The Two Locks of Hair
A wandering youth repeatedly dreams of life with a wife and child, followed by the mother's burial and the child falling asleep. Two locks of hair remain from the vision, brown from the mother and blond from the child; looking at them brings him sorrow and a wish for death.
By Henry Wadsworth Longfellow · Genre: Lyric Poetry, Elegiac Poetry · 268 words
First lines
By Gustav Pfizer
A youth, light-hearted and content, / I wander through the world / Here, Arab-like, is pitched my tent / And straight again is furled.
Yet oft I dream, that once a wife / Close in my heart was locked, / And in the sweet repose of life / A blessed child I rocked.
I wake! Away that dream, -- away! / Too long did it remain! / So long, that both by night and day / It ever comes again.
Genres
- Lyric Poetry — The first-person speaker expresses his recurring dreams and sorrow in rhymed quatrains.
- Elegiac Poetry — The mother's burial within the dream and the surviving locks of hair lead to a closing expression of grief and longing for death.
Tags
locks of hair · recurring dreams · grief · mother and child · wandering · death wish
What this Textopian page supports
The Two Locks of Hair 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: Lyric Poetry, Elegiac Poetry
- Length: 268 words
- Structure: 1 section, 8 paragraphs
- Reading fit: Easy (6th Grade)
Good citation fit
- Work identity for The Two Locks of Hair by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
- Canonical title URL and first readable passage URL
- Genre and topic classification from the Textopian catalog
- Readability and classroom-planning context
- Passage-specific claims should cite the exact /read/ URL for the relevant chapter or paragraph