BIRDS OF PASSAGE

come i gru van cantando lor lai, Facendo in aer di sè lunga riga.

DANTE.

FLIGHT THE FIRST.

BIRDS OF PASSAGE.

Written November 1, 1845.

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.

Oh, 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

15

PROMETHEUS,

OR THE POET'S FORETHOUGHT.

The two poems Prometheus and Epimetheus were originally conceived as a single poem, bearing both the names in the title. Mr. Longfellow in his diary, May 16, 1854, says: "Writing a poem which I hope will turn out a good one, Prometheus and Epimetheus, the before and the after; the feeling of the first design and execution compared with that with which one looks back upon the work when done." The two poems were printed together in Putnam's Magazine, February, 1855.

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,

EPIMETHEUS

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 be 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 forever;

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!

17

66

EPIMETHEUS.

OR THE POET'S AFTERTHOUGHT.

'May 22, 1854. Write Epimetheus as an epilogue to the vol ame to which Prometheus will serve as prologue."

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?

Line 8. Though to all there is not given