The Herons of Elmwood

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow * Track #192 On The Complete Poetical Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

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Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

The Herons of Elmwood by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

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Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

The Herons of Elmwood Annotated

Warm and still is the summer night,
&nbsp As here by the river's brink I wander;
White overhead are the stars, and white
&nbsp The glimmering lamps on the hillside yonder.

Silent are all the sounds of day;
&nbsp Nothing I hear but the chirp of crickets,
And the cry of the herons winging their way
&nbsp O'er the poet's house in the Elmwood thickets.

Call to him, herons, as slowly you pass
&nbsp To your roosts in the haunts of the exiled thrushes,
Sing him the song of the green morass;
&nbsp And the tides that water the reeds and rushes.

Sing him the mystical Song of the Hern,
&nbsp And the secret that baffles our utmost seeking;
For only a sound of lament we discern,
&nbsp And cannot interpret the words you are speaking.

Sing of the air, and the wild delight
&nbsp Of wings that uplift and winds that uphold you,
The joy of freedom, the rapture of flight
&nbsp Through the drift of the floating mists that infold you.

Of the landscape lying so far below,
&nbsp With its towns and rivers and desert places;
And the splendor of light above, and the glow
&nbsp Of the limitless, blue, ethereal spaces.

Ask him if songs of the Troubadours,
&nbsp Or of Minnesingers in old black-letter,
Sound in his ears more sweet than yours,
&nbsp And if yours are not sweeter and wilder and better.

Sing to him, say to him, here at his gate,
&nbsp Where the boughs of the stately elms are meeting,
Some one hath lingered to meditate,
&nbsp And send him unseen this friendly greeting;

That many another hath done the same,
&nbsp Though not by a sound was the silence broken;
The surest pledge of a deathless name
&nbsp Is the silent homage of thoughts unspoken.

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