The Arrow and the Song

I shot an arrow into the air,
It fell to earth, I knew not where;
For, so swiftly it flew, the sight
Could not follow it in its flight.

I breathed a song into the air,
It fell to earth, I knew not where;
For who has sight so keen and strong
That it can follow the flight of song?

Long, long afterward, in an oak
I found the arrow, still unbroke;
And the song, from beginning to end,
I found again in the heart of a friend.

More poems by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Paul Revere's Ride

Listen my children and you shall hear:
Of the midnight ride of Paul Revere,
On the eighteenth of April, in Seventy-five; …
The Wreck of the Hesperus

It was the schooner Hesperus
That sailed the wintry sea;
And the skipper had taken his little daughter, …
A Psalm of Life

Tell me not, in mournful numbers,
Life is but an empty dream!—
For the soul is dead that slumbers, …
The Children's Hour

Between the dark and the daylight,
When the night is beginning to lower,
Comes a pause in the day’s occupations, …