Holidays... Literary Pearls

Holidays

by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

The holiest of all holidays are those

    Kept by ourselves in silence and apart;

    The secret anniversaries of the heart,

    When the full river of feeling overflows;—

The happy days unclouded to their close;

    The sudden joys that out of darkness start

    As flames from ashes; swift desires that dart

    Like swallows singing down each wind that blows!

White as the gleam of a receding sail,

    White as a cloud that floats and fades in air,

    White as the whitest lily on a stream,

These tender memories are;— a Fairy Tale

    Of some enchanted land we know not where,

    But lovely as a landscape in a dream.