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The Goblet of Life

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Afternoon in February An April Day The Arrow and the Song The Arsenal at Springfield Autumn Autumn Within The Beleaguered City The Belfry of Bruges Birds Of Passage Blind Bartimeus The Bridge Burial of the Minnisink Carillon Changed Children The Children's Hour The Courtship of Miles Standish Curfew Dante Day is Done Drinking Song Endymion Evangeline: A Tale of Acadie The Evening Star Excelsior Fata Morgana Flowers Footsteps of Angels A Gleam of Sunshine Goblet of Life God's Acre The Good Part, That Shall Not be Taken Away Hymn of the Moravian Nuns of Bethlehem at the Consecration of Pulaski's Banner Hymn to the Night It Is Not Always May L'Envoi The Ladder of St. Augustine The Light of Stars Loss And Gain Maidenhood Mezzo Cammin Midnight Mass for the Dying Year My Lost Youth Nature The Norman Baron Nuremburg The Occultation of Orion The Old Clock on the Stairs Paul Revere's Ride A Psalm of Life The Quadroon Girl Rain in Summer The Rainy Day The Reaper and the Flowers The Republic The Skeleton in Armor The Slave In the Dismal Swamp The Slave Singing at Midnight The Slave's Dream Snow-Flakes The Song of Hiawatha The Sound Of The Sea Spirit of Poetry St. John's, Cambridge Sunrise on the Hills The Tide Rises, the Tide Falls To a Child To an Old Danish Song-Book To the Driving Cloud To the River Charles To William E. Channing Village Blacksmith Voices Of the Night Walter Von Der Vogel Weid The Warning The Witnesses Woods in Winter Wreck of the Hesperus

 Filled is Life's goblet to the brim;
And though my eyes with tears are dim,
I see its sparkling bubbles swim,
And chant a melancholy hymn
   With solemn voice and slow.

No purple flowers,--no garlands green,
Conceal the goblet's shade or sheen,
Nor maddening draughts of Hippocrene,
Like gleams of sunshine, flash between
   Thick leaves of mistletoe.

This goblet, wrought with curious art,
Is filled with waters, that upstart,
When the deep fountains of the heart,
By strong convulsions rent apart,
   Are running all to waste.

And as it mantling passes round,
With fennel is it wreathed and crowned,
Whose seed and foliage sun-imbrowned
Are in its waters steeped and drowned,
   And give a bitter taste.

Above the lowly plants it towers,
The fennel, with its yellow flowers,
And in an earlier age than ours
Was gifted with the wondrous powers,
   Lost vision to restore.

It gave new strength, and fearless mood;
And gladiators, fierce and rude,
Mingled it in their daily food;
And he who battled and subdued,
   A wreath of fennel wore.

Then in Life's goblet freely press,
The leaves that give it bitterness,
Nor prize the colored waters less,
For in thy darkness and distress
   New light and strength they give!

And he who has not learned to know
How false its sparkling buhbles show,
How bitter are the drops of woe,
With which its brim may overflow,
   He has not learned to live.

The prayer of Ajax was for light;
Through all that dark and desperate fight
The blackness of that noonday night
He asked but the return of sight,
   To see his foeman's face.

Let our unceasing, earnest prayer
Be, too, for light,--for strength to bear
Our portion of the weight of care,
That crushes into dumb despair
   One half the human race.

O suffering, sad humanity!
O ye afflicted one; who lie
Steeped to the lips in misery,
Longing, and yet afraid to die,
   Patient, though sorely tried !

I pledge you in this cup of grief,
Where floats the fennel's bitter leaf !
The Battle of our Life is briet
The alarm,--the struggle,--the relief,
   Then sleep we side by side.

The Goblet of Life

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

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