Holidays by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
The speaker calls the anniversaries kept silently in the heart the holiest holidays: happy days, sudden joys, and swift desires. Their tender memories resemble a receding sail, a fading cloud, a white lily, and an enchanted landscape in a dream.
By Henry Wadsworth Longfellow · Genre: Sonnet, Reflective Poetry · 160 words
First lines
The holiest of all holidays are those / Kept by ourselves in silence and apart; / The secret anniversaries of the heart, / When the full river of feeling overflows; -- / The happy days unclouded to their close; / The sudden joys that out of darkness start / As flames from ashes; swift desires that dart / Like swallows singing down each wind that blows! / White as the gleam of a receding sail, / White as a cloud that floats and fades in air, / White as the whitest lily on a stream, / These tender memories are; -- a Fairy Tale / Of some enchanted land we know not where, / But lovely as a landscape in a dream.
Genres
- Sonnet — Fourteen lines follow an ABBAABBA CDECDE rhyme scheme, turning from private anniversaries to comparisons for their memories.
- Reflective Poetry — The speaker considers inward celebrations of happiness, joy, and desire, then reflects on the tenderness of their memories.
Tags
private anniversaries · memory · happiness · sudden joy · desire · sonnet
What this Textopian page supports
Holidays is listed on Textopian as a poem by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, dated Date unknown.
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- Work type: Poem
- Author: Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
- Date: Date unknown
- Language: English
- Genres: Sonnet, Reflective Poetry
- Length: 160 words
- Structure: 1 section, 1 paragraphs
- Reading fit: Difficult (College Level)
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