Like driftwood spars, which meet and pass So on the sea of life, alas! Man meets man meets, and quits again. I knew it when my life was young; The mists are on the mountain hung, FROM "TRISTRAM AND ISEULT" PART III DEAR saints, it is not sorrow, as I hear, Power to be moved and soothed, for all our pain, But takes away the power this can avail, By drying up our joy in everything, To make our former pleasures all seem stale. Call it ambition, or remorse, or love This too can change us wholly, and make seem And yet, I swear, it angers me to see Not having it; which when they do possess, They straightway are burnt up with fume and care, A SUMMER NIGHT IN the deserted, moon-blanch'd street, Into the dewy dark obscurity Down at the far horizon's rim, Doth a whole tract of heaven disclose! And to my mind the thought Is on a sudden brought Of a past night, and a far different scene. Headlands stood out into the moonlit deep The spring-tide's brimming flow Heaved dazzlingly between ; Houses, with long white sweep, Girdled the glistening bay; Behind, through the soft air, The blue haze-cradled mountains spread away, The night was far more fair— But the same restless pacings to and fro, And the same vainly throbbing heart was there, And the calm moonlight seems to say: Nor ever feels the fiery glow That whirls the spirit from itself away, Never by passion quite possess'd And never quite benumb'd by the world's sway And I, I know not if to pray Still to be what I am, or yield and be Like all the other men I see. For most men in a brazen prison live, With heads bent o'er their toil, they languidly Fresh products of their barren labour fall Never yet comes more near, Gloom settles slowly down over their breast; And while they try to stem ? The waves of mournful thought by which they are prest Death in their prison reaches them, Unfreed, having seen nothing, still unblest. And the rest, a few, Escape their prison and depart On the wide ocean of life anew. There the freed prisoner, where'er his heart Listeth, will sail; Nor doth he know how there prevail, Despotic on that sea, Trade-winds which cross it from eternity. By thwarting signs, and braves The freshening wind and blackening waves. Only a driving wreck, And the pale master on his spar-strewn deck With anguish'd face and flying hair Grasping the rudder hard, Still bent to make some port he knows not where, Of sea and wind, and through the deepening gloom Is there no life, but these alone? Madman or slave, must man be one? Plainness and clearness without shadow of stain! Ye heavens, whose pure dark regions have no sign Who, though so noble, share in the world's toil, I will not say that your mild deeps retain A tinge, it may be, of their silent pain Who have long'd deeply once, and long'd in vain A world above man's head, to let him see How boundless might his soul's horizons be, How it were good to abide there, and breathe free; Is left to each man still! XII HENRY WADSWORTH LONG FELLOW (1807-1882) ONGFELLOW has been perhaps the most popular poet of modern times, both in England and in America. The sweet melody of his verse, his home-like purity and affection, his perennial good temper, his culture and refined gentleness, have made him the friend of millions, and he has inspired and uplifted the hearts of many thousands. By American critics he has doubtless been overpraised, and in some quarters we now see a reaction against his primacy in American literature, but Andrew Lang says: "Longfellow, though not a very great magician and master of language, - not a Keats by any means, has often, by sheer force of plain simplicity, struck exactly the right note, and matched his thought with music that haunts us and will not be forgotten." Walt Whitman has struck the keynote of modern criticism of Longfellow when he says: "He comes as the poet of melody, courtesy, deference, poet of all sympathetic gentleness and universal poet of women and young people." Longfellow is one of the very few modern poets whose verse can be read and understood |