Name/Title
Samuel Longfellow poemEntry/Object ID
2013.28.1Scope and Content
Unnamed poem written by Samuel Longfellow, written from Germantown, April, 1880.
Peom reads as follows: "A thousand roses perish to fill the slender crystal flask with their enduring perfume. So and of all things fleeting we must try to distil, as they pass, the spiritual essence, the drop of their real life, to store in the soul its unperishing fragrance. The outward experience passes, but what it has made us to be what it has done for our souls, lives as long as the soul lives. Let the outward go, as we must. Hold fast to the reality which divert [?] for a moment in the outward. So we may pass undismayed + unshaken though all the [illegible] of life, drawing strength from its decay + from it changes an enternal life. Saml. Longfellow."