{ "id": "henry-van-dyke-jr/longfellow", "title": "Longfellow", "ordinal": null, "subtitle": null, "poet": "Henry van Dyke Jr.", "poet_slug": "henry-van-dyke-jr", "language": "en", "book": "The Poems of Henry Van Dyke: Now First Collected and Revised, with Many Hitherto Unpublished", "book_slug": "poems-now-first-collected", "book_kind": "volume", "sequence": null, "container": null, "epigraph": null, "first_published": { "year": 1911, "venue": "The Poems of Henry Van Dyke: Now First Collected and Revised, with Many Hitherto Unpublished (1911)", "note": "Taken from the 1911 first collected edition. That is the printing this text comes from and the first to give the poem a title, not necessarily the poem's first appearance: the volume's own title page describes it as now first collected and revised, and eleven of these twelve poems had already been printed untitled in Out-of-Doors in the Holy Land (1908).", "uncertain": true, "sources": [ "https://archive.org/details/poemsnowfirstcol00vanduoft" ] }, "source": { "kind": "standard-ebooks", "repo": "standardebooks/henry-van-dyke-jr_poetry", "file": "poetry.xhtml", "upstream": [ "https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/16229", "https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/16134", "https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/10679", "https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/3525", "https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/9372", "https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/29314", "https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/43094", "https://archive.org/details/poemsofhenryvand00vandrich", "https://archive.org/details/buildersotherpoe00vandrich", "https://archive.org/details/toilingoffelixan00vandiala", "https://archive.org/details/musicotherpoems0000henr_c7v6", "https://archive.org/details/poemsnowfirstcol00vanduoft", "https://archive.org/details/songsoutofdoors0000vand", "https://archive.org/details/thyseaisgreatour00vandiala", "https://archive.org/details/chosenpoems0000vand" ], "rights": "public domain (SE dedication; underlying text pre-1931)" }, "verification": { "level": "structural-only", "last_checked": "2026-08-20" }, "stats": { "n_lines": 36, "n_stanzas": 12, "n_parts": 0, "longest_line_chars": 97, "max_indent": 0 }, "site_ready": true, "parts": [], "stanzas": [ [ { "text": "In a great land, a new land, a land full of labour and riches and confusion,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "Where there were many running to and fro, and shouting, and striving together,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "In the midst of the hurry and the troubled noise, I heard the voice of one singing.", "indent": 0 } ], [ { "text": "“What are you doing there, O man, singing quietly amid all this tumult?", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "This is the time for new inventions, mighty shoutings, and blowings of the trumpet.”", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "But he answered, “I am only shepherding my sheep with music.”", "indent": 0 } ], [ { "text": "So he went along his chosen way, keeping his little flock around him;", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "And he paused to listen, now and then, beside the antique fountains,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "Where the faces of forgotten gods were refreshed with musically falling waters;", "indent": 0 } ], [ { "text": "Or he sat for a while at the blacksmith’s door, and heard the cling-clang of the anvils;", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "Or he rested beneath old steeples full of bells, that showered their chimes upon him;", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "Or he walked along the border of the sea, drinking in the long roar of the billows;", "indent": 0 } ], [ { "text": "Or he sunned himself in the pine-scented shipyard, amid the tattoo of the mallets;", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "Or he leaned on the rail of the bridge, letting his thoughts flow with the whispering river;", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "He hearkened also to ancient tales, and made them young again with his singing.", "indent": 0 } ], [ { "text": "Then a flaming arrow of death fell on his flock, and pierced the heart of his dearest!", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "Silent the music now, as the shepherd entered the mystical temple of sorrow:", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "Long he tarried in darkness there: but when he came out he was singing.", "indent": 0 } ], [ { "text": "And I saw the faces of men and women and children silently turning toward him;", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "The youth setting out on the journey of life, and the old man waiting beside the last mile-stone;", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "The toiler sweating beneath his load; and the happy mother rocking her cradle;", "indent": 0 } ], [ { "text": "The lonely sailor on far-off seas; and the gray-minded scholar in his book-room;", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "The mill-hand bound to a clacking machine; and the hunter in the forest;", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "And the solitary soul hiding friendless in the wilderness of the city;", "indent": 0 } ], [ { "text": "Many human faces, full of care and longing, were drawn irresistibly toward him,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "By the charm of something known to every heart, yet very strange and lovely,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "And at the sound of his singing wonderfully all their faces were lightened.", "indent": 0 } ], [ { "text": "“Why do you listen, O you people, to this old and world-worn music?", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "This is not for you, in the splendour of a new age, in the democratic triumph!", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "Listen to the clashing cymbals, the big drums, the brazen trumpets of your poets.”", "indent": 0 } ], [ { "text": "But the people made no answer, following in their hearts the simpler music:", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "For it seemed to them, noise-weary, nothing could be better worth the hearing", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "Than the melodies which brought sweet order into life’s confusion.", "indent": 0 } ], [ { "text": "So the shepherd sang his way along, until he came unto a mountain:", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "And I know not surely whether the mountain was called Parnassus,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "But he climbed it out of sight, and still I heard the voice of one singing.", "indent": 0 } ] ] }