Henry Wadsworth
Longfellow (b. 1807-d. 1882)
The Fire of Drift-Wood
DEVEREUX FARM, NEAR MARBLEHEAD.
1 We sat within
the farm-house old,
2 Whose windows, looking o'er
the bay,
3 Gave to the sea-breeze damp and cold,
4 An easy entrance, night and
day.
5 Not far away we
saw the port,
6 The strange, old-fashioned,
silent town,
7 The lighthouse, the dismantled fort,
8 The wooden houses, quaint
and brown.
9 We sat and talked
until the night,
10 Descending, filled the little room;
11 Our faces faded from the
sight,
12 Our voices only broke the gloom.
13 We spake of many a vanished
scene,
14 Of what we once had thought and said,
15 Of what had been, and might have been,
16 And who was changed, and who was dead;
17 And all that fills the hearts
of friends,
18 When first they feel, with secret pain,
19 Their lives thenceforth have separate ends,
20 And never can be one again;
21 The first slight swerving
of the heart,
22 That words are powerless to express,
23 And leave it still unsaid in part,
24 Or say it in too great excess.
25 The very tones in which we
spake
26 Had something strange, I could but mark;
27 The leaves of memory seemed to make
28 A mournful rustling in the dark.
29 Oft died the words upon our
lips,
30 As suddenly, from out the fire
31 Built of the wreck of stranded ships,
32 The flames would leap and then expire.
33 And, as their splendor flashed
and failed,
34 We thought of wrecks upon the main,
35 Of ships dismasted, that were hailed
36 And sent no answer back again.
37 The windows, rattling in
their frames,
38 The ocean, roaring up the beach,
39 The gusty blast, the bickering flames,
40 All mingled vaguely in our speech;
41 Until they made themselves
a part
42 Of fancies floating through the brain,
43 The long-lost ventures of the heart,
44 That send no answers back again.
45 O flames that glowed! O hearts
that yearned!
46 They were indeed too much akin,
47 The drift-wood fire without that burned,
48 The thoughts that burned and glowed
within.
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