Keats

By Henry Wadsworth Longfellow 1807–1882 Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

The young Endymion sleeps Endymion's sleep;

The shepherd-boy whose tale was left half told!

The solemn grove uplifts its shield of gold

To the red rising moon, and loud and deep

The nightingale is singing from the steep;

It is midsummer, but the air is cold;

Can it be death? Alas, beside the fold

A shepherd's pipe lies shattered near his sheep.

Lo! in the moonlight gleams a marble white,

On which I read: "Here lieth one whose name

Was writ in water." And was this the meed

Of his sweet singing? Rather let me write:

"The smoking flax before it burst to flame

Was quenched by death, and broken the bruised reed."

Biography

By far the most widely known and best-loved American poet of his time, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow achieved a level of national and international prominence possibly unequaled in the literary history of the United States. Poems such as "Paul Revere's Ride," Evangeline, A Tale of Acadie (1847), and "A Psalm of Life" became mainstays of national culture, long remembered by generations of readers who studied them in school. . . .

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