Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807–1882). Complete Poetical Works. 1893.
Birds of PassageFlight the First. The Golden Mile-Stone
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Spread themselves abroad, like reefs of coral,
Rising silent
In the Red Sea of the winter sunset.
Like the Afreet in the Arabian story,
Smoky columns
Tower aloft into the air of amber.
Here and there the lamps of evening glimmer,
Social watch-fires
Answering one another through the darkness.
And like Ariel in the cloven pine-tree
For its freedom
Groans and sighs the air imprisoned in them.
Seeing ruined cities in the ashes,
Asking sadly
Of the Past what it can ne’er restore them.
Building castles fair, with stately stairways,
Asking blindly
Of the Future what it cannot give them.
In whose scenes appear two actors only,
Wife and husband,
And above them God the sole spectator.
Wives and children, with fair, thoughtful faces,
Waiting, watching
For a well-known footstep in the passage.
Is the central point, from which he measures
Every distance
Through the gateways of the world around him.
Hears the talking flame, the answering night-wind,
As he heard them
When he sat with those who were, but are not.
Nor the march of the encroaching city,
Drives an exile
From the hearth of his ancestral homestead.
Fill our rooms with paintings and with sculptures,
But we cannot
Buy with gold the old associations!