Frasi di Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Origine: Citato in Selezione dal Reader's Digest, giugno 1974.

Table-Talk (1857)
Origine: The Complete Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Hyperion, book ii.
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)

Part I, section 3.
Origine: Evangeline: A Tale of Acadie (1847)

St. 7.
A Psalm of Life (1839)
Origine: Voices of the Night

"The Battle of Lovell's Pond," poem first published in the Portland Gazette (November 17, 1820).
Contesto: p>The warriors that fought for their country, and bled,
Have sunk to their rest; the damp earth is their bed;
No stone tells the place where their ashes repose,
Nor points out the spot from the graves of their foes.They died in their glory, surrounded by fame,
And Victory's loud trump their death did proclaim;
They are dead; but they live in each Patriot's breast,
And their names are engraven on honor's bright crest.</p

Table-Talk (1857)
Contesto: Round about what is, lies a whole mysterious world of might be, — a psychological romance of possibilities and things that do not happen. By going out a few minutes sooner or later, by stopping to speak with a friend at a corner, by meeting this man or that, or by turning down this street instead of the other, we may let slip some great occasion of good, or avoid some impending evil, by which the whole current of our lives would have been changed. There is no possible solution to the dark enigma but the one word, "Providence".

Variante: The best thing one can do when it's raining is to let it rain.

Outre-Mer.

Hyperion http://www.gutenberg.org/etext/5436, Bk. III, Ch. IV (1839).
Variante: Believe me, every heart has its secret sorrows, which the world knows not, and oftentimes we call a man cold, when he is only sad.
Contesto: "Ah! this beautiful world!" said Flemming, with a smile. "Indeed, I know not what to think of it. Sometimes it is all gladness and sunshine, and Heaven itself lies not far off. And then it changes suddenly; and is dark and sorrowful, and clouds shut out the sky. In the lives of the saddest of us, there are bright days like this, when we feel as if we could take the great world in our arms and kiss it. Then come the gloomy hours, when the fire will neither burn on our hearths nor in our hearts; and all without and within is dismal, cold, and dark. Believe me, every heart has its secret sorrows, which the world knows not, and oftentimes we call a man cold, when he is only sad."

The Secret of the Sea, reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919).

Origine: Ballads and Other Poems

Table-Talk (1857)

Origine: Kavanagh: A Tale (1849), Chapter 13.
Contesto: Ah, how wonderful is the advent of spring! — the great annual miracle of the blossoming of Aaron's rod, repeated on myriads and myriads of branches! — the gentle progression and growth of herbs, flowers, trees, — gentle and yet irrepressible, — which no force can stay, no violence restrain, like love, that wins its way and cannot be withstood by any human power, because itself is divine power. If spring came but once in a century, instead of once a year, or burst forth with the sound of an earthquake, and not in silence, what wonder and expectation there would be in all hearts to behold the miraculous change! But now the silent succession suggests nothing but necessity. To most men only the cessation of the miracle would be miraculous and the perpetual exercise of God's power seems less wonderful than its withdrawal would be.

God's-Acre, st. 1 (1842).
Contesto: I like that ancient Saxon phrase, which calls
The burial-ground God's-Acre! It is just;
It consecrates each grave within its walls,
And breathes a benison o'er the sleeping dust.

Here Longfellow is translating or paraphrasing an expression attributed to a canon of Seville, also quoted as "we shall have a church so great and of such a kind that those who see it built will think we were mad".
Table-Talk (1857)
Contesto: "Let us build such a church, that those who come after us shall take us for madmen," said the old canon of Seville, when the great cathedral was planned. Perhaps through every mind passes some such thought, when it first entertains the design of a great and seemingly impossible action, the end of which it dimly foresees. This divine madness enters more or less into all our noblest undertakings.

The Old Clock on the Stairs, st. 9 (1845).
Contesto: Never here, forever there,
Where all parting, pain, and care,
And death, and time shall disappear,—
Forever there, but never here!
The horologe of Eternity
Sayeth this incessantly,—
"Forever — never!
Never — forever!"