Bliss Carman, et al., eds. The World’s Best Poetry. 1904.
Descriptive Poems: I. Personal: Great WritersHawthorne
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (18071882)H
In the long week of rain!
Though all its splendor could not chase away
The omnipresent pain.
And the great elms o’erhead
Dark shadows wove on their aerial looms
Shot through with golden thread.
The historic river flowed:
I was as one who wanders in a trance,
Unconscious of his road.
Their voices I could hear,
And yet the words they uttered seemed to change
Their meaning to my ear.
The one low voice was mute;
Only an unseen presence filled the air,
And baffled my pursuit.
Dimly my thought defines;
I only see—a dream within a dream—
The hill-top hearsed with pines.
Their tender undertone,
The infinite longings of a troubled breast,
The voice so like his own.
The wizard hand lies cold,
Which at its topmost speed let fall the pen
And left the tale half told.
And the lost clew regain?
The unfinished window in Aladdin’s tower
Unfinished must remain!