(27 February 1807 – 24 March 1882 / Portland, Maine)

poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
#24 on top 500 poets

Quotations

  • ''All are architects of Fate,
    Working in these walls of Time;
    Some with massive deeds and great,
    Some with ornaments of rhyme.''
    Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1809-1882), U.S. poet. The Builders (l. 1-4). . . Anthology of American Poetry. George Gesner, ed. (1983) Avenel Books.
    3 person liked.
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  • ''In spite of rock and tempest's roar,
    In spite of false lights on the shore,
    Sail on, nor fear to breast the sea!
    Our hearts, our hopes, are all with thee,
    Our hearts, our hopes, our prayers, our tears,
    Our faith triumphant o'er our fears,
    Are all with thee,—are all with thee!''
    Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1809-1882), U.S. poet. The Building of the Ship (l. 6-12). . . 101 Patriotic Poems. (1986) Contemporary Books.
    3 person liked.
    		2 person did not like.
  • ''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!''
    Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807-1882), U.S. poet. The Building of the Ship, l. 378-82 (1849).
    4 person liked.
    		3 person did not like.
  • ''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.''
    Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1809-1882), U.S. poet. The Children's Hour (l. 1-4). . . Oxford Book of American Light Verse, The. William Harmon, ed. (1979) Oxford University Press.
    5 person liked.
    		2 person did not like.
  • ''There is a mountain in the distant West
    That, sun-defying, in its deep ravines
    Displays a cross of snow upon its side.
    Such is the cross I wear upon my breast
    These eighteen years, through all the changing scenes
    And seasons, changeless since the day she died.''
    Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1809-1882), U.S. poet. The Cross of Snow (l. 9-14). . . Oxford Book of American Verse, The. F. O. Matthiessen, ed. (1950) Oxford University Press.
    2 person liked.
    		2 person did not like.
  • ''In the long, sleepless watches of the night,
    A gentle face—the face of one long dead—
    Looks at me from the wall,''
    Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1809-1882), U.S. poet. The Cross of Snow (l. 1-3). . . Oxford Book of American Verse, The. F. O. Matthiessen, ed. (1950) Oxford University Press.
    1 person liked.
    		2 person did not like.
  • ''A feeling of sadness and longing
    That is not akin to pain,
    And resembles sorrow only
    As the mist resembles the rain.''
    Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807-1882), U.S. poet. The Day Is Done, st. 3.
    5 person liked.
    		2 person did not like.
  • ''And all the great traditions of the Past
    They saw reflected in the coming time.

    And thus forever with reverted look
    The mystic volume of the world they read,
    Spelling it backward, like a Hebrew book,
    Till life became a Legend of the Dead.''
    Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1809-1882), U.S. poet. The Jewish Cemetery at Newport (l. 51-56). . . Oxford Book of American Verse, The. F. O. Matthiessen, ed. (1950) Oxford University Press.
    2 person liked.
    		2 person did not like.
  • ''Pride and humiliation hand in hand
    Walked with them through the world where'er they went;
    Trampled and beaten were they as the sand,
    And yet unshaken as the continent.''
    Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1809-1882), U.S. poet. The Jewish Cemetery at Newport (l. 45-48). . . Oxford Book of American Verse, The. F. O. Matthiessen, ed. (1950) Oxford University Press.
    2 person liked.
    		2 person did not like.
  • ''Oh, fear not in a world like this,
    And thou shalt know erelong,
    Know how sublime a thing it is
    To suffer and be strong.''
    Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807-1882), U.S. poet. "The Light of Stars in Knickerbocker," (Jan. 1839).
    4 person liked.
    		3 person did not like.

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The Belfrey of Bruges

In the market-place of Bruges stands the belfrey old and brown;
Thrice consumed and thrice rebuilded, still it watches o'er the town.

As the summer morn was breaking, on that lofty tower I stood,
And the world through off the darkness, like the weeds of widowhood.

Thick with towns and hamlets studded, and with streams and vapors gray,
Like a shield embossed with silver, round and vast the landscape lay.

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