The Spirit of Poetry

There is a quiet spirit in these woods,
That dwells where’er the gentle southwind blows;
Where, underneath the white-thorn, in the glade,
The wild flowers bloom, or, kissing the soft air,
The leaves above their sunny palms outspread.
With what a tender and impassioned voice
It fills the nice and delicate ear of thought,
When the fast ushering star of morning comes
O’er-riding the gray hills with golden scarf;
Or when the cowled and dusky-sandaled Eve
In mourning weeds, from out the western gate,
Departs with silent pace! That spirit moves
In the green valley, where the silver brook,
From its full laver, pours the white cascade;
And, babbling low amid the tangled woods,
Slips down through moss-grown stones with endless laughter.
And frequent, on the everlasting hills,
Its feet go forth, when it doth wrap itself
In all the dark embroidery of the storm,
And shouts the stern, strong wind. And here, amid
The silent majesty of these deep woods,
Its presence shall uplift thy thoughts from earth,
As to the sunshine and the pure, bright air
Their tops the green trees lift. Hence gifted bards
Have ever loved the calm and quiet shades.
For them there was an eloquent voice in all
The sylvan pomp of woods, the golden sun,
The flowers, the leaves, the river on its way,
Blue skies, and silver clouds, and gentle winds,
The swelling upland, where the sidelong sun
Aslant the wooded slope, at evening, goes,
Groves, through whose broken roof the sky looks in,
Mountain, and shattered cliff, and sunnyvale,
The distant lake, fountains, and mighty trees,
In many a lazy syllable, repeating
Their old poetic legends to the wind.
And this is the sweet spirit, that doth fill
The world; and, in these wayward days of youth,
My busy fancy oft embodies it,
As a bright image of the light and beauty
That dwell in nature; of the heavenly forms
We worship in our dreams, and the soft hues
That stain the wild bird’s wing and flush the clouds
When the sun sets. Within her tender eye
The heaven of April, with its changing light,
And when it wears the blue of May, is hung,
And on her lip the rich, red rose. Her hair
Is like the summer tresses of the trees,
When twilight makes them brown, and on her cheek
Blushes the richness of an autumn sky,
With ever-shifting beauty. Then her breath,
It is so like the gentle air of Spring,
As, from the morning’s dewy flowers, it comes
Full of their fragrance, that it is a joy
To have it round us, and her silver voice
Is the rich music of a summer bird,
Heard in the till night, with its passionate cadence.

This poem is in the public domain. Published in Poem-a-Day on October 26, 2024, by the Academy of American Poets.

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“The Spirit of Poetry” appears in The Poetical Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (Houghton, Mifflin and Company, 1886) in the section “Early Poems.” When Edgar Allan Poe wrote to Longfellow on May 3, 1841, the fellow poet said, “I cannot refrain from availing myself of this, the only opportunity I may ever have, to assure the author of the ‘Hymn to the Night,’ of the ‘Beleaguered City,’ and of the ‘Skeleton in Armor’ of the fervent admiration with which his genius has inspired me.” In Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (Houghton, Mifflin, and Company, 1902), writer, abolitionist, and politician Thomas Wentworth Higginson went on to say, “Yet a common ground of criticism on Longfellow’s early poems lay in the very simplicity which made them, then and ever since, so near to the popular heart.”