Six Songs on Poems by Henry W. Longfellow

I heard the trailing garments of the Night
  Sweep through her marble halls!
I saw her sable skirts all fringed with light
  From the celestial walls!

I felt her presence, by its spell of might,
  Stoop o'er me from above;
The calm, majestic presence of the Night,
  As of the one I love.

I heard the sounds of sorrow and delight,
  The manifold, soft chimes,
That fill the haunted chambers of the Night
  Like some old poet's rhymes.

From the cool cisterns of the midnight air
  My spirit drank repose;
The fountain of perpetual peace flows there, --
  From those deep cisterns flows.

O holy Night! from thee I learn to bear
  What man has borne before!
Thou layest thy finger on the lips of Care,
  And they complain no more.

Peace!  Peace!  Orestes-like I breathe this prayer!
  Descend with broad-winged flight,
The welcome, the thrice-prayed for, the most fair,
  The best-beloved Night!

Half of my life is gone, and I have let
   The years slip from me and have not fulfilled
   The aspiration of my youth, to build
   Some tower of song with lofty parapet.
Not indolence, nor pleasure, nor the fret
   Of restless passions that would not be stilled,
   But sorrow, and a care that almost killed,
   Kept me from what I may accomplish yet;
Though, half-way up the hill, I see the Past
   Lying beneath me with its sounds and sights,—
   A city in the twilight dim and vast,
With smoking roofs, soft bells, and gleaming lights,—
   And hear above me on the autumnal blast
   The cataract of Death far thundering from the heights.

Out of the bosom of the Air,
  Out of the cloud-folds of her garments shaken,
Over the woodlands brown and bare,
  Over the harvest-fields forsaken,
    Silent, and soft, and slow
    Descends the snow. 
Even as our cloudy fancies take
  Suddenly shape in some divine expression,
Even as the troubled heart doth make
  In the white countenance confession,
    The troubled sky reveals
    The grief it feels. 
This is the poem of the air,
  Slowly in silent syllables recorded;
This is the secret of despair,
  Long in its cloudy bosom hoarded,
    Now whispered and revealed
    To wood and field. 

Each heart has its haunted chamber,
Where the silent moonlight falls!
On the floor are mysterious footsteps,
There are whispers along the walls!

And mine at times is haunted
By phantoms of the Past
As motionless as shadows
By the silent moonlight cast.

A form sits by the window,
That is not seen by day,
For as soon as the dawn approaches
It vanishes away.

It sits there in the moonlight
Itself as pale and still,
And points with its airy finger
Across the window-sill.

Without before the window,
There stands a gloomy pine,
Whose boughs wave upward and downward
As wave these thoughts of mine.

And underneath its branches
Is the grave of a little child,
Who died upon life’s threshold,
And never wept nor smiled.

What are ye, O pallid phantoms!
That haunt my troubled brain?
That vanish when day approaches,
And at night return again?

What are ye, O pallid phantoms!
But the statues without breath,
That stand on the bridge overarching
The silent river of death?

Sweet as the tender fragrance that survives,
When martyred flowers breathe out their little lives,
Sweet as a song that once consoled our pain,
But never will be sung to us again,
Is thy remembrance.  Now the hour of rest
Hath come to thee.  Sleep, darling; it is best.

I shot an Arrow into the air
It fell to earth I knew not where,
For so swiftly it flew, the sight
Could not follow it in its flight.

I breath'd a Song into the air
It fell to earth, I knew not where.
For who has sight so keen and strong
That it can follow the flight of a song?

Long, long afterward in an oak
I found the Arrow still unbroke;
And the Song from begining to end
I found again in the heart of a friend.