Henry Longfellow - The Complete Poetical Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

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This is the place. Stand still, my steed,

Let me review the scene,

And summon from the shadowy Past

The forms that once have been.

The Past and Present here unite

Beneath Time's flowing tide,

Like footprints hidden by a brook,

But seen on either side.

Here runs the highway to the town;

There the green lane descends,

Through which I walked to church with thee,

O gentlest of my friends!

The shadow of the linden-trees

Lay moving on the grass;

Between them and the moving boughs,

A shadow, thou didst pass.

Thy dress was like the lilies,

And thy heart as pure as they:

One of God's holy messengers

Did walk with me that day.

I saw the branches of the trees

Bend down thy touch to meet,

The clover-blossoms in the grass

Rise up to kiss thy feet,

"Sleep, sleep to-day, tormenting cares,

Of earth and folly born!"

Solemnly sang the village choir

On that sweet Sabbath morn.

Through the closed blinds the golden sun

Poured in a dusty beam,

Like the celestial ladder seen

By Jacob in his dream.

And ever and anon, the wind,

Sweet-scented with the hay,

Turned o'er the hymn-book's fluttering leaves

That on the window lay.

Long was the good man's sermon,

Yet it seemed not so to me;

For he spake of Ruth the beautiful,

And still I thought of thee.

Long was the prayer he uttered,

Yet it seemed not so to me;

For in my heart I prayed with him,

And still I thought of thee.

But now, alas! the place seems changed;

Thou art no longer here:

Part of the sunshine of the scene

With thee did disappear.

Though thoughts, deep-rooted in my heart,

Like pine-trees dark and high,

Subdue the light of noon, and breathe

A low and ceaseless sigh;

This memory brightens o'er the past,

As when the sun, concealed

Behind some cloud that near us hangs

Shines on a distant field.

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This is the Arsenal. From floor to ceiling,

Like a huge organ, rise the burnished arms;

But front their silent pipes no anthem pealing

Startles the villages with strange alarms.

Ah! what a sound will rise, how wild and dreary,

When the death-angel touches those swift keys

What loud lament and dismal Miserere

Will mingle with their awful symphonies

I hear even now the infinite fierce chorus,

The cries of agony, the endless groan,

Which, through the ages that have gone before us,

In long reverberations reach our own.

On helm and harness rings the Saxon hammer,

Through Cimbric forest roars the Norseman's song,

And loud, amid the universal clamor,

O'er distant deserts sounds the Tartar gong.

I hear the Florentine, who from his palace

Wheels out his battle-bell with dreadful din,

And Aztec priests upon their teocallis

Beat the wild war-drums made of serpent's skin;

The tumult of each sacked and burning village;

The shout that every prayer for mercy drowns;

The soldiers' revels in the midst of pillage;

The wail of famine in beleaguered towns;

The bursting shell, the gateway wrenched asunder,

The rattling musketry, the clashing blade;

And ever and anon, in tones of thunder,

The diapason of the cannonade.

Is it, O man, with such discordant noises,

With such accursed instruments as these,

Thou drownest Nature's sweet and kindly voices,

And jarrest the celestial harmonies?

Were half the power, that fills the world with terror,

Were half the wealth, bestowed on camps and courts,

Given to redeem the human mind from error,

There were no need of arsenals or forts:

The warrior's name would be a name abhorred!

And every nation, that should lift again

Its hand against a brother, on its forehead

Would wear forevermore the curse of Cain!

Down the dark future, through long generations,

The echoing sounds grow fainter and then cease;

And like a bell, with solemn, sweet vibrations,

I hear once more the voice of Christ say, "Peace!"

Peace! and no longer from its brazen portals

The blast of War's great organ shakes the skies!

But beautiful as songs of the immortals,

The holy melodies of love arise.

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In the valley of the Pegnitz, where across broad meadow-lands Rise the blue Franconian mountains, Nuremberg, the ancient, stands.

Quaint old town of toil and traffic, quaint old town of art and song, Memories haunt thy pointed gables, like the rooks that round them throng:

Memories of the Middle Ages, when the emperors, rough and bold, Had their dwelling in thy castle, time-defying, centuries old;

And thy brave and thrifty burghers boasted, in their uncouth rhyme, That their great imperial city stretched its hand through every clime.

In the court-yard of the castle, bound with many an iron hand, Stands the mighty linden planted by Queen Cunigunde's hand;

On the square the oriel window, where in old heroic days Sat the poet Melchior singing Kaiser Maximilian's praise.

Everywhere I see around me rise the wondrous world of Art: Fountains wrought with richest sculpture standing in the common mart;

And above cathedral doorways saints and bishops carved in stone, By a former age commissioned as apostles to our own.

In the church of sainted Sebald sleeps enshrined his holy dust, And in bronze the Twelve Apostles guard from age to age their trust;

In the church of sainted Lawrence stands a pix of sculpture rare, Like the foamy sheaf of fountains, rising through the painted air.

Here, when Art was still religion, with a simple, reverent heart, Lived and labored Albrecht Durer, the Evangelist of Art;

Hence in silence and in sorrow, toiling still with busy hand, Like an emigrant he wandered, seeking for the Better Land.

Emigravit is the inscription on the tombstone where he lies; Dead he is not, but departed—for the artist never dies.

Fairer seems the ancient city, and the sunshine seems more fair, That he once has trod its pavement, that he once has breathed its air!

Through these streets so broad and stately, these obscure and dismal lanes, Walked of yore the Mastersingers, chanting rude poetic strains.

From remote and sunless suburbs came they to the friendly guild, Building nests in Fame's great temple, as in spouts the swallows build.

As the weaver plied the shuttle, wove he too the mystic rhyme, And the smith his iron measures hammered to the anvil's chime;

Thanking God, whose boundless wisdom makes the flowers of poesy bloom In the forge's dust and cinders, in the tissues of the loom.

Here Hans Sachs, the cobbler-poet, laureate of the gentle craft, Wisest of the Twelve Wise Masters, in huge folios sang and laughed.

But his house is now an ale-house, with a nicely sanded floor, And a garland in the window, and his face above the door;

Painted by some humble artist, as in Adam Puschman's song, As the old man gray and dove-like, with his great beard white and long.

And at night the swart mechanic comes to drown his cark and care, Quaffing ale from pewter tankard; in the master's antique chair.

Vanished is the ancient splendor, and before my dreamy eye Wave these mingled shapes and figures, like a faded tapestry.

Not thy Councils, not thy Kaisers, win for thee the world's regard; But thy painter, Albrecht Durer, and Hans Sachs thy cobbler-bard.

Thus, O Nuremberg, a wanderer from a region far away, As he paced thy streets and court-yards, sang in thought his careless lay: