And, at the sound,
Thou turnest round

With quick and questioning eyes,
Like one, who, in a foreign land,
Beholds on every hand

Some source of wonder and surprise!
And, restlessly, impatiently,
Thou strivest, strugglest, to be free.

The four walls of thy nursery
Are now like prison walls to thee.
No more thy mother's smiles,
No more the painted tiles,

Delight thee, nor the playthings on the floor,

That won thy little, beating heart before;
Thou strugglest for the open door.

Through these once solitary halls
Thy pattering footstep falls.
The sound of thy merry voice
Makes the old walls
Jubilant, and they rejoice

With the joy of thy young heart,
O'er the light of whose gladness

No shadows of sadness

From the sombre background of memory

start.

Once, ah, once, within these walls,
One whom memory oft recalls,
The Father of his Country, dwelt.
And yonder meadows broad and damp
The fires of the besieging camp
Encircled with a burning belt.
Up and down these echoing stairs,
Heavy with the weight of cares,
Sounded his majestic tread;
Yes, within this very room
Sat he in those hours of gloom,
Weary both in heart and head.

But what are these grave thoughts to thee?

Out, out! into the open air!

Thy only dream is liberty,
Thou carest little how or where.

I see thee eager at thy play,

Now shouting to the apples on the tree,

With cheeks as round and red as they ;

And now among the yellow stalks,
Among the flowering shrubs and plants,
As restless as the bee.

Along the garden walks,

And see at every turn how they efface
Whole villages of sand-roofed tents,
That rise like golden domes

Above the cavernous and secret homes
Of wandering and nomadic tribes of ants.
Ah, cruel little Tamerlane,
Who, with thy dreadful reign,
Dost persecute and overwhelm

These hapless Troglodytes of thy realm!

What! tired already! with those suppliant looks,

And voice more beautiful than a poet's books

Or murmuring sound of water as it flows, Thou comest back to parley with re

pose!

This rustic seat in the old apple-tree,
With its o'erhanging golden canopy
Of leaves illuminate with autumnal hues,
And shining with the argent light of dews,
Shall for a season be our place of rest.
Beneath us, like an oriole's pendent nest,
From which the laughing birds have taken
wing,

By thee abandoned, hangs thy vacant swing.

Dream-like the waters of the river gleam; A sailless vessel drops adown the stream, And like it, to a sea as wide and deep, Thou driftest gently down the tides of sleep.

O child! O new-born denizen
Of life's great city! on thy head
The glory of the morn is shed,
Like a celestial benison !

Here at the portal thou dost stand,
And with thy little hand

Thou openest the mysterious gate
Into the future's undiscovered land.

I see its valves expand,

As at the touch of Fate!

Into those realms of love and hate,
Into that darkness blank and drear,
By some prophetic feeling taught,
I launch the bold, adventurous thought,
Freighted with hope and fear;
As upon subterranean streams,
In caverns unexplored and dark,
Men sometimes launch a fragile bark,
Laden with flickering fire,

And watch its swift-receding beams,

trace ;

And in the distant dark expire.

By what astrology of fear or hope
Dare I to cast thy horoscope !
Like the new moon thy life appears;
A little strip of silver light,
And widening outward into night
The shadowy disk of future years ;
And yet upon its outer rim,

A luminous circle, faint and dim,
And scarcely visible to us here,
Rounds and completes the perfect sphere;
A prophecy and intimation,

A pale and feeble adumbration,
Of the great world of light, that lies
Behind all human destinies.

Ah! if thy fate, with anguish fraught,
Should be to wet the dusty soil
With the hot tears and sweat of toil,
To struggle with imperious thought,
Until the overburdened brain,
Weary with labor, faint with pain,
Like a jarred pendulum, retain
Only its motion, not its power,
Remember, in that perilous hour,
When most afflicted and oppressed,
From labor there shall come forth rest.

And if a more auspicious fate
On thy advancing steps await,
Still let it ever be thy pride
To linger by the laborer's side;
With words of sympathy or song
To cheer the dreary march along
Of the great army of the poor,
O'er desert sand, o'er dangerous moor.
Nor to thyself the task shall be
Without reward; for thou shalt learn
The wisdom early to discern
True beauty in utility;
As great Pythagoras of yore,
Standing beside the blacksmith's door,
And hearing the hammers, as they smote
The anvils with a different note,
Stole from the varying tones, that hung
Vibrant on every iron tongue,
The secret of the sounding wire,
And formed the seven-chorded lyre.

Enough! I will not play the Seer;
I will no longer strive to ope
The mystic volume, where appear
The herald Hope, forerunning Fear,
And Fear, the pursuivant of Hope.
Thy destiny remains untold;
For, like Acestes' shaft of old,

The swift thought kindles as it flies, And burns to ashes in the skies.

THE OCCULTATION OF ORION

Mr. Longfellow says: "Astronomically speaking, this title is incorrect; as I apply to a constellation what can properly be applied to some of its stars only. But my observation is made from the hill of song, and not from that of science; and will, I trust, be found sumciently accurate for the present purpose."

I SAW, as in a dream sublime,
The balance in the hand of Time.
O'er East and West its beam impended;
And Day, with all its hours of light,
Was slowly sinking out of sight,
While, opposite, the scale of Night
Silently with the stars ascended.

Like the astrologers of eld,
In that bright vision I beheld
Greater and deeper mysteries.
I saw, with its celestial keys,
Its chords of air, its frets of fire,
The Samian's great Æolian lyre,
Rising through all its sevenfold bars,
From earth unto the fixèd stars.
And through the dewy atmosphere,
Not only could I see, but hear,
Its wondrous and harmonious strings,
In sweet vibration, sphere by sphere,
From Dian's circle light and near,
Onward to vaster and wider rings,
Where, chanting through his beard of

snows,

Majestic, mournful, Saturn goes,
And down the sunless realms of space
Reverberates the thunder of his bass.

Beneath the sky's triumphal arch
This music sounded like a march,
And with its chorus seemed to be
Preluding some great tragedy.
Sirius was rising in the east;
And, slow ascending one by one,
The kindling constellations shone.
Begirt with many a blazing star,
Stood the great giant Algebar,
Orion, hunter of the beast!

His sword hung gleaming by his side,
And, on his arm, the lion's hide
Scattered across the midnight air
The golden radiance of its hair.

The moon was pallid, but not faint;
And beautiful as some fair saint,
Serenely moving on her way
In hours of trial and dismay.
As if she heard the voice of God,
Unharmed with naked feet she trod
Upon the hot and burning stars,
As on the glowing coals and bars,
That were to prove her strength and try
Her holiness and her purity.

Thus moving on, with silent pace,
And triumph in her sweet, pale fare,
She reached the station of Orion.
Aghast he stood in strange alarm!
And suddenly from his outstretched arm
Down fell the red skin of the lion
Into the river at his feet.

His mighty club no longer beat
The forehead of the bull; but he
Reeled as of yore beside the sea,
When, blinded by Enopion,

He sought the blacksmith at his forge,
And, climbing up the mountain gorge,
Fixed his blank eyes upon the sun.

Then, through the silence overhead,
An angel with a trumpet said,
"Forevermore, forevermore,
The reign of violence is o'er !"
And, like an instrument that flings
Its music on another's strings,
The trumpet of the angel cast
Upon the heavenly lyre its blast,
And on from sphere to sphere the words
Reechoed down the burning chords, —
"Forevermore, forevermore,
The reign of violence is o'er !"

THE BRIDGE

At first localized as The Bridge over the Charles, the river which separates Cambridge from Boston.

I STOOD on the bridge at midnight,
As the clocks were striking the hour,
And the moon rose o'er the city,
Behind the dark church-tower.

I saw her bright reflection In the waters under me, Like a golden goblet falling And sinking into the sea.

GLOOMY and dark art thou, O chief of the mighty Omahas ;

Gloomy and dark as the driving cloud,

whose name thou hast taken!

Wrapped in thy scarlet blanket, I see thee stalk through the city's

Narrow and populous streets, as once by the margin of rivers

Stalked those birds unknown, that have left us only their footprints. What, in a few short years, will remain of thy race but the footprints?

How canst thou walk these streets, who hast trod the green turf of the prairies?

How canst thou breathe this air, who hast breathed the sweet air of the mountains ?

Ah! 't is in vain that with lordly looks of disdain thou dost challenge

Looks of disdain in return, and question these walls and these pavements, Claiming the soil for thy hunting-grounds, while down-trodden millions Starve in the garrets of Europe, and cry from its caverns that they, too, Have been created heirs of the earth, and claim its division!

Back, then, back to thy woods in the regions west of the Wabash!

There as a monarch thou reignest. In autumn the leaves of the maple Pave the floors of thy palace-halls with gold, and in summer Pine-trees waft through its chambers the odorous breath of their branches. There thou art strong and great, a hero, a tamer of horses!

There thou chasest the stately stag on the banks of the Elkhorn,

Or by the roar of the Running-Water, or where the Omaha

Calls thee, and leaps through the wild ravine like a brave of the Blackfeet!

Hark! what murmurs arise from the heart of those mountainous deserts? Is it the cry of the Foxes and Crows, or the mighty Behemoth,

Who, unharmed, on his tusks once caught the bolts of the thunder,

And now lurks in his lair to destroy the race of the red man?

Far more fatal to thee and thy race than the Crows and the Foxes,

Far more fatal to thee and thy race than the tread of Behemoth,

Lo! the big thunder-canoe, that steadily breasts the Missouri's Merciless current! and yonder, afar on the prairies, the camp-fires Gleam through the night; and the cloud of

dust in the gray of the daybreak Marks not the buffalo's track, nor the Mandan's dexterous horse-race;

It is a caravan, whitening the desert where dwell the Camanches!

Ha! how the breath of these Saxons and Celts, like the blast of the east-wind, Drifts evermore to the west the scanty smokes of thy wigwams!

SONGS

THE DAY IS DONE

Written in the fall of 1844 as proem to The Weif, a small volume of poems selected by Mr. Longfellow and published at Christmas of that year.

THE day is done, and the darkness Falls from the wings of Night, As a feather is wafted downward From an eagle in his flight.

I see the lights of the village

Gleam through the rain and the mist, And a feeling of sadness comes o'er me That my soul cannot resist :

A feeling of sadness and longing, That is not akin to pain,

And resembles sorrow only

As the mist resembles the rain.