The Children's Hour...by H.W. Longfellow

  

 Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

THE ATLANTIC SPEAKS OF HIM THUS 

'No American poet ever filled out the part quite like Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. One glance at the Moses-like profile on the jacket of the new Library of America edition of his selected poems and prose confirms as much, a silver-hued photograph taken late in his life that makes it appear as if the domed brow and furling beard were already sculpted in marble...'

'He was certainly a grand poet, and in the public mind the grandest of his day and age. No American poet of any era, it's safe to say, has been both as awesomely prolific and prodigiously popular...; 

now, the poem...

THE CHILDREN'S HOUR

Between the dark and the daylight,

    When the night is beginning to lower,

Comes a pause in the day's occupations

    That is known as the Children's Hour.

I hear in the chamber above me

    The patter of little feet,

The sound of a door that is opened,

    And voices soft and sweet.

From my study I see in the lamplight,

    Descending the broad hall-stair,

Grave Alice, and laughing Allegra,

    And Edith with golden hair.

A whisper, and then a silence:

    Yet I know by their merry eyes

They are plotting and planning together

    To take me by surprise.

A sudden rush from the stairway,

    A sudden raid from the hall!

By three doors left unguarded

    They enter my castle wall!

They climb up into my turret

    O'er the arms and back of my chair;

If I try to escape, they surround me;

    They seem to be everywhere.

They almost devour me with kisses,

    Their arms about me entwine,

Till I think of the Bishop of Bingen

    In his Mouse-Tower on the Rhine!

Do you think, O blue-eyed banditti,

    Because you have scaled the wall,

Such an old moustache as I am

    Is not a match for you all?

I have you fast in my fortress,

    And will not let you depart,

But put you down into the dungeons

    In the round-tower of my heart.

And there will I keep you forever,

    Yes, forever and a day,

Till the walls shall crumble to ruin,

    And moulder in dust away!