Henry Wadsworth Longfellow - Sea Quotes

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Bright before it beat the water,
Beat the clear and sunny water,
Beat the shining Big-Sea-Water.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
At daybreak, on the bleak sea-beach,
A fisherman stood aghast,
To see the form of a maiden fair,
Lashed close to a drifting mast.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Ah, yes, the sea is still and deep, All things within its bosom sleep! A single step, and all is o'er, A plunge, a bubble, and no more.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Two ways the rivers Leap down to different seas, and as they roll Grow deep and still, and their majestic presence Becomes a benefaction to the towns They visit, wandering silently among them, Like patriarchs old among their shining tents.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Look at this vigorous plant that lifts its head from the meadow, See how its leaves are turned to the north, as true as the magnet; This is the compass-flower, that the finger of God has planted Here in the houseless wild, to direct the traveller's journey. Over the sea-like, pathless, limitless waste of the desert, Such in the soul of man is faith.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Would'st thou, — so the helmsman answered, Learn the secret of the sea? Only those who brave its dangers Comprehend its mystery!

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
What child has a heart to sing in this capricious clime of ours, when spring comes sailing in from the sea, with wet and heavy cloud-sails and the misty pennon of the east-wind nailed to the mast.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
The twilight is sad and cloudy, The wind blows wild and free, And like the wings of sea-birds Flash the white caps of the sea.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
I saw the long line of the vacant shore, The sea-weed and the shells upon the sand, And the brown rocks left bare on every hand, As if the ebbing tide would flow no more.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
As I gaze upon the sea! All the old romantic legends, all my dreams, come back to me.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Perhaps there lives some dreamy boy, untaught
In schools, some graduate of the field or street,
Who shall become a master of art,
An admiral sailing the high seas of thought
Fearless and first, and steering with his fleet
For lands not yet laid down in any chart.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Like black hulks the shadows of the great trees ride at anchor on the billowy sea of grass.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Morality without religion is only a kind of dead reckoning - an endeavor to find our place on a cloudy sea by measuring the distance we have run, but without any observation of the heavenly bodies.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
By the shore of Gitche Gumee,
By the shining Big-Sea-Water,
Stood the wigwam of Nokomis,
Daughter of the Moon, Nokomis.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
By the shores of Gitche Gumee,
By the shining Big-Sea-Water,
Stood the wigwam of Nokomis,
Daughter of the Moon, Nokomis.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Moons waxed and waned, the lilacs bloomed and died,
In the broad river ebbed and flowed the tide,
Ships went to sea, and ships came home from sea,
And the slow years sailed by and ceased to be.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
I remember the black wharves and the slips,
And the sea-tides tossing free;
And the Spanish sailors with bearded lips,
And the beauty and majesty of the ships,
And the magic of the sea.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
One, if by land, and two, if by sea;
And I on the opposite shore will be,
Ready to ride and spread the alarm
Through every Middlesex village and farm
For the country folk to be up and to arm.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
It was the schooner Hesperus,
That sailed the wintry sea;
And the skipper had taken his little daughter,
To bear him company.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
It is curious to note the old sea-margins of human thought! Each subsiding century reveals some new mystery; we build where monsters used to hide themselves.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Sail forth into the sea of life,
O gentle, loving, trusting wife,
And safe from all adversity
Upon the bosom of that sea
Thy comings and thy goings be!
For gentleness and love and trust
Prevail o'er angry wave and gust;
And in the wreck of noble lives
Something immortal still survives.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
O summer day beside the joyous sea!
O summer day so wonderful and white,
So full of gladness and so full of pain!
Forever and forever shalt thou be
To some the gravestone of a dead delight,
To some the landmark of a new domain.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
One if by land and two if by sea;
And I on the opposite shore will be,
Ready to ride and sound the alarm.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
The sea hath its pearls
The heaven hath its stars
But my heart, my heart
Has its love.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
By the shore of Gitche Gumee,
By the shining Big-Sea-Water,
At the doorway of his wigwam,
In the pleasant Summer morning,
Hiawatha stood and waited.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
A great sorrow, like a mariner's quadrant, brings the sun at noon down to the horizon, and we learn where we are on the sea of life.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
The course of my long life hath reached at last in fragile bark over a tempestuous sea the common harbor, where must rendered be account for all the actions of the past.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
My soul is full of longing
For the secret of the Sea,
And the heart of the great ocean
Sends a thrilling pulse through me.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow