Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807-1882)

• Mezzo Cummin
• The Cross of Snow
• Milton
• The Poets

Divina Commedia

• I. Oft have I seen at some cathedral door"
• II. "How strange the sculptures that adorn these towers"
• III. "I enter, and I see thee in the gloom"
• IV. "With snow-white veil and garments as of flame"
• V. "I lift mine eyes, and all the windows blaze"
• VI. "O star of morning and of liberty"

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  Mezzo Cummin

  
  Half of my life is gone, and I have let
  The years slip from me and have not fulfilled
  The asperations of my youth, to build
  Some tower of song with lofty parapet.
  Not indolence, nor pleasure, nor the fret
  Of restless passions that would not be stilled,
  But sorrow, and a care that almost killed,
  Kept me from what I may accomplish yet;
  Though, half-way up the hill, I see the Past
  Lying beneath me with its sounds and sights,--
  A city in the twilight dim and vast,
  With smoking roofs, soft bells, and gleaming lights,--
  And hear above me on the autumnal blast
  The cataract of Death far thundering from the heights.

  The Cross of Snow

  

  In the long, sleepless watches of the night
  A gentle face--the face of one long dead--
  Looks at me from the wall, where round its head
  The night-lamp casts a halo of pale light.
  Here in this room she died; and soul more white
  Never through martyrdom of fire was led
  To its repose; nor can in books be read
  The legend of a life more benedight.
  There is a mountain in the distant West
  That, sun-defying, in its deap 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.

  Milton

  

  I pace the sounding sea-beach and behold
  How the voluminous billows roll and run,
  Upheaving and subsiding, while the sun
  Shines through their sheeted emerald far unrolled,
  And the ninth wave, slow gathering fold by fold
  All its loose-flowing garments into one,
  Plunges upon the shore, and floods the dun
  Pale reach of sands, and changes them to gold.
  So in majestic cadence rise and fall
  The mighty undulations of thy song,
  O sightless bard, England's Maeonides!
  And ever and anon, high over all
  Uplifted, a ninth wave superb and strong,
  Floods all the soul with its melodious seas.

  The Poets

  

  O ye dead Poets, who are living still
  Immortal in your verse, though life be fled,
  And ye, O living Poets, who are dead
  Though ye are living, if neglect can kill,
  Tell me if in the darkest hours of ill,
  With drops of anguish falling fast and red
  From the sharp crown of thorns upon your head,
  Ye were not glad your errand to fulfil?
  Yes; for the gift and ministry of Song
  Have something in them so divinely sweet,
  It can assuage the bitterness of wrong;
  Not in the clamor of the crowded street,
  Not in the shouts and plaudits of the throng,
  But in ourselves, are triumph and defeat.

  Divina Commedia

  I

  

  Oft have I seen at some cathedral door
  A laborer, pausing in the dust and heat,
  Lay down his burden, and with reverent feet
  Enter, and cross himself, and on the floor
  Kneel to repeat his paternoster o'er;
  Far off the noises of the world retreat;
  The loud vociferations of the street
  Become an undistinguishable roar.
  So, as I enter here from day to day,
  And leave my burden at this minster gate,
  Kneeling in prayer, and not ashamed to pray,
  The tumult of the time disconsolate
  To inarticulate murmurs dies away,
  While the eternal ages watch and wait.

  II

  

  How strange the sculptures that adorn these towers!
  This crowd of statues, in whose folded sleeves
  Birds build their nests; while canopied with leaves
  Parvis and portal bloom like trellised bowers,
  And the vast minster seems a cross of flowers!
  But fiends and dragons on the gargoyled eaves
  Watch the dead Christ between the living thieves,
  And, underneath, the traitor Judas lowers!
  Ah! from what agonies of heart and brain,
  What exultations trampling on despair,
  What tenderness, what tears, what hate of wrong,
  What passionate outcry of a soul in pain,
  Uprose this poem of the earth and air,
  This mediaeval miracle of song!

  III

  

  I enter, and I see thee in the gloom
  Of the long aisles, O poet saturnine!
  And strive to make my steps keep pace with thine.
  The air is filled with some unknown perfume;
  The congregation of the dead make room
  For thee to pass; the votive tapers shine;
  Like rooks that haunt Ravenna's groves of pine
  The hovering echoes fly from tomb to tomb.
  From the confessionals I hear arise
  Rehearsals of forgotten tragedies,
  And lamentations from the crypts below;
  And then a voice celestial that begins
  With the pathetic words, "Although your sins
  As scarlet be," and ends with "as the snow."

  IV

  

  With snow-white veil and garments as of flame,
  She stands before thee, who so long ago
  Filled thy young heart with passion and the woe
  From which thy song and all its splendors came;
  And while with stern rebuke she speaks thy name,
  The ice about thy heart melts as the snow
  On mountain heights, and in swift overflow
  Comes gushing from thy lips in sobs of shame.
  Thou makest full confession; and a gleam,
  As of the dawn on some dark forest cast,
  Seems on thy lifted forehead to increase;
  Lethe and Eunoc--the remembered dream
  And the forgotten sorrow--bring at last
  That perfect pardon which is perfect peace.

  V

  

  I lift mine eyes, and all the windows blaze
  With forms of Saints and holy men who died,
  Here martyred and hereafter glorffied;
  And the great Rose upon its leaves displays
  Christ's Triumph, and the angelic roundelays,
  With splendor upon splendor multiplied;
  And Beatrice again at Dante's side
  No more rebukes, but smiles her words of praise.
  And then the organ sounds, and unseen choirs
  Sing the old Latin hymns of peace and love
  And benedictions of the Holy Ghost;
  And the melodious bells among the spires
  O'er all the house-tops and through heaven above
  Proclaim the elevation of the Host!

  VI

  

  O star of morning and of liberty!
  O bringer of the light, whose splendor shines
  Above the darkness of the Apennines,
  Forerunner of the day that is to be!
  The voices of the city and the sea,
  The voices of the mountains and the pines,
  Repeat thy song, till the familiar lines
  Are footpaths for the thought of Italy!
  Thy flame is blown abroad from all the heights,
  Through all the nations, and a sound is heard,
  As of a mighty wind, and men devout,
  Strangers of Rome, and the new proselytes,
  In their own language hear thy wondrous word,
  And many are amazed and many doubt.

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  Glossed Words (Click on title to return to poem.)

  

  Mezzo Cummin

  Title, Italian for "Halfway [through life]"--a reference to the beginning of Dante's Inferno.