To the Avon by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Addressing the Avon beside a dead poet's grave, the speaker imagines him as a boy in Stratford, wading among sedges and wishing to follow the river into the wider world. The closing stanza pictures him on another shore, still following a greater river.
By Henry Wadsworth Longfellow · Genre: Elegiac Poetry, Lyric Poetry · 196 words
First lines
Flow on, sweet river! like his verse / Who lies beneath this sculptured hearse / Nor wait beside the churchyard wall / For him who cannot hear thy call.
Thy playmate once; I see him now / A boy with sunshine on his brow, / And hear in Stratford's quiet street / The patter of his little feet.
I see him by thy shallow edge / Wading knee-deep amid the sedge; / And lost in thought, as if thy stream / Were the swift river of a dream.
He wonders whitherward it flows; / And fain would follow where it goes, / To the wide world, that shall erelong / Be filled with his melodious song.
Genres
- Elegiac Poetry — The speaker addresses a river beside a dead poet's grave, recalls his imagined childhood, and closes with an image of another shore.
- Lyric Poetry — Five rhymed quatrains sustain a personal address to the river, moving from the grave to imagined scenes of the poet's boyhood.
Tags
rivers · childhood · remembrance · death · poetic imagination
What this Textopian page supports
To the Avon 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: Elegiac Poetry, Lyric Poetry
- Length: 196 words
- Structure: 1 section, 5 paragraphs
- Reading fit: Easy (6th Grade)
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