Poems of places Oceana 1 v - 1876 Author:Henry Wadsworth Longfellow Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: He is won with a word of despair, And is lost with a toy. " Such is the love of womankind, Or the word abused, Under which many childish desires And c... more »onceits are excused. "But love is a durable fire, In the mind ever burning; Never sick, never dead, never cold, From itself never turning." Child's English and Scottish Ballads. Waltham Abbey. WALTHAM HOLY CROSS. Time has reft the shrine Where the last Saxon, canonized, lay, And every trace has vanished, like the light That from the high-arched eastern window fell, With broken sunshine on his marble tomb — So have they passed; and silent are the choirs That to his spirit sang eternal rest; And scattered are his bones who raised those walls Where, from the field of blood slowly conveyed, His mangled corse, with torch and orison, Before the altar and in holy earth Was laid! Yet oft I muse upon the theme; And now, whilst solemn the slow curfew tolls, Years and dim centuries seem to unfold Their shroud, as at the summons; and I think How sad that sound on every English heart Smote, when along these darkening vales, where Lea Beneath the woods of Waltham winds, it hroke First on the silence of the night, far heard Through the deep forest! Phantoms of the past, Ye gather round me ! Voices of the dead, Ye come by fits! And now I hear, far off, Faint Eleesons swell, whilst to the fane The long procession, and the pomp of death, Moves visible; and now one voice is heard From a vast multitude, " Harold, farewell! Farewell, and rest in peace!" That sable car Bears the last Saxon to his grave; the last From Hengist, of the long illustrious line That swayed the English sceptre. Hark! a cry! 'T is from his mother, who with frantic mien Follows the bier: with manly look composed, Gedwin, his eldest-born, and Adel...« less