The Two Rivers by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Midnight divides time into the imagined rivers of yesterday and tomorrow. The speaker turns toward the future, acknowledges the past's regrets and inspirations, and describes the competing urges to cling to familiar things and reach toward the unknown.
By Henry Wadsworth Longfellow · Genre: Sonnet, Reflective Poetry · 675 words
First lines
I
Slowly the hour-hand of the clock moves round; / So slowly that no human eye hath power / To see it move! Slowly in shine or shower / The painted ship above it, homeward bound, / Sails, but seems motionless, as if aground; / Yet both arrive at last; and in his tower / The slumberous watchman wakes and strikes the hour, / A mellow, measured, melancholy sound. / Midnight! the outpost of advancing day! / The frontier town and citadel of night! / The watershed of Time, from which the streams / Of Yesterday and To-morrow take their way, / One to the land of promise and of light, / One to the land of darkness and of dreams!
Genres
- Sonnet — Four numbered fourteen-line poems develop the comparison of yesterday and tomorrow to rivers through patterned rhyme.
- Reflective Poetry — The speaker considers his debts to past recollections and inspirations alongside his confidence in, and uncertainty about, tomorrow.
Tags
time · midnight · memory · regret · future · uncertainty · sonnets
What this Textopian page supports
The Two Rivers 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: 675 words
- Structure: 1 section, 8 paragraphs
- Reading fit: Fairly Difficult (10th-12th Grade)
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