But there was something at Portland vastly more to me than seas or
continents, and that was the house where Longfellow was born. I believe,
now, I did not get the right house, but only the house he went to live in
later; but it served, and I rejoiced in it with a rapture that could not
have been more genuine if it had been the real birthplace of the poet. I
got my friend to show me

"----the breezy dome of groves,
The shadows of Deering's woods,"

because they were in one of Longfellow's loveliest and tenderest poems;
and I made an errand to the docks, for the sake of the

"---black wharves and the slips,
And the sea-tides tossing free,
And Spanish sailors with bearded lips,
And the beauty and mystery of the ships,
And the magic of the sea,"

mainly for the reason that these were colors and shapes of the fond
vision of the poet's past. I am in doubt whether it was at this time or
a later time that I went to revere

"--the dead captains as they lay
In their graves o'erlooking the tranquil bay,
where they in battle died,"

but I am quite sure it was now that I wandered under