Explore "Elegiac" by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
Dark is the morning with mist; in the narrow mouth of the harbor / Motionless lies the sea, under its curtain of cloud; / Dreamily glimmer the sails of ships on the distant horizon, / Like to the towers of a town, built on the verge of the sea.
Slowly and stately and still, they sail forth into the ocean; / With them sail my thoughts over the limitless deep, / Farther and farther away, borne on by unsatisfied longings, / Unto Hesperian isles, unto Ausonian shores.
Now they have vanished away, have disappeared in the ocean; / Sunk are the towers of the town into the depths of the sea! / AU have vanished but those that, moored in the neighboring roadstead, / Sailless at anchor ride, looming so large in the mist.
Vanished, too, are the thoughts, the dim, unsatisfied longings; / Sunk are the turrets of cloud into the ocean of dreams; / While in a haven of rest my heart is riding at anchor, / Held by the chains of love, held by the anchors of trust!