HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW

 

*

Snow-Flakes

 

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 and field.

 

*

Paul Revere’s Ride

 

Listen, my children, and you shall hear

Of the midnight ride of Paul Revere,

On the eighteenth of April, in Seventy-five;

Hardly a man is now alive

Who remembers that famous day and year.

 

He said to his friend, “If the British march

By land or sea from the town to-night,

Hang a lantern aloft in the belfry arch

Of the North Church tower as a signal light,—

One, if by land, and two, if by sea;
And I on the opposite shore will be,
Ready to ride and spread the alarm
Through every Middlesex village and farm,
For the country folk to be up and to arm.”

 

Then he said, “Good night!” and with muffled oar

Silently rowed to the Charlestown shore,

Just as the moon rose over the bay,

Where swinging wide at her moorings lay

The Somerset, British man-of-war;

A phantom ship, with each mast and spar

Across the moon like a prison bar,

And a huge black hulk, that was magnified

By its own reflection in the tide.

 

Meanwhile his friend, through alley and street,
Wanders and watches with eager ears,
Till in the silence around him he hears
The muster of men at the barrack door,
The sound of arms, and the tramp of feet,
And the measured tread of the grenadiers,
Marching down to their boats on the shore.

 

Then he climbed the tower of the Old North Church,

By the wooden stairs, with stealthy tread,

To the belfry-chamber overhead,

And startled the pigeons from their perch

On the sombre rafters, that round him made

Masses and moving shapes of shade,—

By the trembling ladder, steep and tall,
To the highest window in the wall,
Where he paused to listen and look down
A moment on the roofs of the town,
And the moonlight flowing over all.

 

Beneath, in the churchyard, lay the dead,

In their night-encampment on the hill,

Wrapped in silence so deep and still

That he could hear, like a sentinel’s tread,

The watchful night-wind, as it went:

Creeping along from tent to tent,

And seeming to whisper, “All is well!”

A moment only he feels the spell

Of the place and the hour, and the secret dread

Of the lonely belfry and the dead;

For suddenly all his thoughts are bent

On a shadowy something far away,

Where the river widens to meet the bay,—

A line of black that bends and floats

On the rising tide, like a bridge of boats.

 

Meanwhile, impatient to mount and ride,
Booted and spurred, with a heavy stride
On the opposite shore walked Paul Revere.
Now he patted his horse’s side,
Now gazed at the landscape far and near,
Then, impetuous, stamped the earth,
And turned and tightened his saddle-girth;
But mostly he watched with eager search
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!

 

A hurry of hoofs in a village street,

A shape in the moonlight, a bulk in the dark,

And beneath, from the pebbles, in passing, a spark

Struck out by a steed flying fearless and fleet:

That was all! And yet, through the gloom and the light,

The fate of a nation was riding that night;
And the spark struck out by that steed, in his flight,
Kindled the land into flame with its heat.

 

He has left the village and mounted the steep,
And beneath him, tranquil and broad and deep,
Is the Mystic, meeting the ocean tides;
And under the alders that skirt its edge,
Now soft on the sand, now loud on the ledge,
Is heard the tramp of his steed as he rides.

 

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.

He saw the gilded weathercock

Swim in the moonlight as he passed,

And the meeting-house windows, blank and bare,

Gaze at him with a spectral glare,

As if they already stood aghast

At the bloody work they would look upon.

 

It was two by the village clock,

When he came to the bridge in Concord town.

He heard the bleating of the flock,

And the twitter of birds among the trees,

And felt the breath of the morning breeze

Blowing over the meadows brown.

And one was safe and asleep in his bed

Who at the bridge would be first to fall,

Who that day would be lying dead,

Pierced by a British musket-ball.

 

You know the rest. In the books you have read,
How the British Regulars fired and fled,—
How the farmers gave them ball for ball,
From behind each fence and farm-yard wall,
Chasing the red-coats down the lane,
Then crossing the fields to emerge again
Under the trees at the turn of the road,
And only pausing to fire and load.

 

So through the night rode Paul Revere;

And so through the night went his cry of alarm

To every Middlesex village and farm,—

A cry of defiance and not of fear,

A voice in the darkness, a knock at the door,

And a word that shall echo forevermore!

For, borne on the night-wind of the Past,

Through all our history, to the last,

In the hour of darkness and peril and need,

The people will waken and listen to hear

The hurrying hoof-beats of that steed,
And the midnight message of Paul Revere.

 

*

The Children’s Hour

 

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

To take me by surprise.

 

A sudden rush from the stairway,

A sudden raid from the hall!

By three doors left unguarded,

They enter my castle wall!

 

They climb up into my turret,

O’er the arms and back of my chair;

If I try to escape, they surround me;

They seem to be everywhere.

 

They almost devour me with kisses,

Their arms about me entwine,

Till I think of the Bishop of Bingen

In his Mouse-Tower on the Rhine!

 

Do you think, O blue-eyed banditti,

Because you have scaled the wall,

Such an old moustache as I am

Is not a match for you all?

 

I have you fast in my fortress,

And will not let you depart,

But put you down into the dungeon

In the round-tower of my heart.

 

And there will I keep you forever,

Yes, forever and a day,

Till the walls shall crumble to ruin,

And moulder in dust away!

 

*

The Wreck of the Hesperus

 

It was the schooner Hesperus,

That sailed the wintry sea;
And the skipper had taken his little daughter,

To bear him company.

 

Blue were her eyes as the fairy-flax,

Her cheeks like the dawn of day,

And her bosom white as the hawthorn buds,

That ope in the month of May.

 

The skipper he stood beside the helm,

His pipe was in his mouth,
And he watched how the veering flaw did blow

The smoke now West, now South.

 

Then up and spake an old Sailor,
      Had sailed to the Spanish Main,
I pray thee, put into yonder port,
      For I fear a hurricane.

 

Last night, the moon had a golden ring,
      And to-night no moon we see!”

The skipper, he blew a whiff from his pipe,
      And a scornful laugh laughed he.

 

Colder and louder blew the wind,

A gale from the Northeast,

The snow fell hissing in the brine,

And the billows frothed like yeast.

 

Down came the storm, and smote amain

The vessel in its strength;
She shuddered and paused, like a frighted steed,

Then leaped her cable’s length.

 

“Come hither! come hither! my little daughter,
      And do not tremble so;
For I can weather the roughest gale
      That ever wind did blow.”

 

He wrapped her warm in his seaman’s coat
      Against the stinging blast;
He cut a rope from a broken spar,
      And bound her to the mast.

 

“O father! I hear the church-bells ring,

Oh say, what may it be?”
“’Tis a fog-bell on a rock-bound coast!”—

And he steered for the open sea.

 

“O father! I hear the sound of guns,

Oh say, what may it be?”
“Some ship in distress that cannot live

In such an angry sea!”

 

O father! I see a gleaming light,
      Oh say, what may it be?”
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-savèd she might be;
And she thought of Christ, who stilled the wave,

On the Lake of Galilee.

 

And fast through the midnight dark and drear,
      Through the whistling sleet and snow,

Like a sheeted ghost, the vessel swept
      Tow’rds the reef of Norman’s Woe.

 

And ever the fitful gusts between

A sound came from the land;
It was the sound of the trampling surf

On the rocks and the hard sea-sand.

 

The breakers were right beneath her bows,

She drifted a dreary wreck,
And a whooping billow swept the crew

Like icicles from her deck.

 

She struck where the white and fleecy waves

Looked soft as carded wool,
But the cruel rocks, they gored her side
      Like the horns of an angry bull.

 

Her rattling shrouds, all sheathed in ice,
      With the masts went by the board;
Like a vessel of glass, she stove and sank.
      Ho! ho ! the breakers roared!

 

At daybreak, on the bleak sea-beach,

A fisherman stood aghast,
To see the form of a maiden fair,

Lashed close to a drifting mast.

 

The salt sea was frozen on her breast,

The salt tears in her eyes;
And he saw her hair, like the brown sea-weed,

On the billows fall and rise.

Such was the wreck of the Hesperus,
      In the midnight and the snow!

Christ save us all from a death like this,
      On the reef of Norman’s Woe!