With Favoring Winds, o'Er Sunlit Seas
The speaker recalls youth as a shared voyage toward the Hesperides, now far behind, and asks whether the travelers have reached the stormy Hebrides. The closing stanza pictures a temporary rest in the harbors of Ultima Thule before the endless quest continues.
By Henry Wadsworth Longfellow · Genre: Lyric Poetry, Allegorical Poetry · 164 words
First lines
To G. W. G.
With favoring winds, o'er sunlit seas, / We sailed for the Hesperides, / The land where golden apples grow; / But that, ah! that was long ago.
How far, since then, the ocean streams / Have swept us from that land of dreams, / That land of fiction and of truth, / The lost Atlantis of our youth!
Whither, oh, whither? Are not these / The tempest-haunted Hebrides, / Where sea gulls scream, and breakers roar, / And wreck and sea-weed line the shore?
Genres
- Lyric Poetry — Four rhymed stanzas express the speaker's retrospective longing and questions through a shared sea voyage.
- Allegorical Poetry — The voyage links the lost dreamland of youth with stormy shores and a temporary harbor in an endless quest.
Tags
sea voyages · youth · memory · mythic islands · rest · quest
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With Favoring Winds, o'Er Sunlit Seas 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: Lyric Poetry, Allegorical Poetry
- Length: 164 words
- Structure: 1 section, 5 paragraphs
- Reading fit: Fairly Easy (7th Grade)
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