In Song

 

Let us go early to the vineyards

to see if the vines have budded

if their blossoms have opened, 

and if the pomegranates are in bloom.

There I will give you my love.

H. W. Longfellow & The Poem of The Air

 

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 of despair,

   Long in its cloudy bosom hoarded,

   Now whispered and revealed

   To Wood & Field.

Longfellow's "Snow-Flakes"

Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr: "The Height of The Ridiculous"

 

H. W. Longfellow (1807-1882): "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.

101 Great American Poets

Dover Thrifts Editions 1998

Edited by The American Poetry & Literacy Project (AP&L Project)

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807 - 1882) : "Giotto's Tower"

How many lives, made beautiful and sweet 

    By self-devotion and by self-restraint,

    Whose pleasure is to run without complaint

    On unknown errands of the Paraclete,

Wanting the reverence of unshodden feet,

    Fail of the nimbus which the artists paint

   Around the shining forehead of the saint,

   And are in their completeness incomplete!

In the old Tuscan town stands Giotto's tower,

   The lily of Florence blossoming in stone, -

   A vision, a delight, and a desire, -

The builder's perfect and centennial flower,

    That in the night of ages bloomed alone,

    But wanting still the glory of the spire.

From "Flower - De - Luce"

Ticknor and Fields,  1867

Flower De Luce