| Arthur Quiller-Couch, comp. The Oxford Book of Victorian Verse. 1922. | | | | To an Old Danish Song-book | | By Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807–1882) |
| | | WELCOME, my old friend, | |
| Welcome to a foreign fireside, | |
| While the sullen gales of autumn | |
| Shake the windows. | |
| |
| The ungrateful world | 5 |
| Has, it seems, dealt harshly with thee, | |
| Since, beneath the skies of Denmark, | |
| First I met thee. | |
| |
| There are marks of age, | |
| There are thumb-marks on thy margin, | 10 |
| Made by hands that clasp’d thee rudely, | |
| At the alehouse. | |
| |
| Soil’d and dull thou art; | |
| Yellow are thy time-worn pages, | |
| As the russet, rain-molested | 15 |
| Leaves of autumn. | |
| |
| Thou art stain’d with wine | |
| Scatter’d from hilarious goblets, | |
| As the leaves with the libations | |
| Of Olympus. | 20 |
| |
| Yet dost thou recall | |
| Days departed, half-forgotten, | |
| When in dreamy youth I wander’d | |
| By the Baltic,— | |
| |
| When I paused to hear | 25 |
| The old ballad of King Christian | |
| Shouted from suburban taverns | |
| In the twilight. | |
| |
| Thou recallest bards, | |
| Who, in solitary chambers, | 30 |
| And with hearts by passion wasted, | |
| Wrote thy pages. | |
| |
| Thou recallest homes | |
| Where thy songs of love and friendship | |
| Made the gloomy Northern winter | 35 |
| Bright as summer. | |
| |
| Once some ancient Scald, | |
| In his bleak, ancestral Iceland, | |
| Chanted staves of these old ballads | |
| To the Vikings. | 40 |
| |
| Once in Elsinore, | |
| At the court of old King Hamlet, | |
| Yorick and his boon companions | |
| Sang these ditties. | |
| |
| Once Prince Frederick’s Guard | 45 |
| Sang them in their smoky barracks;— | |
| Suddenly the English cannon | |
| Join’d the chorus! | |
| |
| Peasants in the field, | |
| Sailors on the roaring ocean, | 50 |
| Students, tradesmen, pale mechanics, | |
| All have sung them. | |
| |
| Thou hast been their friend; | |
| They, alas! have left thee friendless! | |
| Yet at least by one warm fireside | 55 |
| Art thou welcome. | |
| |
| And, as swallows build | |
| In these wide, old-fashion’d chimneys, | |
| So thy twittering songs shall nestle | |
| In my bosom,— | 60 |
| |
| Quiet, close, and warm, | |
| Sheltered from all molestation, | |
| And recalling by their voices | |
| Youth and travel. | | | | |
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