The Complete Poetical Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (A Selection)
The belfry old and brown;
Thrice consumed and thrice rebuilded,
still it watches o'er the town.
As the summer morn was breaking, on
that lofty tower I stood,
And the world threw off the darkness,
like the weeds of widowhood.
Thick with towns and hamlets studded,
and with streams and vapors gray,
Like a shield embossed with silver,
round and vast the landscape lay.
At my feet the city slumbered. From
its chimneys, here and there,
Wreaths of snow-white smoke, ascend
ing, vanished, ghost-like into air.
Not a sound rose from the city at that
early morning hour,
But I heard a heart of iron beating in
the ancient tower.
From their nests beneath the rafters sang
the swallows wild and high;
And the world, beneath me sleeping,
seemed more distant than the sky.
Then most musical and solemn, bringing
back the olden times,
With their strange, unearthly changes
rang the melancholy chimes,
Like the psalms from some old cloister,
when the nuns sing in the choir;
And the great bell tolled among them,
like the chanting of a friar.
Visions of the days departed, shadowy
phantoms filled my brain;
They who live in history only seemed to
walk the earth again;
All the Foresters of Flanders, --- mighty
Baldwin Bras de Fer,
Lyderick du Bucq and Cressy Philip,
Guy de Dampierre,
I beheld the pageants splendid that
adorned those days of old;
Stately dames, like queens attended,
knights who bore the Fleece of Gold
Lombard and Venetian merchants with
deep-laden argosies;
Ministers from twenty nations; more
than royal pomp and ease.
I beheld proud Maximilian, kneeling
humbly on the ground;
I beheld the gentle Mary, hunting with
her hawk and hound;
And her lighted bridal-chamber, where
a duke slept with the queen,
And the armed guard around them, and
the sword unsheathed between.
I beheld the Flemish weavers, with Na-
mur and Juliers bold,
Marching homeward from the bloody
battle of the Spurs of Gold;
Saw the fight at Minnewater, saw the
White Hoods moving west,
Saw great Artevelde victorious scale the
Golden Dragon's nest.
And again the whiskered Spaniard all
the land with terror smote;
And again the wild alarum sounded from
the tocsin's throat;
Till the bell of Ghent responded o'er la-
goon and dike of sand,
"I am Roland! I am Roland! there is
victory in the land!"
Then the sound of drums aroused me
The awakened city's roar
Chased the phantoms I had summoned
back into their graves once more.
Hours had passed away like minutes;
and, before I was aware,
Lo! the shadow of the belfry crossed
the sun-illumined square.
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