And the burden of that old song,
It murmurs and whispers still:
'A boy's will is the wind's will,
And the thoughts of youth are long, long thoughts.'

"I remember the black wharves and the slips,
And the sea-tides tossing free;
And Spanish sailors with bearded lips,
And the beauty and mystery of the ships,
And the magic of the sea.
And the voice of that wayward song
Is singing and saying still:
'A boy's will is the wind's will,
And the thoughts of youth are long, long thoughts.'"

Longfellow's earliest volume, "The Voices of the Night," was one of the
few books of American poetry that some of us who are now growing old
ourselves can remember reading, just as we were emerging from childhood.
"The Reaper and the Flowers" and the "Psalm of Life,"--I recall the
delight with which I used to repeat those poems. The latter, so full of
suggestions which a very young person could feel, but only half
understand, was for that very reason the more fascinating. It seemed to
give glimpses, through opening doors, of that wonderful new world of
mankind, where children are always longing to wander freely as men and
women. Looking forward and aspiring are among the first occupations of
an imaginative child; and the school-boy who declaimed the words:

"Lives of great men all remind us
We can make our lives sublime,"

and the school-girl who read them quietly by herself, felt them,
perhaps, no less keenly than the man of thought and experience.

Longfellow has said that--

"Sublimity always is simple
Both in sermon and song, a child can seize on its meaning,"

and the simplicity of his poetry is the reason why children and young
people have always loved it; the reason, also, why it has been enjoyed
by men and women and children all over the world.

One of his poems which has been the delight of children and grown people
alike is the "Village Blacksmith," the first half of which is a
description that many a boy might feel as if he could have written
himself--if he only had the poet's command of words and rhymes, and the
poet's genius! Is not this one of the proofs of a good poem, that it
haunts us until it seems as if it had almost grown out of our own mind?
How life-like the picture is!--

"And children coming home from school
Look in at the open door;
They love to see the flaming forge,