Longfellow
I first met you in the schoolroom,
_When I was but a child,
And read your words and heard your voice
_Sing out so sweet and mild.
But as I grew, I saw your work
_More cast off and despised,
By those critics who now believe
_History should be revised.
So they call you sentimental,
_Like innocence were a crime,
And wash with a wave of insults,
_Your name from the sands of Time.
And they say you are too simple,
_Too straightforward, lacking flair,
As if it were ever easy,
_Choosing Hope over Despair.
As if the Truth should be obscured,
_Guarded by a select few,
And is something that the common
_Man should never hope to view.
Like conviction were a weakness,
_And clarity a sin,
And instead of your bright music,
_They prefer the dark and din
Of formless Vanity, in whose
_Dim shadowed shroud they hide,
And they mock those who tell stories,
_Sitting by the fireside.
Can’t they feel the embering soul,
_At your verses rise and swell?
Can’t they see the light of Heaven,
_Runs far deeper than their Hell?
When you write old-fashioned Virtue,
_They count it as a flaw,
They realize not they fault the man,
_Who saw what Dante saw.
The tower that you built with rhyme,
_The human heart to hallow,
Blames more the reader and not you,
_If they should find it shallow.
Some dismiss you still as childish,
_And some still call you fraud,
Forgetting that only children
_Form the Kingdom of our God.
For Truth and Wisdom are profound,
_E’en more so when they’re plain,
And will brighter grow, yet brighter,
_When they are read again.
Lovers of confusion, who at
_Your life so often jeered,
Cannot see the fiery scars burned,
_Beneath your snowy beard.
But are maddened flocks of sea-birds,
_Always raging like a squall,
Up against the flaming lighthouse,
_Unperturbed and standing tall.
For your words, like church bells, teach us
_As they’re ringing out their song,
How to suffer, and to suffer,
_And to suffer and be strong.
Kevin Parks works as a data analyst in Ogden, Utah.
