The Complete Poems of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow Quotes

“For age is opportunity no less
Than youth itself, though in another dress,
And as the evening twilight fades away
The sky is filled with stars, invisible by day.”
― Henry Wadsworth Longfellow , The Complete Poems of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

“It is too late! Ah, nothing is too late
Till the tired heart shall cease to palpitate.
Cato learned Greek at eighty; Sophocles
Wrote his grand Oedipus, and Simonides
Bore off the prize of verse from his compeers,
When each had numbered more than fourscore years,
And Theophrastus, at fourscore and ten,
Had but begun his Characters of Men.
Chaucer, at Woodstock with the nightingales,
At sixty wrote the Canterbury Tales;
Goethe at Weimar, toiling to the last,
Completed Faust when eighty years were past,
These are indeed exceptions; but they show
How far the gulf-stream of our youth may flow
Into the arctic regions of our lives.
Where little else than life itself survives.”
― Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, The Complete Poems of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

“The holiest of all holidays are those
Kept by ourselves in silence and apart;
The secret anniversaries of the heart.”
― Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, The Complete Poems of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

“Write on your doors the saying wise and old,
"Be bold! be bold!" and everywhere-- "Be bold;
Be not too bold!" Yet better the excess
Than the defect; better the more than less;
Better like Hector in the field to die,
Than like a perfumed Paris turn and fly,”
― Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, The Complete Poems of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

“Death takes us by surprise,
And stays our hurrying feet;
The great design unfinished lies,
Our lives are incomplete
But in the dark unknown,
Perfect their circles seem,
Even as a bridge's arch of stone
Is rounded in the stream.
Alike are life and death,
When life in death survives,
And the uninterrupted breath
Inspires a thousand lives.
Were a star quenched on high,
For ages would its light,
Still traveling downward from the sky,
Shine on our mortal sight.
So when a great man dies,
For years beyond our ken,
The light he leaves behind him lies
Upon the paths of men.”
― Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, The Complete Poems of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

“Awake! arise! the hour is late!
Angels are knocking at thy door!
They are in haste and cannot wait,
And once departed come no more.
Awake! arise! the athlete's arm
Loses its strength by too much rest;
The fallow land, the untilled farm
Produces only weeds at best.”
― Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, The Complete Poems of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

“Lull me to sleep, ye winds, whose fitful sound
Seems from some faint Aeolian harp-string caught;
Seal up the hundred wakeful eyes of thought
As Hermes with his lyre in sleep profound
The hundred wakeful eyes of Argus bound;
For I am weary, and am overwrought
With too much toil, with too much care distraught,
And with the iron crown of anguish crowned.
Lay thy soft hand upon my brow and cheek,
O peaceful Sleep! until from pain released
I breathe again uninterrupted breath!
Ah, with what subtile meaning did the Greek
Call thee the lesser mystery at the feast
Whereof the greater mystery is death!”
― Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, The Complete Poems of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

“The ceaseless rain is falling fast,
And yonder gilded vane,
Immovable for three days past,
Points to the misty main,
It drives me in upon myself
And to the fireside gleams,
To pleasant books that crowd my shelf,
And still more pleasant dreams,
I read whatever bards have sung
Of lands beyond the sea,
And the bright days when I was young
Come thronging back to me.
In fancy I can hear again
The Alpine torrent's roar,
The mule-bells on the hills of Spain,
The sea at Elsinore.
I see the convent's gleaming wall
Rise from its groves of pine,
And towers of old cathedrals tall,
And castles by the Rhine.
I journey on by park and spire,
Beneath centennial trees,
Through fields with poppies all on fire,
And gleams of distant seas.
I fear no more the dust and heat,
No more I feel fatigue,
While journeying with another's feet
O'er many a lengthening league.
Let others traverse sea and land,
And toil through various climes,
I turn the world round with my hand
Reading these poets' rhymes.
From them I learn whatever lies
Beneath each changing zone,
And see, when looking with their eyes,
Better than with mine own.”
― Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, The Complete Poems of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

“It is the mystery of the unknown
That fascinates us; we are children still
Wayward and wistful; with one hand we cling
To the familiar things we call our own,
And with the other, resolute of will,
Grope in the dark for what the day will bring”
― Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, The Complete Poems of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

“Midnight! the outpost of advancing day!
The frontier town and citadel of night!
The watershed of Time, from which the streams
Of Yesterday and To-morrow take their way,
One to the land of promise and of light,
One to the land of darkness and of dreams!”
― Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, The Complete Poems of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

“The writer of this legend then records
Its ghostly application in these words:
The image is the Adversary old,
Whose beckoning finger points to realms of gold;
Our lusts and passions are the downward stair
That leads the soul from a diviner air;
The archer, Death; the flaming jewel, Life;
Terrestrial goods, the goblet and the knife;
The knights and ladies all whose flesh and bone
By avarice have been hardened into stone;
The clerk, the scholar whom the love of pelf
Tempts from his books and from his nobler self.
The scholar and the world! The endless strife,
The discord in the harmonies of life!
The love of learning, the sequestered nooks,
And all the sweet serenity of books;
The market-place, the eager love of gain,
Whose aim is vanity, and whose end is pain!”
― Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, The Complete Poems of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

“O, never from the memory of my heart
Your dear, paternal image shall depart,
Who while on earth, ere yet by death surprised,
Taught me how mortals are immortalized;
How grateful am I for that patient care
All my life long my language shall declare.”
― Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, The Complete Poems of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

“Toiling,—rejoicing,—sorrowing,   Onward through life he goes; Each morning sees some task begin,   Each evening sees it close Something attempted, something done,   Has earned a night's repose.”
― Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, The Complete Poems of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

“Sadly as some old mediaeval knight
Gazed at the arms he could no longer wield,
The sword two-handed and the shining shield
Suspended in the hall, and full in sight,
While secret longings for the lost delight
Of tourney or adventure in the field
Came over him, and tears but half concealed
Trembled and fell upon his beard of white,
So I behold these books upon their shelf,
My ornaments and arms of other days;
Not wholly useless, though no longer used,
For they remind me of my other self,
Younger and stronger, and the pleasant ways
In which I walked, now clouded and confused.”
― Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, The Complete Poems of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

“I felt her presence, by its spell of might,      Stoop o'er me from above; The calm, majestic presence of the Night,      As of the one I love.”
― Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, The Complete Poems of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

“Wisely the Hebrews admit no Present tense in their language;
While we are speaking the word, it is is already the Past.”
― Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, The Complete Poems of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

“And thou, too, whosoe'er thou art,
  That readest this brief psalm,
As one by one thy hopes depart,
  Be resolute and calm.
O 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, The Complete Poems of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow