Possibilities by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
The speaker asks where the poets of bold, adventurous song are. He imagines that a boy untaught in schools, learning instead from the field or street, may become a master who leads poetry into uncharted regions of thought.
By Henry Wadsworth Longfellow · Genre: Sonnet, Metapoetry · 167 words
First lines
Where are the Poets, unto whom belong / The Olympian heights; whose singing shafts were sent / Straight to the mark, and not from bows half bent, / But with the utmost tension of the thong? / Where are the stately argosies of song, / Whose rushing keels made music as they went / Sailing in search of some new continent, / With all sail set, and steady winds and strong? / Perhaps there lives some dreamy boy, untaught / In schools, some graduate of the field or street, / Who shall become a master of the art, / An admiral sailing the high seas of thought, / Fearless and first and steering with his fleet / For lands not yet laid down in any chart.
Genres
- Sonnet — Fourteen rhymed lines turn from questions about powerful poets to the possibility of a future master.
- Metapoetry — The speaker considers poetic achievement through comparisons with fully drawn bows and ships seeking unknown lands.
Tags
poetic ambition · informal education · artistic discovery · sonnet
What this Textopian page supports
Possibilities is listed on Textopian as a poem by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, dated Date unknown.
This source record anchors work identity, reading entry points, and catalog context for checking claims about the work.
- Work type: Poem
- Author: Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
- Date: Date unknown
- Language: English
- Genres: Sonnet, Metapoetry
- Length: 167 words
- Structure: 1 section, 1 paragraphs
- Reading fit: Standard (8th-9th Grade)
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