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    Birds of Passage: "The rapture of pursuing is the prize the vanquished gain"
    Birds of Passage: "The rapture of pursuing is the prize the vanquished gain"
    Birds of Passage: "The rapture of pursuing is the prize the vanquished gain"
    Ebook115 pages1 hour

    Birds of Passage: "The rapture of pursuing is the prize the vanquished gain"

    By Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

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    About this ebook

    Henry Wadsworth Longfellow was born on February 27th, 1807 in Portland, Maine. As a young boy, it was obvious that he was very studious and he quickly became fluent in Latin. He published his first poem, "The Battle of Lovell's Pond", in the Portland Gazette on November 17th, 1820. He was already thinking of a career in literature and, in his senior year, wrote to his father: “I will not disguise it in the least... the fact is, I most eagerly aspire after future eminence in literature, my whole soul burns most ardently after it, and every earthly thought centers in it....” After graduation travels in Europe occupied the next three years and he seemed to easily absorb any language he set himself to learn. On September 14th, 1831, Longfellow married Mary Storer Potter. They settled in Brunswick. His first published book was in 1833, a translation of poems by the Spanish poet Jorge Manrique. He also published a travel book, Outre-Mer: A Pilgrimage Beyond the Sea. During a trip to Europe Mary became pregnant. Sadly, in October 1835, she miscarried at some six months. After weeks of illness she died, at the age of 22 on November 29th, 1835. Longfellow wrote "One thought occupies me night and day... She is dead — She is dead! All day I am weary and sad". In late 1839, Longfellow published Hyperion, a book in prose inspired by his trips abroad. Ballads and Other Poems was published in 1841 and included "The Village Blacksmith" and "The Wreck of the Hesperus". His reputation as a poet, and a commercial one at that, was set. On May 10th, 1843, after seven years in pursuit of a chance for new love, Longfellow received word from Fanny Appleton that she agreed to marry him. On November 1st, 1847, the epic poem Evangeline was published. In 1854, Longfellow retired from Harvard, to devote himself entirely to writing. The Song of Haiwatha, perhaps his best known and enjoyed work was published in 1855. On July 10th, 1861, after suffering horrific burns the previous day. In his attempts to save her Longfellow had also been badly burned and was unable to attend her funeral. He spent several years translating Dante Alighieri's Divine Comedy. It was published in 1867. Longfellow was also part of a group who became known as The Fireside Poets which also included William Cullen Bryant, John Greenleaf Whittier, James Russell Lowell, and Oliver Wendell Holmes Snr. Longfellow was the most popular poet of his day. As a friend once wrote to him, "no other poet was so fully recognized in his lifetime". Some of his works including "Paul Revere's Ride" and “The Song of Haiwatha” may have rewritten the facts but became essential parts of the American psyche and culture. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow died, surrounded by family, on Friday, March 24th, 1882. He had been suffering from peritonitis.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherPortable Poetry
    Release dateFeb 21, 2017
    ISBN9781787370708
    Birds of Passage: "The rapture of pursuing is the prize the vanquished gain"

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      Book preview

      Birds of Passage - Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

      Birds of Passage by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

      BIRDS OF PASSAGE

      FLIGHT THE FIRST

      Birds of Passage

      Prometheus, or the Poet's Forethought

      Epimetheus, or the Poet's Afterthought

      The Ladder of St. Augustine

      The Phantom Ship

      The Warden of the Cinque Ports

      Haunted Houses

      In the Churchyard at Cambridge

      The Emperor's Bird's-Nest

      The Two Angels

      Daylight and Moonlight

      The Jewish Cemetery at Newport

      Oliver Basselin

      Victor Galbraith

      My Lost Youth

      The Ropewalk

      The Golden Mile-Stone

      Catawba Wine

      Santa Filomena

      The Discoverer of the North Cape

      Daybreak

      The Fiftieth Birthday of Agassiz

      Children

      Sandalphon

      FLIGHT THE SECOND

      The Children's Hour

      Enceladus

      The Cumberland

      Snow-Flakes

      A Day of Sunshine

      Something left Undone

      Weariness

      FLIGHT THE THIRD

      Fata Morgana

      The Haunted Chamber

      The Meeting

      Vox Populi

      The Castle-Builder

      Changed

      The Challenge

      The Brook and the Wave

      Aftermath

      FLIGHT THE FOURTH

      Charles Sumner

      Travels by the Fireside

      Cadenabbia

      Monte Cassino

      Amalfi

      The Sermon of St. Francis

      Belisarius

      Songo River

      FLIGHT THE FIFTH

      The Herons of Elmwood

      A Dutch Picture

      Castles in Spain

      Vittoria Colonna

      The Revenge of Rain-in-the-Face

      To the River Yvette

      The Emperor's Glove

      A Ballad or the French Fleet

      The Leap of Roushan Beg

      Haroun Al Raschid.

      King Trisanku

      A Wraith in the Mist

      The Three Kings

      Song: Stay, Stay at Home, my Heart, and Rest.

      The White Czar

      Delia

      HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW – A SHORT BIOGRAPHY

      HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW – A CONCISE BIBLIOGRAPHY

      BIRDS OF PASSAGE

      FLIGHT THE FIRST

      . . come i gru van cantando lor lai,

      Facendo in aer di se lunga riga. -- DANTE

      BIRDS OF PASSAGE

      Black shadows fall

      From the lindens tall,

      That lift aloft their massive wall

      Against the southern sky;

      And from the realms

      Of the shadowy elms

      A tide-like darkness overwhelms

      The fields that round us lie.

      But the night is fair,

      And everywhere

      A warm, soft vapor fills the air,

      And distant sounds seem near,

      And above, in the light

      Of the star-lit night,

      Swift birds of passage wing their flight

      Through the dewy atmosphere.

      I hear the beat

      Of their pinions fleet,

      As from the land of snow and sleet

      They seek a southern lea.

      I hear the cry

      Of their voices high

      Falling dreamily through the sky,

      But their forms I cannot see.

      O, say not so!

      Those sounds that flow

      In murmurs of delight and woe

      Come not from wings of birds.

      They are the throngs

      Of the poet's songs,

      Murmurs of pleasures, and pains, and wrongs,

      The sound of winged words.

      This is the cry

      Of souls, that high

      On toiling, beating pinions, fly,

      Seeking a warmer clime,

      From their distant flight

      Through realms of light

      It falls into our world of night,

      With the murmuring sound of rhyme.

      PROMETHEUS

      OR THE POET'S FORETHOUGHT

      Of Prometheus, how undaunted

      On Olympus' shining bastions

      His audacious foot he planted,

      Myths are told and songs are chanted,

      Full of promptings and suggestions.

      Beautiful is the tradition

      Of that flight through heavenly portals,

      The old classic superstition

      Of the theft and the transmission

      Of the fire of the Immortals!

      First the deed of noble daring,

      Born of heavenward aspiration,

      Then the fire with mortals sharing,

      Then the vulture,--the despairing

      Cry of pain on crags Caucasian.

      All is but a symbol painted

      Of the Poet, Prophet, Seer;

      Only those are crowned and sainted

      Who with grief have been acquainted,

      Making nations nobler, freer.

      In their feverish exultations,

      In their triumph and their yearning,

      In their passionate pulsations,

      In their words among the nations,

      The Promethean fire is burning.

      Shall it, then, be unavailing,

      All this toil for human culture?

      Through the cloud-rack, dark and trailing,

      Must they see above them sailing

      O'er life's barren crags the vulture?

      Such a fate as this was Dante's,

      By defeat and exile maddened;

      Thus were Milton and Cervantes,

      Nature's priests and Corybantes,

      By affliction touched and saddened.

      But the glories so transcendent

      That around their memories cluster,

      And, on all their steps attendant,

      Make their darkened lives resplendent

      With such gleams of inward lustre!

      All the melodies mysterious,

      Through the dreary darkness chanted;

      Thoughts in attitudes imperious,

      Voices soft, and deep, and serious,

      Words that whispered, songs that haunted!

      All the soul in rapt suspension,

      All the quivering, palpitating

      Chords of life in utmost tension,

      With the fervor of invention,

      With the rapture of creating!

      Ah, Prometheus! heaven-scaling!

      In such hours of exultation

      Even the faintest heart, unquailing,

      Might behold the vulture sailing

      Round the cloudy crags Caucasian!

      Though to all there is not given

      Strength for such sublime endeavor,

      Thus to scale the walls of heaven,

      And to leaven with fiery leaven

      All the hearts of men for ever;

      Yet all bards, whose hearts unblighted

      Honor and believe the presage,

      Hold aloft their torches lighted,

      Gleaming through the realms benighted,

      As they onward bear the message!

      EPIMETHEUS

      OR THE POET'S AFTERTHOUGHT

      Have I dreamed? or was it real,

      What I saw as in a vision,

      When to marches hymeneal

      In the land of the Ideal

      Moved my thought o'er Fields Elysian?

      What! are these the guests whose glances

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