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With what a gentle grace, with what serene
Unconsciousness ye wear the triple crown
Of youth and beauty and the fair renown
Of a great name, that ne'er hath tarnished been!
From your soft eyes, so innocent and sweet,
Four spirits, sweet and innocent as they,

Gaze on the world below, the sky above;

Hark! there is some one singing in the street;

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'Faith, Hope, and Love! these three," he seems

to say;

"These three; and greatest of the three is Love."

HOLIDAYS.

THE holiest of all holidays are those
Kept by ourselves in silence and apart;
The secret anniversaries of the heart,
When the full river of feeling overflows;
The happy days unclouded to their close;

The sudden joys that out of darkness start
As flames from ashes; swift desires that dart
Like swallows singing down each wind that
blows!

White as the gleam of a receding sail,

White as a cloud that floats and fades in air,
White as the whitest lily on a stream,
These tender memories are; a fairy tale
Of some enchanted land we know not where,
But lovely as a landscape in a dream.

WAPENTAKE.

TO ALFRED TENNYSON.

POET! I come to touch thy lance with mine;
Not as a knight, who on the listed field
Of tourney touched his adversary's shield
In token of defiance, but in sign

Of homage to the mastery, which is thine,
In English song; nor will I keep concealed,
And voiceless as a rivulet frost-congealed,
My admiration for thy verse divine.
Not of the howling dervishes of song,

Who craze the brain with their delirious dance,
Art thou, O sweet historian of the heart!
Therefore to thee the laurel-leaves belong,
To thee our love and our allegiance,
For thy allegiance to the poet's art.

THE BROKEN OAR.

"November 13, 1864. Stay at home and ponder upon Dante. I am frequently tempted to write upon my work the inscription found upon an oar cast on the coast of Iceland,

Oft war ek dasa durek Oro thick.

Oft was I weary when I tugged at thee."

ONCE upon Iceland's solitary strand

A poet wandered with his book and pen, Seeking some final word, some sweet Amen, Wherewith to close the volume in his hand. The billows rolled and plunged upon the sand, The circling sea-gulls swept beyond his ken, And from the parting cloud-rack now and then Flashed the red sunset over sea and land.

Then by the billows at his feet was tossed

A broken oar; and carved thereon he read:
"Oft was I weary, when I toiled at thee ";
And like a man, who findeth what was lost,
He wrote the words, then lifted up his head,
And flung his useless pen into the sea.

THE CROSS OF SNOW.

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Written July 10, 1879. "Looking over one day," says Mr. Longfellow's biographer, an illustrated book of Western scenery, his attention was arrested by a picture of that mysterious mountain upon whose lonely, lofty breast the snow lies in long furrows that make a rude but wonderfully clear image of a vast cross. At night, as he looked upon the pictured countenance that hung upon his chamber wall, his thoughts framed themselves into the verses that follow. He put them away in his portfolio, where they were found after his death."

IN the long, sleepless watches of the night,

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A gentle face the face of one long deadLooks 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 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.

KERAMOS

"On the 7th of May, 1877, he is trying to write a poem on the potter's wheel.' The then new interest in Ceramics had brought out a number of books upon that subject, one of which, it is likely, turned his thoughts in that direction. His memory recalled the old pottery, still standing in Portland, near Deering's Woods, where it had been a delight of his boyhood to stop and watch the bowl or pitcher of clay rise up under the workman's hand, as he stood at his wheel under the shadow of a thorn-tree. There, within doors, amid the shelves of pots and pans, he may have read the inscription upon a glazed tile,

No handicraftman's art can with our art compare ;
We potters make our pots of what we potters are.

On the 3d of August is an entry in the journal, 'Received, from the Harpers, one thousand dollars for Kéramos.' The poem was published in their magazine with illustrations." S. Longfellow: Life of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, II. 460. The poem was the first in the volume Kéramos and other Poems, published in 1878.

Turn, turn, my wheel! Turn round and round
Without a pause, without a sound:

So spins the flying world away!

This clay, well mixed with marl and sand,

Follows the motion of my hand;

For some must follow, and some command,
Though all are made of clay!

Thus sang the Potter at his task
Beneath the blossoming hawthorn-tree,
While o'er his features, like a mask,
The quilted sunshine and leaf-shade

Moved, as the boughs above him swayed,
And clothed him, till he seemed to be
A figure woven in tapestry,

So sumptuously was he arrayed
In that magnificent attire

Of sable tissue flaked with fire.
Like a magician he appeared,
A conjurer without book or beard;
And while he plied his magic art-
For it was magical to me

I stood in silence and apart,

And wondered more and more to see
That shapeless, lifeless mass of clay
Rise up to meet the master's hand,
And now contract and now expand,
And even his slightest touch obey;
While ever in a thoughtful mood
He sang his ditty, and at times
Whistled a tune between the rhymes,
As a melodious interlude.

Turn, turn, my wheel! All things must change
To something new, to something strange;

Nothing that is can pause or stay;
The moon will wax, the moon will wane,
The mist and cloud will turn to rain,
The rain to mist and cloud again,
To-morrow be to-day.

Thus still the Potter sang, and still,
By some unconscious act of will,
The melody and even the words
Were intermingled with my thought,
As bits of colored thread are caught

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