"The Rainy Day" by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (poetry reading)

The pictures were all taken in 1859. The first picture shows Longfellow's three daughters: Annie Allegra, age 4 front, Edith, age 6 left, Alice Mary age 9 at the back. The second shows his wife Fanny, Frances Appleton Longfellow, at the age of 42.

Just two years later, while Longfellow was asleep in his study, his wife was sealing their daughter's hair with wax when a spark set fire to her dress. She ran to Longfellow and woke him up. He desperately tried to smother the flames but Fanny was so severely burned that she died that night.

Longfellow was burned too, too badly to go to Fanny's funeral. His face was so scarred that he could not shave, and that is why he grew the long white beard that is now the most familiar image of him. After the tragedy he lived with constant grief and the fear that he would go mad.
http://www.uncp.edu/home/canada/work/canam/longfell.htm

This poem is one of the first he wrote after the event.

I have a great admiration for Longfellow as a man. He is often ridiculed and despised as a poet, yet he created lines that were so succinct that they have become part of the language, e.g. "into each life some rain must fall."

Longfellow seems to me in every way admirable, a loving husband and father, an industrious scholar, a great teacher and very popular in his day. He reached more people than most poets ever will. His simple poetry has descriptions of the human condition and an attitude to life that seem exemplary.
http://www.hwlongfellow.org/

The day is cold, and dark, and dreary
It rains, and the wind is never weary;
The vine still clings to the mouldering wall,
But at every gust the dead leaves fall,
And the day is dark and dreary.

My life is cold, and dark, and dreary;
It rains, and the wind is never weary;
My thoughts still cling to the mouldering Past,
But the hopes of youth fall thick in the blast,
And the days are dark and dreary.

Be still, sad heart! and cease repining;
Behind the clouds is the sun still shining;
Thy fate is the common fate of all,
Into each life some rain must fall,
Some days must be dark and dreary.

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• Rainy
• Day
• Henry
• Wadsworth
• Longfellow

[funnybunches320]

Pause this.

go to Rainymood(dot)com

Enjoy this poem even more.

[vickiehill1]

I am so happy that poets have had the courage to be real & not worry that people would think their genius a "downer". I love it. Simply beautiful.

[thissong4you]

I love Longfellow. The meter and rhythm of his poetry is, to me, the heartbeat of 19th century America. The grief in this poem, and your reading of it, pierces one's empathic core. I cannot hear it without thinking ahead to "Grave Alice, and laughing Allegra, and Edith with golden hair," and hoping that his love of his daughter's helped him find the sun still shining behind the clouds. Thank you for this reading, Tom. The timbre and timing is perfect.

[Xylok]

awesome awesome poem, thanks for sharing.

[drryllo]

made a song about this poem, check my channel

[MsRadomness]

Thats my great great great something grandfather! :D

[MiracleUR2Me]

Wonderful reading. Thank you!

[DemeterEuropa]

It reminds me of a song by the carpenters called "rainy days and mondays"

[mysticmagic4760]

Beautiful!