Widely considered the greatest and most influential of the English Romantic poets, William Wordsworth (1770–1850) remains today among the most admired and studied of all English writers. He is best remembered for the poems he wrote between 1798 and 1806, the period most fully represented in this selection of 39 of his most highly regarded works. Among them are poems from the revolutionary Lyrical Ballads of 1798, including the well-known "Lines Composed a Few Miles Above Tintern Abby"; the famous "Lucy" series of 1799; the political and social commentaries of 1802; the moving "I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud"; and the great "Ode: Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood" — all reprinted from an authoritative edition. Favorite Poems By HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW, STANLEY APPELBAUM Dover Publications, Inc. Copyright © 1992 Dover Publications, Inc. All rights reserved. ISBN: 978-0-486-27073-9 Contents Title Page, Copyright Page, Note, Hymn to the Night, A Psalm of Life, The Reaper and the Flowers, The Light of Stars, The Wreck of the Hesperus, The Village Blacksmith, The Rainy Day, Excelsior, The Slave's Dream, The Bridge, The Day Is Done, The Arrow and the Song, The Building of the Ship, The Secret of the Sea, The Courtship of Miles Standish, The Ladder of Saint Augustine, My Lost Youth, Santa Filomena, The Children's Hour, Paul Revere's Ride, Elizabeth, Christmas Bells, Giotto's Tower, The Poets, Beware!, Alphabetical List of Titles, Alphabetical List of First Lines, DOVER · THRIFT · EDITIONS - POETRY, CHAPTER 1      Hymn to the Night     [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII]     I heard the trailing garments of the Night     Sweep through her marble halls!     I saw her sable skirts all fringed with light     From the celestial walls!     I felt her presence, by its spell of might,     Stoop o'er me from above;     The calm, majestic presence of the Night,     As of the one I love.     I heard the sounds of sorrow and delight,     The manifold, soft chimes,     That fill the haunted chambers of the Night,     Like some old poet's rhymes.     From the cool cisterns of the midnight air     My spirit drank repose;     The fountain of perpetual peace flows there,—     From those deep cisterns flows.     O holy Night! from thee I learn to bear     What man has borne before!     Thou layest thy finger on the lips of Care,     And they complain no more.     Peace! Peace! Orestes-like I breathe this prayer!     Descend with broad-winged flight,     The welcome, the thrice-prayed for, the most fair,     The best-beloved Night!      A Psalm of Life     WHAT THE HEART OF THE YOUNG     MAN SAID TO THE PSALMIST     Tell me not, in mournful numbers,     Life is but an empty dream!—     For the soul is dead that slumbers,     And things are not what they seem.     Life is real! Life is earnest!     And the grave is not its goal;     Dust thou art, to dust returnest,     Was not spoken of the soul.     Not enjoyment, and not sorrow,     Is our destined end or way;     But to act, that each to-morrow     Find us farther than to-day.     Art is long, and Time is fleeting,     And our hearts, though stout and brave,     Still, like muffled drums, are beating     Funeral marches to the grave.     In the world's broad field of battle,     In the bivouac of Life,     Be not like dumb, driven cattle!     Be a hero in the strife!     Trust no Future, howe'er pleasant!     Let the dead Past bury its dead!     Act,—act in the living Present!     Heart within, and God o'erhead!     Lives of great men all remind us     We can make our lives sublime,     And, departing, leave behind us     Footprints on the sands of time;     Footprints, that perhaps another,     Sailing o'er life's solemn main,     A forlorn and shipwrecked brother,     Seeing, shall take heart again.     Let us, then, be up and doing,     With a heart for any fate;     Still achieving, still pursuing,     Learn to labor and to wait.      The Reaper and the Flowers     There is a Reaper, whose name is Death,     And, with his sickle keen,     He reaps the bearded grain at a breath,     And the flowers that grow between.     "Shall I have naught that is fair?" saith he;     "Have naught but the bearded grain?     Though the breath of these flowers is sweet to me,     I will give them all back again."     He gazed at the flowers with tearful eyes,     He kissed their drooping leaves;     It was for the Lord of Paradise     He bound them in his sheaves.     "My Lord has need of these flowerets gay,"     The Reaper said, and smiled;     "Dear tokens of the earth are they,     Where He was once a child.     "They shall all bloom in fields of light,     Transplanted by my care,     And saints, upon their garments white,     These sacred blossoms wear."     And the mother gave, in t