Palingenesis by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Lying on a headland, the speaker briefly sees dreamlike figures of people known in earlier days. An old belief about recreating roses from ashes prompts a plea for restored youth, but the personified sea declares that youth is dead. The speaker resolves to remember lost affections without turning back to weep, and to face the unknown remainder of life without conjecture.
By Henry Wadsworth Longfellow · Genre: Meditative Poetry, Elegiac Poetry · 679 words
First lines
I lay upon the headland-height, and listened / To the incessant sobbing of the sea / In caverns under me, / And watched the waves, that tossed and fled and glistened, / Until the rolling meadows of amethyst / Melted away in mist.
Then suddenly, as one from sleep, I started; / For round about me all the sunny capes / Seemed peopled with the shapes / Of those whom I had known in days departed, / Apparelled in the loveliness which gleams / On faces seen in dreams.
Genres
- Meditative Poetry — The speaker moves from watching the sea to questioning whether youth can be restored, then accepts uncertainty about the life still ahead.
- Elegiac Poetry — The lament for vanished youth develops through images of ashes, burial shrouds, and remembered affections.
Tags
lost youth · memory · aging · alchemy · seashore · uncertain future
What this Textopian page supports
Palingenesis 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: Meditative Poetry, Elegiac Poetry
- Length: 679 words
- Structure: 1 section, 11 paragraphs
- Reading fit: Fairly Difficult (10th-12th Grade)
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- Work identity for Palingenesis by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
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