Explore "The Poets" by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
O ye dead Poets, who are living still / Immortal in your verse, though life be fled, / And ye, O living Poets, who are dead / Though ye are living, if neglect can kill, / Tell me if in the darkest hours of ill, / With drops of anguish falling fast and red / From the sharp crown of thorns upon your head, / Ye were not glad your errand to fulfil? / Yes; for the gift and ministry of Song / Have something in them so divinely sweet, / It can assuage the bitterness of wrong; / Not in the clamor of the crowded street, / Not in the shouts and plaudits of the throng, / But in ourselves, are triumph and defeat.