God o'erhead!

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