"And she sits and gazes at me
With those deep and tender eyes,
Like the stars, so still and saintlike,
Looking downward from the skies."

It is from the skies that they look down, those eyes which once read the
"Voices of the Night" from the same book with us, how long ago! So long
ago that one was half-frightened by the legend of the "Beleaguered City."
I know the ballad brought the scene to me so vividly that I expected, any
frosty night, to see how

"The white pavilions rose and fell
On the alarmed air;"

and it was down the valley of Ettrick, beneath the dark "Three Brethren's
Cairn," that I half-hoped to watch when "the troubled army fled"--fled
with battered banners of mist drifting through the pines, down to the
Tweed and the sea. The "Skeleton in Armour" comes out once more as
terrific as ever, and the "Wreck of the Hesperus" touches one in the old,
simple way after so many, many days of verse-reading and even
verse-writing.

In brief, Longfellow's qualities are so mixed with what the reader
brings, with so many kindliest associations of memory, that one cannot
easily criticize him in cold blood. Even in spite of this friendliness
and affection which Longfellow wins, I can see, of course, that he does
moralize too much. The first part of his lyrics is always the best; the
part where he is dealing directly with his subject. Then comes the
"practical application" as preachers say, and I feel now that it is