When I was a youngster, the only poets I knew were Poe (force-fed by schoolbooks) and Longfellow. My mother would launch into 'the forest primevil' (the only line she knew) every time she saw a redwood. And there was always that old saw, "You're a poet and everyone knows it; your feet show it—You wear LONGFELLOWS!"
It's only in the last couple of years that I've come to appreciate Longfellow for the wonderful poet he was, not only for his narrative ability (and subsequent HUGE income), but for the way he could buckle down and play with sounds. Below is "The Sound of the Sea". (Well, okay, of course I'm a sucker for anything that has to do with the sea, selkie that I am...)
THE SOUND OF THE SEA
The sea awoke at midnight from its sleep,
And round the pebbly beaches far and wide
I heard the first wave of the rising tide
Rush onward with uninterrupted sweep;
A voice out of the silence of the deep,
A sound mysteriously multiplied
As of a cataract from the mountain's side,
Or roar of winds upon a wooded steep.
So comes to us at times, from the unknown
And inaccessible solitudes of being,
The rushing of the sea-tides of the soul;
And inspirations, that we deem our own,
Are some divine foreshadowing and foreseeing
Of things beyond our reason or control.
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Is that cool, or what???
Have a good weekend, mateys. I'm still digging out from the typhoon of Snake 6.
Medusa