Explore "Longfellow" by James Whitcomb Riley on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
The winds have talked with him confidingly; / The trees have whispered to him; and the night / Hath held him gently as a mother might, / And taught him all sad tones of melody: / The mountains have bowed to him; and the sea, / In clamorous waves, and murmurs exquisite, / Hath told him all her sorrow and delight -- / Her legends fair -- her darkest mystery.
His verse blooms like a flower, night and day; / Bees cluster round his rhymes; and twitterings / Of lark and swallow, in an endless May, / Are mingling with the tender songs he sings. -- / Nor shall he cease to sing -- in every lay / Of Nature's voice he sings -- and will alway.