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"The Mormons make the marriage ring, like the ring of Saturn, fluid, not solid, and keep it in its place by numerous satellites."
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807-1882), U.S. poet. repr. In Complete Works, vol. 1 (1886). "Table-Talk," Drift-Wood (1857 edition). |
"I feel a kind of reverence for the first books of young authors. There is so much aspiration in them, so much audacious hope and trembling fear, so much of the heart's history, that all errors and shortcomings are for a while lost sight of in the amiable self assertion of youth."
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807-1882), U.S. poet. repr. In Complete Works, vol. 1 (1886). "Table-Talk," Drift-Wood (1857). |
"The Helicon of too many poets is not a hill crowned with sunshine and visited by the Muses and the Graces, but an old, mouldering house, full of gloom and haunted by ghosts."
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807-1882), U.S. poet. repr. In Complete Works, vol. 1 (1886). "Table-Talk," Drift-Wood (1857). |
"The Laws of Nature are just, but terrible. There is no weak mercy in them. Cause and consequence are inseparable and inevitable. The elements have no forbearance. The fire burns, the water drowns, the air consumes, the earth buries. And perhaps it would be well for our race if the punishment of crimes against the Laws of Man were as inevitable as the punishment of crimes against the Laws of Nature—were Man as unerring in his judgments as Nature."
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807-1882), U.S. poet. repr. In Complete Works, vol. 1 (1886). "Table-Talk," Drift-Wood (ed. 1857). |
"Some critics are like chimneysweepers; they put out the fire below, and frighten the swallows from the nests above; they scrape a long time in the chimney, cover themselves with soot, and bring nothing away but a bag of cinders, and then sing out from the top of the house, as if they had built it."
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807-1882), U.S. poet. Table Talk (1845). |
"Ships that pass in the night, and speak each other in passing,
Only a signal shown and a distant voice in the darkness;
So on the ocean of life we pass and speak one another,
Only a look and a voice; then darkness again and a silence."
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807-1882), U.S. poet. Tales of a Wayside Inn, pt. 3, "The Theologian's Tale: Elizabeth," (1863-74). |
"I breathed a song into the air,
It fell to earth, I knew not where;"
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1809-1882), U.S. poet. The Arrow and the Song (l. 5-6). . .
Anthology of American Poetry. George Gesner, ed. (1983) Avenel Books. |
"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."
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1809-1882), U.S. poet. The Arrow and the Song (l. 9-12). . .
Anthology of American Poetry. George Gesner, ed. (1983) Avenel Books. |
"I shot an arrow into the air,
It fell to earth, I knew not where;"
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1809-1882), U.S. poet. The Arrow and the Song (l. 1-2). . .
Anthology of American Poetry. George Gesner, ed. (1983) Avenel Books. |
"For the structure that we raise,
Time is with materials filled;
Our to-days and yesterdays
Are the blocks with which we build."
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1809-1882), U.S. poet. The Builders (l. 9-12). . .
Anthology of American Poetry. George Gesner, ed. (1983) Avenel Books. |
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Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
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