To H. W. Longfellow - Before His Departure For Europe, May 27, 1868

Our Poet, who has taught the Western breeze     To waft his songs before him o'er the seas,     Will find them wheresoe'er his wanderings reach     Borne on the spreading tide of English speech     Twin with the rhythmic waves that kiss the farthest beach.     Where shall the singing bird a stranger be     That finds a nest for him in every tree?     How shall he travel who can never go     Where his own voice the echoes do not know,     Where his own garden flowers no longer learn to grow?     Ah! gentlest soul! how gracious, how benign     Breathes through our troubled life that voice of thine,     Filled with a sweetness born of happier spheres,     That wins and warms, that kindles, softens, cheers,     That calms the wildest woe and stays the bitterest tears!     Forgive the simple words that sound like praise;     The mist before me dims my gilded phrase;     Our speech at best is half alive and cold,     And save that tenderer moments make us bold     Our whitening lips would close, their truest truth untold.     We who behold our autumn sun below     The Scorpion's sign, against the Archer's bow,     Know well what parting means of friend from friend;     After the snows no freshening dews descend,     And what the frost has marred, the sunshine will not mend.     So we all count the months, the weeks, the days,     That keep thee from us in unwonted ways,     Grudging to alien hearths our widowed time;     And one has shaped a breath in artless rhyme     That sighs, "We track thee still through each remotest clime."     What wishes, longings, blessings, prayers shall be     The more than golden freight that floats with thee!     And know, whatever welcome thou shalt find, -     Thou who hast won the hearts of half mankind, -     The proudest, fondest love thou leavest still behind!