From My Mother’s Poetry Notebook: Longfellow’s Building Of The Ship
From “The Building of the Ship”
“Like unto ships far off at sea,
Outward or homeward bound are we.
Before, behind, and all around,
Floats and swings the horizon’s hound,
Seems at its distant rim to rise
And climb the crystal wall of skies,
And then again to turn and sink,
As if we could slide from its outer brink.
Ah! it is not the sea;
It is not the sea that sinks and shelves,
But ourselves
That rock and rise
With endless and uneasy motion,
Now touching the very skies,
Now sinking into the depths of the ocean.
Ah! if our souls but poise and swing
Like the compass in its brazen ring,
Ever level and ever true
To the toil and task we have to do,
We shall sail securely, and safely reach
The Fortune Isles, on whose shining beach
The sights we see and the sounds we hear,
Will be those of joy and not of fear!”
Outward or homeward bound are we.
Before, behind, and all around,
Floats and swings the horizon’s hound,
Seems at its distant rim to rise
And climb the crystal wall of skies,
And then again to turn and sink,
As if we could slide from its outer brink.
Ah! it is not the sea;
It is not the sea that sinks and shelves,
But ourselves
That rock and rise
With endless and uneasy motion,
Now touching the very skies,
Now sinking into the depths of the ocean.
Ah! if our souls but poise and swing
Like the compass in its brazen ring,
Ever level and ever true
To the toil and task we have to do,
We shall sail securely, and safely reach
The Fortune Isles, on whose shining beach
The sights we see and the sounds we hear,
Will be those of joy and not of fear!”
~Longfellow
I remember Mom loved Longfellow’s poetry. Especially his “The Song of Hiawatha.”
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