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Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807–1882). Complete Poetical Works. 1893.

Earlier Poems

L’Envoi

  • This poem was written as a poetical summary of the volume Voices of the Night, which it closed, referring in its three parts to the three divisions of that volume.


  • YE voices, that arose

    After the Evening’s close,

    And whispered to my restless heart repose!

    Go, breathe it in the ear

    Of all who doubt and fear,

    And say to them, “Be of good cheer!”

    Ye sounds, so low and calm,

    That in the groves of balm

    Seemed to me like an angel’s psalm!

    Go, mingle yet once more

    With the perpetual roar

    Of the pine forest, dark and hoar!

    Tongues of the dead, not lost,

    But speaking from death’s frost,

    Like fiery tongues at Pentecost!

    Glimmer, as funeral lamps,

    Amid the chills and damps

    Of the vast plain where Death encamps!