Henry Wadsworth Longfellow Summer Quotations

Very hot and still the air was, Very smooth the gliding river, Motionless the sleeping shadows.

O summer day beside the joyous sea! O summer day so wonderful and white, So full of gladness and so full of pain! Forever and forever shalt thou be To some the gravestone of a dead delight, To some the landmark of a new domain.

There is a beautiful spirit breathing now Its mellowed richness on the clustered trees, And, from a beaker full of richest dyes, Pouring new glory on the autumn woods, And dipping in warm light the pillared clouds. Morn on the mountain, like a summer bird, Lifts up her purple wing, and in the vales The gentle wind, a sweet and passionate wooer, Kisses the blushing leaf, and stirs up life Within the solemn woods of ash deep-crimsoned, And silver beech, and maple yellow-leaved, Where Autumn, like a faint old man, sits down By the wayside a-weary.

Gone are the living, but the dead remain, And not neglected; for a hand unseen, Scattering its bounty like a summer rain, Still keeps their graves and their remembrance green.

O lovely eyes of azure, Clear as the waters of a brook that run Limpid and laughing in the summer sun!

By the shore of Gitche Gumee, By the shining Big-Sea-Water, At the doorway of his wigwam, In the pleasant Summer morning, Hiawatha stood and waited.

Read from some humbler poet, Whose songs gushed from his heart, As showers from the clouds of summer, Or tears from the eyelids start.

O beautiful, awful summer day, what hast thou given, what taken away?

The air of summer was sweeter than wine.

Where, twisted round the barren oak, The summer vine in beauty clung, And summer winds the stillness broke, The crystal icicle is hung.

Gone are the birds that were our summer guests.

Then followed that beautiful season... Summer.... Filled was the air with a dreamy and magical light; and the landscape Lay as if new created in all the freshness of childhood.

Oh, how beautiful is the summer night, which is not night, but a sunless, yet unclouded, day, descending upon earth with dews and shadows and refreshing coolness! How beautiful the long mild twilight, which, like a silver clasp, unites today with yesterday!

What is time? The shadow on the dial, the striking of the clock, the running of the sand, day and night, summer and winter, months, years, centuries-these are but arbitrary and outward signs, the measure of Time, not Time itself. Time is the Life of the Soul.