Poem-A-Day April 13: The secret anniversaries of the heart

Holidays

The holiest of all holidays are those
     Kept by ourselves in silence and apart;
     The secret anniversaries of the heart,
     When the full river of feeling overflows;—
The happy days unclouded to their close;
     The sudden joys that out of darkness start
     As flames from ashes; swift desires that dart
     Like swallows singing down each wind that blows!
White as the gleam of a receding sail,
     White as a cloud that floats and fades in air,
     White as the whitest lily on a stream,
These tender memories are;—a Fairy Tale
     Of some enchanted land we know not where,
     But lovely as a landscape in a dream.


“Holidays” can be found in Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s Kéramos: And Other Poems (1878) and was also featured for Poem-a-Day April 13, 2018.

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