Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807–1882). Complete Poetical Works. 1893.
Earlier Poems
An April Day
“These poems were written for the most part during my college life, and all of them before the age of nineteen. Some have found their way into schools, and seem to be successful. Others lead a vagabond and precarious existence in the corners of newspapers; or have changed their names and run away to seek their fortunes beyond the sea. I say, with the Bishop of Avranches on a similar occasion: ‘I cannot be displeased to see these children of mine, which I have neglected, and almost exposed, brought from their wanderings in lanes and alleys, and safely lodged, in order to go forth into the world together in a more decorous garb.’” This note was prefixed by Mr. Longfellow to the following group of poems when published in Voices of the Night. “The first five” of the following, Mr. Longfellow says elsewhere in a manuscript note, “were written during my last year in college, in No. 27 Maine Hall, whose windows looked out upon the pine groves to which allusion is made in L’Envoi.” In the appendix may be found a fuller collection of poems of this class.
WHEN the warm sun, that brings
Seed-time and harvest, has returned again,
’T is sweet to visit the still wood, where springs
