University of Virginia Library

MY “LONGFELLOW.”

When the news lightened o'er the sea which said
That Longfellow was dead,
I took his volume down from the bookshelf,
Made roughly by myself,
Brown on the title-page, bound more than once,
Full of notations,
Expressing full a dozen different things,
Those neat soft pencillings
Point out the lines my mother chose in turn
For me by heart to learn:
Those now faint underlinings mark the joy
That seized me when a boy
At some fresh touch of nature, or a shout
Of victory or rout,
In an Icelandic legend, or a tale
Quaint and fantastical,
Of the dead cities of the Zuyder Zee,
Or rude mythology
Of the Red Indian, or glimpse of the life,
Averse to stir or strife,
Led by the Pilgrims in their western home.
And sometimes too I come
On pencil marks drawn downwards on a page,
Made at a riper age,
Significant of well-considered praise:
And, written in those days,
I see initials in a woman's hand,
Who came not to this land.
Let there be given to the cunning seer
Some portion of the tear
That splashed upon the book for the old love,
Like the wings of a dove
In her hair's sheen and subtlety of hue,
And with a depth of blue
Stolen from heaven in some Promethean wise
To glorify her eyes.
She grew as grows the willow in the spring,
Before it falls weeping;
But when the summer came she wept and drooped
Like a wild bird that's cooped
From soaring up to carol nearer heaven:
Sixteen years was she given,
And then the hand that lent her took her back,
As transient as the rack
That for a while a hill peak did enshroud
And then resought its cloud.