“"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)

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Henry Wadsworth Longfellow 202

American poet 1807–1882

Related quotes

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

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807–1882) American poet

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

“O say can you see by the dawn's early light,
What so proudly we hailed at the twilight's last gleaming”

Francis Scott Key (1779–1843) American lawyer and poet

A line in the final stanzas is comparable to "It made and preserves us a nation" in The Flag of our Union by George Pope Morris.
The Star-Spangled Banner (1814)
Context: O say can you see by the dawn's early light,
What so proudly we hailed at the twilight's last gleaming,
Whose broad stripes and bright stars through the perilous fight,
O'er the ramparts we watched, were so gallantly streaming?
And the rockets' red glare, the bombs bursting in air,
Gave proof through the night that our flag was still there;
O say does that star-spangled banner yet wave,
O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave?On the shore dimly seen through the mists of the deep,
Where the foe's haughty host in dread silence reposes,
What is that which the breeze, o'er the towering steep,
As it fitfully blows, half conceals, half discloses?
Now it catches the gleam of the morning's first beam,
In full glory reflected now shines in the stream:
'Tis the star-spangled banner, O! long may it wave
O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave. And where is that band who so vauntingly swore
That the havoc of war and the battle's confusion,
A home and a country, should leave us no more?
Their blood has washed out their foul footsteps' pollution.
No refuge could save the hireling and slave
From the terror of flight, or the gloom of the grave:
And the star-spangled banner in triumph doth wave,
O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave.O thus be it ever, when freemen shall stand
Between their loved home and the war's desolation.
Blest with vict'ry and peace, may the Heav'n rescued land
Praise the Power that hath made and preserved us a nation!
Then conquer we must, when our cause it is just,
And this be our motto: "In God is our trust."
And the star-spangled banner in triumph shall wave
O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave!

“I thought what father said. Oh god he said. And only eight.”

Richard Matheson (1926–2013) American fiction writer

Born of Man and Woman (1950)

“I say nothing of father, for he is shrouded in a mystery I have never been able to penetrate. Slavery does away with fathers, as it does away with families.”

Frederick Douglass (1818–1895) American social reformer, orator, writer and statesman

Source: 1850s, My Bondage and My Freedom (1855), Chapter 3: Parentage.
Context: I say nothing of father, for he is shrouded in a mystery I have never been able to penetrate. Slavery does away with fathers, as it does away with families. Slavery has no use for either fathers or families, and its laws do not recognize their existence in the social arrangements of the plantation.