Courtship of Miles Standish : and other poems / Henry Wadsworth Longfellow [electronic text]
About this Item
Title
Courtship of Miles Standish : and other poems / Henry Wadsworth Longfellow [electronic text]
Author
Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth, 1807-1882
Publication
Boston: Ticknor and Fields
1859
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"Courtship of Miles Standish : and other poems / Henry Wadsworth Longfellow [electronic text]." In the digital collection American Verse Project. https://name.umdl.umich.edu/BAD8947.0001.001. University of Michigan Library Digital Collections. Accessed April 27, 2024.
Pages
PROMETHEUS, OR THE POET'S FORETHOUGHT.
OF Prometheus, how undauntedOn Olympus' shining bastionsHis audacious foot he planted,Myths are told and songs are chaunted,Full of promptings and suggestions.
Beautiful is the traditionOf that flight through heavenly portals,The old classic superstitionOf the theft and the transmissionOf the fire of the Immortals!
First the deed of noble daring,Born of heavenward aspiration,
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Then the fire with mortals sharing,Then the vulture, — the despairingCry of pain on crags Caucasian.
All is but a symbol paintedOf the Poet, Prophet, Seer;Only those are crowned and saintedWho with grief have been acquainted,Making nations nobler, freer.
In their feverish exultations,In their triumph and their yearning,In their passionate pulsations,In their words among the nations,The Promethean fire is burning.
Shall it, then, be unavailing,All this toil for human culture?Through the cloud-rack, dark and trailing,Must they see above them sailingO'er life's barren crags the vulture ?
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Such a fate as this was Dante's,By defeat and exile maddened;Thus were Milton and Cervantes,Nature's priests and Corybantes,By affliction touched and saddened.
But the glories so transcendentThat around their memories cluster,And, on all their steps attendant,Make their darkened lives resplendentWith such gleams of inward lustre!
All the melodies mysterious,Through the dreary darkness chaunted;Thoughts in attitudes imperious,Voices soft, and deep, and serious,Words that whispered, songs that haunted!
All the soul in rapt suspension,All the quivering, palpitating
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Chords of life in utmost tension,With the fervor of invention,With the rapture of creating!
Ah, Prometheus! heaven-scaling!In such hours of exultationEven the faintest heart, unquailing,Might behold the vulture sailingRound the cloudy crags Caucasian!
Though to all there is not givenStrength for such sublime endeavor,Thus to scale the walls of heaven,And to leaven with fiery leavenAll the hearts of men for ever;
Yet all bards, whose hearts unblightedHonor and believe the presage,Hold aloft their torches lighted,Gleaming through the realms benighted,As they onward bear the message!
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