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Home  »  Complete Poetical Works by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow  »  Flight the First. My Lost Youth

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

Birds of Passage

Flight the First. My Lost Youth

  • During one of his visits to Portland in 1846, Mr. Longfellow relates how he took a long walk round Munjoy’s hill and down to the old Fort Lawrence. “I lay down,” he says, “in one of the embrasures and listened to the lashing, lulling sound of the sea just at my feet. It was a beautiful afternoon, and the harbor was full of white sails, coming and departing. Meditated a poem on the Old Fort.” It does not appear that any poem was then written, but the theme remained, and in 1855, when in Cambridge, he notes in his diary, March 29: “A day of pain; cowering over the fire. At night, as I lie in bed, a poem comes into my mind,—a memory of Portland,—my native town, the city by the sea.
  • Siede la terra dove nato fui
  • Sulla marina.
  • “March 30. Wrote the poem; and am rather pleased with it, and with the bringing in of the two lines of the old Lapland song,
  • A boy’s will is the wind’s will,
  • And the thoughts of youth are long, long thoughts.”


  • OFTEN I think of the beautiful town

    That is seated by the sea;

    Often in thought go up and down

    The pleasant streets of that dear old town,

    And my youth comes back to me.

    And a verse of a Lapland song

    Is haunting my memory still:

    “A boy’s will is the wind’s will,

    And the thoughts of youth are long, long thoughts.”

    I can see the shadowy lines of its trees,

    And catch, in sudden gleams,

    The sheen of the far-surrounding seas,

    And islands that were the Hesperides

    Of all my boyish dreams.

    And the burden of that old song,

    It murmurs and whispers still:

    “A boy’s will is the wind’s will,

    And the thoughts of youth are long, long thoughts.”

    I remember the black wharves and the slips,

    And the sea-tides tossing free;

    And Spanish sailors with bearded lips,

    And the beauty and mystery of the ships,

    And the magic of the sea.

    And the voice of that wayward song

    Is singing and saying still:

    “A boy’s will is the wind’s will,

    And the thoughts of youth are long, long thoughts.”

    I remember the bulwarks by the shore,

    And the fort upon the hill;

    The sunrise gun, with its hollow roar,

    The drum-beat repeated o’er and o’er,

    And the bugle wild and shrill.

    And the music of that old song

    Throbs in my memory still:

    “A boy’s will is the wind’s will,

    And the thoughts of youth are long, long thoughts.”

    I remember the sea-fight far away,

    How it thundered o’er the tide!

    And the dead captains, as they lay

    In their graves, o’erlooking the tranquil bay

    Where they in battle died.

    And the sound of that mournful song

    Goes through me with a thrill:

    “A boy’s will is the wind’s will,

    And the thoughts of youth are long, long thoughts.”

    I can see the breezy dome of groves,

    The shadows of Deering’s Woods;

    And the friendships old and the early loves

    Come back with a Sabbath sound, as of doves

    In quiet neighborhoods.

    And the verse of that sweet old song,

    It flutters and murmurs still:

    “A boy’s will is the wind’s will,

    And the thoughts of youth are long, long thoughts.”

    I remember the gleams and glooms that dart

    Across the school-boy’s brain;

    The song and the silence in the heart,

    That in part are prophecies, and in part

    Are longings wild and vain.

    And the voice of that fitful song

    Sings on, and is never still:

    “A boy’s will is the wind’s will,

    And the thoughts of youth are long, long thoughts.”

    There are things of which I may not speak;

    There are dreams that cannot die;

    There are thoughts that make the strong heart weak,

    And bring a pallor into the cheek,

    And a mist before the eye.

    And the words of that fatal song

    Come over me like a chill:

    “A boy’s will is the wind’s will,

    And the thoughts of youth are long, long thoughts.”

    Strange to me now are the forms I meet

    When I visit the dear old town;

    But the native air is pure and sweet,

    And the trees that o’ershadow each well-known street,

    As they balance up and down,

    Are singing the beautiful song,

    Are sighing and whispering still:

    “A boy’s will is the wind’s will,

    And the thoughts of youth are long, long thoughts.”

    And Deering’s Woods are fresh and fair,

    And with joy that is almost pain

    My heart goes back to wander there,

    And among the dreams of the days that were,

    I find my lost youth again.

    And the strange and beautiful song,

    The groves are repeating it still:

    “A boy’s will is the wind’s will,

    And the thoughts of youth are long, long thoughts.”