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Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807-1882)

Milton


              1I pace the sounding sea-beach and behold
              2    How the voluminous billows roll and run,
              3    Upheaving and subsiding, while the sun
              4    Shines through their sheeted emerald far unrolled,
              5And the ninth wave, slow gathering fold by fold
              6    All its loose-flowing garments into one,
              7    Plunges upon the shore, and floods the dun
              8    Pale reach of sands, and changes them to gold.
              9So in majestic cadence rise and fall
            10    The mighty undulations of thy song,
            11    O sightless bard, England's Mæonides!
            12And ever and anon, high over all
            13    Uplifted, a ninth wave superb and strong,
            14    Floods all the soul with its melodious seas.

Notes

11] Mæonides: the blind Greek epic poet Homer, thought to come from Mæonia, a country in Asia Minor.

Online text copyright © 2009, Ian Lancashire (the Department of English) and the University of Toronto.
Published by the Web Development Group, Information Technology Services, University of Toronto Libraries.

Original text: The Poetical Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, with Bibliographical and Critical Notes, Riverside Edition (Boston and New York: Houghton, Mifflin, 1890), III, 201. PS 2250 E90 Robarts Library.
First publication date: 1875
Publication date note: In The Masque of Pandora
RPO poem editor: Ian Lancashire
RP edition: RPO 1998.
Recent editing: 4:2002/4/4

Composition date: 1873
Form: Italian Sonnet
Rhyme: abbaabbacdecde

Other poems by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

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