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Henry Wadsworth Longfellow Quotes
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Henry Wadsworth Longfellow was an American poet and educator whose works include "Paul Revere's Ride", The Song of Hiawatha, and Evangeline. He was also the first American to translate Dante Alighieri's Divine Comedy and was one of the Fireside Poets from New England.

Longfellow was born in Portland, Maine, which was then still part of Massachusetts. He studied at Bowdoin College and became a professor at Bowdoin and later at Harvard College after spending time in Europe. His first major poetry collections were Voices of the Night and Ballads and Other Poems . He retired from teaching in 1854 to focus on his writing, and he lived the remainder of his life in the Revolutionary War headquarters of George Washington in Cambridge, Massachusetts. His first wife Mary Potter died in 1835 after a miscarriage. His second wife Frances Appleton died in 1861 after sustaining burns when her dress caught fire. After her death, Longfellow had difficulty writing poetry for a time and focused on translating works from foreign languages. He died in 1882.

Longfellow wrote many lyric poems known for their musicality and often presenting stories of mythology and legend. He became the most popular American poet of his day and also had success overseas. He has been criticized by some, however, for imitating European styles and writing specifically for the masses. Wikipedia  

✵ 27. February 1807 – 24. March 1882   •   Other names Генри Уодсворт Лонгфелло, Longfello Genri Uodsuort
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow photo
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow: 202   quotes 24   likes

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow Quotes

“O Bells of San Blas in vain
Ye call back the Past again;
The Past is deaf to your prayer!
Out of the shadows of night
The world rolls into light;
It is daybreak everywhere.”

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

The Bells of San Blas, st. 11 (March 15, 1882).

World , Light , Past , Night

“Every great poem is in itself limited by necessity, — but in its suggestions unlimited and infinite.”

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Table-Talk (1857)

“"O father! I see a gleaming light.
Oh say, what may it be?"
But the father answered never a word,
A frozen corpse was he.”

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

St. 12.
The Wreck of the Hesperus (1842)

Light

“A feeling of sadness and longing,
That is not akin to pain,
And resembles sorrow only
As the mist resembles the rain.”

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

St. 3.
The Day is Done (1845)

Pain , Sadness , Feeling

“Build me straight, O worthy Master!
Stanch and strong, a goodly vessel,
That shall laugh at all disaster,
And with wave and whirlwind wrestle!”

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow The Building of the Ship

Source: The Building of the Ship (1849), Lines 1-4.

Strong

“Such was the wreck of the Hesperus,
In the midnight and the snow!
Christ save us all from a death like this,
On the reef of Norman's Woe!”

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

St. 22.
The Wreck of the Hesperus (1842)

Death , Christ

“But oftentimes celestial benedictions
Assume this dark disguise.”

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow Resignation

Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919), Resignation

“Thine was the prophet's vision, thine
The exaltation, the divine
Insanity of noble minds,
That never falters nor abates,
But labors and endures and waits,
Till all that it foresees it finds
Or what it can not find creates.”

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Kéramos http://www.worldwideschool.org/library/books/lit/poetry/TheCompletePoeticalWorksofHenryWadsworthLongfellow/chap22.html, st. 9 (1878).

Waiting

“And see! she stirs!
She starts,—she moves,—she seems to feel
The thrill of life along her keel,
And, spurning with her foot the ground,
With one exulting, joyous bound,
She leaps into the ocean's arms!”

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow The Building of the Ship

Source: The Building of the Ship (1849), Lines 349-354.

Life , Feeling

“Big words do not smite like war-clubs,
Boastful breath is not a bow-string,
Taunts are not so sharp as arrows,
Deeds are better things than words are,
Actions mightier than boastings.”

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow book The Song of Hiawatha

Pt. IX.
The Song of Hiawatha (1855)

War

“Not from the grand old masters,
Not from the bards sublime,
Whose distant footsteps echo
Through the corridors of Time.”

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

St. 5.
The Day is Done (1845)

Distant , Time

“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.”

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

St. 1.
The Day is Done (1845)

Night

“A Lady with a Lamp shall stand
In the great history of the land,
A noble type of good,
Heroic womanhood.”

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow Santa Filomena

Santa Filomena, st. 10 (1858).

History

“Authors have a greater right than any copyright, though it is generally unacknowledged or disregarded. They have a right to the reader's civility. There are favorable hours for reading a book, as for writing it, and to these the author has a claim. Yet many people think that when they buy a book they buy with it the right to abuse the author.”

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Table-Talk (1857)

People , Books , Thinking , Reading

“Each morning sees some task begin,
Each evening sees it close
Something attempted, something done,
Has earned a night's repose.”

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow The Village Blacksmith

St. 7.
The Village Blacksmith (1842)

Night

“His form was ponderous, and his step was slow;
There never was so wise a man before;
He seemed the incarnate "Well, I told you so!"”

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow Tales of a Wayside Inn

Pt. I, The Poet's Tale: The Birds of Killingworth, st. 9.
Tales of a Wayside Inn (1863-1874)

“Ye are better than all the ballads
That ever were sung or said;
For ye are living poems,
And all the rest are dead.”

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Children, st. 9 (1858).

Dead

“I know a maiden fair to see,
Take care!
She can both false and friendly be,
Beware! Beware!
Trust her not,
She is fooling thee.”

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

From the German (In Hyperion).
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)

Fools , Falseness

“The hooded clouds, like friars,
Tell their beads in drops of rain.”

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Midnight Mass, reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919).

“Chorus of the Eumenides: …
Never by lapse of time
The soul defaced by crime
Into its former self returns again;
For every guilty deed
Holds in itself the seed
Of retribution and undying pain.

Never shall be the loss
Restored, till Helios
Hath purified them with his heavenly fires;
Then what was lost is won,
And the new life begun,
Kindled with nobler passions and desires.”

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

The Masque of Pandora and Other Poems (1875)

Life , Pain , Soul , Passion

“It was the schooner Hesperus,
That sailed the wintry sea;
And the skipper had taken his little daughter,
To bear him company.”

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

St. 1.
The Wreck of the Hesperus (1842)

Daughters , Sea

“Alas! it is not till time, with reckless hand, has torn out half the leaves from the Book of Human Life to light the fires of passion with from day to day, that man begins to see that the leaves which remain are few in number.”

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow book Hyperion

Hyperion, book iv. Chap. viii.
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)

Life , Books , Light , Passion

“For Time will teach thee soon the truth,
There are no birds in last year's nest!”

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

It is not always May, reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919).

Truth , Bird , Time

“Come, read to me some poem,
Some simple and heartfelt lay,
That shall soothe this restless feeling,
And banish the thoughts of day.”

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

St. 4.
The Day is Done (1845)

Feeling , Reading

“By the shore of Gitche Gumee,
By the shining Big-Sea-Water,
At the doorway of his wigwam,
In the pleasant Summer morning,
Hiawatha stood and waited.”

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow book The Song of Hiawatha

Pt. XXII, Hiawatha's Departure, st. 1.
The Song of Hiawatha (1855)

Water , Waiting , Summer , Sea

“A town that boasts inhabitants like me
Can have no lack of good society.”

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow Tales of a Wayside Inn

Pt. I, The Poet's Tale: The Birds of Killingworth.
Tales of a Wayside Inn (1863-1874)

“The star of the unconquered will.”

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow The Light of Stars

The Light of Stars, reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919).

Star

“O father! I see a gleaming light.
Oh say, what may it be?”

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

But the father answered never a word,
A frozen corpse was he.
St. 12.
The Wreck of the Hesperus (1842)

Light

“Ah! this beautiful world!”

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

said Flemming, with a smile. "Indeed, I know not what to think of it. Sometimes it is all gladness and sunshine, and Heaven itself lies not far off. And then it changes suddenly; and is dark and sorrowful, and clouds shut out the sky. In the lives of the saddest of us, there are bright days like this, when we feel as if we could take the great world in our arms and kiss it. Then come the gloomy hours, when the fire will neither burn on our hearths nor in our hearts; and all without and within is dismal, cold, and dark. Believe me, every heart has its secret sorrows, which the world knows not, and oftentimes we call a man cold, when he is only sad."
Hyperion http://www.gutenberg.org/etext/5436, Bk. III, Ch. IV (1839).

World , Beauty

“Tell me not, in mournful numbers,
"Life is but an empty dream!"”

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow A Psalm of Life

For the soul is dead that slumbers,
And things are not what they seem.
St. 1.
A Psalm of Life (1839)

Life , Dreams

“The warriors that fought for their country, and bled,
Have sunk to their rest; the damp earth is their bed;
No stone tells the place where their ashes repose,
Nor points out the spot from the graves of their foes.

They died in their glory, surrounded by fame,
And Victory's loud trump their death did proclaim;
They are dead; but they live in each Patriot's breast,
And their names are engraven on honor's bright crest.”

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

"The Battle of Lovell's Pond," poem first published in the Portland Gazette (November 17, 1820).

Dead , Country , Victory , Death