sharing my love of books with you

Category: Bookish Thoughts (Page 2 of 33)

Longfellow on Mocking-bird Songs

“Then from a neighboring thicket the mocking-bird, wildest of singers,
Swinging aloft on a willow spray that hung o’er the water,
Shook from his little throat such floods of delirious music,
That the whole air and the woods and the waves seemed silent to listen.
Plaintive at first were the tones, and sad; then soaring to madness
Seemed they to follow or guide the revel of frenzied Bacchantes.
Single notes were then heard, in sorrowful, low lamentation;
Till, having gathered them all, he hung them abroad in derision,
As when, after a storm, a gust of wind through the tree-tops
Shakes down the rattling rain in a crystal shower on the branches.”

Henry Waldsworth Longfellow, Evangeline

Father Felician on Affection

“Thereupon the priest, her friend and father-confessor,

Said, with a smile, “O daughter! thy God thus speaketh within thee!

Talk not of wasted affection, affection never was wasted;

If it enrich not the heart of another, its waters, returning

Back to their springs, like the rain, shall fill them full of refreshment;

That which the fountain sends forth returns again to the fountain,

Patience; accomplish thy labor; accomplish thy work of affection!

Sorrow and silence are strong, and patient endurance is godlike.

Purified, strengthened, perfected, and rendered more worthy of heaven!”

Father Felician to Evangeline, in Evangeline, by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Gleeds

Gleeds – a glowing coal

“Then as the wind seized the gleeds and the burning thatch, and, uplifting,

Whirled them aloft through the air, at once from a hundred house-tops

Started the sheeted smoke with flashes of flame intermingled.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Evangeline

Refluent

Refluent – flowing back, ebbing as the tide

“Half the task was not done when the sun went down, and the twilight

Deepened and darkened around; and in haste the refluent ocean

Fled away from the shore, and left the line of the sand-beach

Covered with waifs of the tide, with kelp and the slippery seaweed.

Henry wadsworth Longfellow, Evangeline

Tocsin’s Alarum

Tocsin’s Alarum – an alarm bellow the ringing of it; a warning signal

“Deep were his tones and solemn; in accents measured and mournful

Spake he, as, after the tocsin’s alarum, distinctly the clock strikes.”

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Jocund

Jocund – merry, cheerful, genial, sportive

“Many a glad good-morrow and jocund laugh from the young folk

Made the bright air brighter…”

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Glebe

Glebe – turf, soil, ground

“Built are the house and the barn. The merry lads of the village

Strongly have built them and well; and, breaking the glebe round about them,

Filled the barn with hay, and the house with food for a twelvemonth.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Evangeline

Seraglio

Seraglio – the place of a Turkish sultan or noble; formerly the palace of the sultan of Turkey at Constantinople

“There stood the broad-wheeled wains and the antique ploughs and the harrows;

There were the folds for the sheep; and there, in his feathered seraglio,

Strutted the lordly turkey, and crowed the cock with the selfsame

Voice that in ages of old had startled the penitent Peter.”

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Evangeline

Lawrence Buell on Longfellow’s Hiawatha

“A fairer reading of Longfellow’s work, however, would be this: Hiawatha was a one-time experiment for him, not to be taken as the quintessence of his muse but as one among other occasional attempts to extend his treatment of American life beyond the regional and cultural boundaries he knew best… Although his experiment failed by any exacting standard, at least it was vigorous enough to establish itself, along with James Fenimore Cooper’s novels, ahead of the thousand of other contemporary literary evocations of Indian life.”

Lawrence Buell, in the introduction to Henry Wadsworth Longfellow: Selected Poems

Mellifluous

Mellifluous – flowing sweetly and smoothly; honeyed; said of words, sounds, etc.

“[The two excepts of Hiawatha in this volume] show the poem to be mellifluous, prettily and sometimes even beautifully imagistic, but shallow; a pleasant literary-anthropological tour de force but nothing more.”

Lawrence Buell, in the introduction to Henry Wadsworth Longfellow: Selected Poems
« Older posts Newer posts »