Contents -BIBLIOGRAPHIC RECORD

Arthur Quiller-Couch, comp. The Oxford Book of Victorian Verse. 1922.

To an Old Danish Song-book

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807–1882)

WELCOME, my old friend,

Welcome to a foreign fireside,

While the sullen gales of autumn

Shake the windows.

The ungrateful world

Has, it seems, dealt harshly with thee,

Since, beneath the skies of Denmark,

First I met thee.

There are marks of age,

There are thumb-marks on thy margin,

Made by hands that clasp’d thee rudely,

At the alehouse.

Soil’d and dull thou art;

Yellow are thy time-worn pages,

As the russet, rain-molested

Leaves of autumn.

Thou art stain’d with wine

Scatter’d from hilarious goblets,

As the leaves with the libations

Of Olympus.

Yet dost thou recall

Days departed, half-forgotten,

When in dreamy youth I wander’d

By the Baltic,—

When I paused to hear

The old ballad of King Christian

Shouted from suburban taverns

In the twilight.

Thou recallest bards,

Who, in solitary chambers,

And with hearts by passion wasted,

Wrote thy pages.

Thou recallest homes

Where thy songs of love and friendship

Made the gloomy Northern winter

Bright as summer.

Once some ancient Scald,

In his bleak, ancestral Iceland,

Chanted staves of these old ballads

To the Vikings.

Once in Elsinore,

At the court of old King Hamlet,

Yorick and his boon companions

Sang these ditties.

Once Prince Frederick’s Guard

Sang them in their smoky barracks;—

Suddenly the English cannon

Join’d the chorus!

Peasants in the field,

Sailors on the roaring ocean,

Students, tradesmen, pale mechanics,

All have sung them.

Thou hast been their friend;

They, alas! have left thee friendless!

Yet at least by one warm fireside

Art thou welcome.

And, as swallows build

In these wide, old-fashion’d chimneys,

So thy twittering songs shall nestle

In my bosom,—

Quiet, close, and warm,

Sheltered from all molestation,

And recalling by their voices

Youth and travel.