Frasi di Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Data di nascita: 27. Febbraio 1807
Data di morte: 24. Marzo 1882
Altri nomi:Longfello Genri Uodsuort,Генри Уодсворт Лонгфелло
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow è stato uno scrittore e poeta statunitense, tra i primi letterati americani ad assurgere alla fama mondiale.
Longfellow fu il più famoso poeta della scena del New England nell''800 e scrisse numerose opere tra cui Evangeline e Il faro.
Fu un acceso promotore dell'abolizione della schiavitù negli anni prima e durante la Guerra Civile Americana insieme ad altri intellettuali che gravitavano nell'orbita di Harvard e soprattutto insieme all'allora Governatore del Massachusetts John Andrew.
Intorno al 1862 insieme ai letterati James Russell Lowell, Oliver W. Holmes e George Washington Greene diede vita al cosiddetto "Circolo Dante", atto a promuovere la conoscenza della Divina Commedia di Dante Alighieri negli Stati Uniti. Insieme ai suoi colleghi del circolo, Longfellow ne portò a termine la prima traduzione statunitense in inglese nel 1867.
Da allora il successo dell'opera di Dante in America fu costante ed in seguito il Circolo diventò la "Dante Society", una delle più famose associazioni di dantisti nel mondo.
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poeta, scrittoreFrasi Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
„Silently one by one, in the infinite meadows of heaven,
Blossomed the lovely stars, the forget-me-nots of the angels.“
— Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Evangeline: A Tale of Acadie
Part I, section 3.
„My soul is full of longing
For the secret of the Sea,
And the heart of the great ocean
Sends a thrilling pulse through me.“
— Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
The Secret of the Sea, reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919).
„If we could read the secret history of our enemies, we should find in each man's life sorrow and suffering enough to disarm all hostility.“
— Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, The Complete Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
„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.“
— Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Context: "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."
Hyperion http://www.gutenberg.org/etext/5436, Bk. III, Ch. IV (1839).
„I like that ancient Saxon phrase, which calls
The burial-ground God's-Acre!“
— Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Context: 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.
God's-Acre, st. 1 (1842).
„The tragic element in poetry is like Saturn in alchemy, — the Malevolent, the Destroyer of Nature ; but without it no true Aurum Potabile, or Elixir of Life, can be made.“
— Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Context: The tragic element in poetry is like Saturn in alchemy, — the Malevolent, the Destroyer of Nature; but without it no true Aurum Potabile, or Elixir of Life, can be made.
„Great is the art of beginning, but greater the art is of ending“
— Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Context: Great is the art of beginning, but greater the art is of ending;
Many a poem is marred by a superfluous verse.
Elegiac Verse, st. 14 (1879).
„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!“
— Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Context: 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.
Chapter 13.
„Round about what is, lies a whole mysterious world of might be, — a psychological romance of possibilities and things that do not happen.“
— Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Context: 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".
