To H. W. Longfellow - Before His Departure For Europe, May 27, 1868 Poem Rhyme Scheme and Analysis
Rhyme Scheme: AABBB CCDDD EEFFG HHIII DJKKK HHLLL CCMMM| Our Poet who has taught the Western breeze | A |
| To waft his songs before him o'er the seas | A |
| Will find them wheresoe'er his wanderings reach | B |
| Borne on the spreading tide of English speech | B |
| Twin with the rhythmic waves that kiss the farthest beach | B |
| - | |
| Where shall the singing bird a stranger be | C |
| That finds a nest for him in every tree | C |
| How shall he travel who can never go | D |
| Where his own voice the echoes do not know | D |
| Where his own garden flowers no longer learn to grow | D |
| - | |
| Ah gentlest soul how gracious how benign | E |
| Breathes through our troubled life that voice of thine | E |
| Filled with a sweetness born of happier spheres | F |
| That wins and warms that kindles softens cheers | F |
| That calms the wildest woe and stays the bitterest tears | G |
| - | |
| Forgive the simple words that sound like praise | H |
| The mist before me dims my gilded phrase | H |
| Our speech at best is half alive and cold | I |
| And save that tenderer moments make us bold | I |
| Our whitening lips would close their truest truth untold | I |
| - | |
| We who behold our autumn sun below | D |
| The Scorpion's sign against the Archer's bow | J |
| Know well what parting means of friend from friend | K |
| After the snows no freshening dews descend | K |
| And what the frost has marred the sunshine will not mend | K |
| - | |
| So we all count the months the weeks the days | H |
| That keep thee from us in unwonted ways | H |
| Grudging to alien hearths our widowed time | L |
| And one has shaped a breath in artless rhyme | L |
| That sighs We track thee still through each remotest clime | L |
| - | |
| What wishes longings blessings prayers shall be | C |
| The more than golden freight that floats with thee | C |
| And know whatever welcome thou shalt find | M |
| Thou who hast won the hearts of half mankind | M |
| The proudest fondest love thou leavest still behind | M |
Oliver Wendell Holmes
(1)
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