Devereaux Farm, Near Marblehead
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
We sat within the farm-house old,
Gave to the sea-breeze damp and cold
Not far away we saw the port,
The lighthouse, the dismantled fort,
We sat and talked until the night,
Our faces faded from the sight,
We spake of many a vanished scene,
Of what had been, and might have been,
And all that fills the hearts of friends,
Their lives thenceforth have separate ends,
The first slight swerving of the heart,
And leave it still unsaid in part,
The very tones in which we spake
The leaves of memory seemed to make
Oft died the words upon our lips,
Built of the wreck of stranded ships,
And, as their splendor flashed and failed,
Of ships dismasted, that were hailed
The windows, rattling in their frames,
The gusty blast, the bickering flames,
Until they made themselves a part
The long-lost ventures of the heart,
O flames that glowed! O hearts that yearned!
The drift-wood fire without that burned,
