Sonnet: Henry Wadsworth Longfellow Poem by Helen Gray Cone

Thou wast not robbed of wonder when youth fled,
But still the bud had promise to thine eyes,
And beauty was not sundered from surprise,
And reverent, as reverend, was thy head.
Thy life was music, and thou mad'st it ours,
Not thine, crude scorn of gentle household things;
And yet thy spirit had the sea-bird's wings,
Nor rested long among the chestnut-flowers.
Spain's coast of charm, and all the North Sea's cold
Thou knewest, and thou knewest the soul of eld,
And dusty scroll and volume we beheld
To gold transmuted-not to hard-wrought gold,
But that clear shining of the eastern air,
When Helios rising shakes the splendour of his hair.