From My Arm-Chair

by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

    TO THE CHILDREN OF CAMBRIDGE

    Who presented to me on my Seventy-second Birth-day, February 27, 1879, this Chair, made from the Wood of the Village Blacksmith's Chestnut Tree.

    Am I a king, that I should call my own
         This splendid ebon throne?
    Or by what reason, or what right divine,
         Can I proclaim it mine?

    Only, perhaps, by right divine of song
         It may to me belong;
    Only because the spreading chestnut tree
         Of old was sung by me.

    Well I remember it in all its prime,
         When in the summer-time
    The affluent foliage of its branches made
         A cavern of cool shade.

    There, by the blacksmith's forge, beside the street,
         Its blossoms white and sweet
    Enticed the bees, until it seemed alive,
         And murmured like a hive.

    And when the winds of autumn, with a shout,
         Tossed its great arms about,
    The shining chestnuts, bursting from the sheath,
         Dropped to the ground beneath.

    And now some fragments of its branches bare,
         Shaped as a stately chair,
    Have by my hearthstone found a home at last,
         And whisper of the past.

    The Danish king could not in all his pride
         Repel the ocean tide,
    But, seated in this chair, I can in rhyme
         Roll back the tide of Time.

    I see again, as one in vision sees,
         The blossoms and the bees,
    And hear the children's voices shout and call,
         And the brown chestnuts fall.

    I see the smithy with its fires aglow,
         I hear the bellows blow,
    And the shrill hammers on the anvil beat
         The iron white with heat!

    And thus, dear children, have ye made for me
         This day a jubilee,
    And to my more than three-score years and ten
         Brought back my youth again.

    The heart hath its own memory, like the mind,
         And in it are enshrined
    The precious keepsakes, into which is wrought
         The giver's loving thought.

    Only your love and your remembrance could
         Give life to this dead wood,
    And make these branches, leafless now so long,
         Blossom again in song.