Pelosi Quotes Longfellow [by Mitch Sisskind]

Yesterday, introducing the impeachment managers,
Nancy Pelosi invoked Longfellow. It was the 
first time I've heard poetry spoken by a politician 
since Bill Clinton in the 1980's quoted Emerson's
baleful line about the future, "When our sons have
gone to where our fathers are...."

Speaking of baleful, here's a Longfellow poem 
perhaps appropriate for these dark times:

Haunted Houses (1858)

All houses wherein men have lived and died
Are haunted houses. Through the open doors
The harmless phantoms on their errands glide,
With feet that make no sound upon the floors.

We meet them at the doorway, on the stair,
Along the passages they come and go,
Impalpable impressions on the air,
A sense of something moving to and fro.

There are more guests at table, than the hosts
Invited; the illuminated hall
Is thronged with quiet, inoffensive ghosts,
As silent as the pictures on the wall.

The stranger at my fireside cannot see
The forms I see, nor hear the sounds I hear;
He but perceives what is; while unto me
All that has been is visible and clear.

We have no title-deeds to house or lands;
Owners and occupants of earlier dates
From graves forgotten stretch their dusty hands,
And hold in mortmain still their old estates.

The spirit-world around this world of sense
Floats like an atmosphere, and everywhere
Wafts through these earthly mists and vapors dense
A vital breath of more ethereal air.

Our little lives are kept in equipoise
By opposite attractions and desires;
The struggle of the instinct that enjoys,
And the more noble instinct that aspires.

These perturbations, this perpetual jar
Of earthly wants and aspirations high,
Come from the influence of an unseen star,
An undiscovered planet in our sky.

And as the moon from some dark gate of cloud
Throws o’er the sea a floating bridge of light,
Across whose trembling planks our fancies crowd
Into the realm of mystery and night,–

So from the world of spirits there descends
A bridge of light, connecting it with this,
O’er whose unsteady floor, that sways and bends,
Wander our thoughts above the dark abyss.

 

Comments

[Suzanne Lummis]

Many thanks for this commentary, the Longfellow poem -- which is fabulous -- and the video link. Hillary Clinton's book "What Happened" also quotes poets and other literary people, such as Flannery O'Connor and George Bernard Shaw, though of course these are in book form rather than the context of a public speech. A new chapter opens with lines from Carl Sandberg, but elsewhere an altogether different sort of voice, Marge Piercy -- makes sense, because she's a poet who would've been quite in evidence when HRC was coming into her own. Here's the Piercy quote:
"I love people who harness themselves, an ox to a heavy cart/who pull like water buffalo, with massive patience,/who strain in the mud and the muck to move things forward,/who do what has to be done, again and again."

We could've had a very different sort of president.

[Lloyd Schwartz]

What an extraordinary, chilling poem. It calls to mind one of my favorite Emily Dickinson poems: "One need not be a Chamber--to be haunted." https://www.sas.upenn.edu/~cavitch/pdf-library/Dickinson_Chamber.pdf

[The Best American Poetry]

Powerful poem. Too bad she quoted the Paul Revere lines instead of "Haunted Houses" by the now underrated, even neglected, Longfellow.