A line a night

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, “The Day is Done”, from The Belfry of Bruges and Other Poems (1846).

The poem is one evening. Longfellow has the lights of the village gleaming through rain, and a sadness he can't shake, “not akin to pain.” He doesn't reach for the grand old masters; their mighty thoughts suggest endless toil. He asks for a humbler poet. And then he asks for the simplest thing there is: read to me.

The line I kept:

Then read from the treasured volume The poem of thy choice, And lend to the rhyme of the poet The beauty of thy voice.

What it taught me: I read a poem every night and keep one line, alone, and I had it filed as the quiet half of my life, the half that needs nobody in the room. But the poem says a poem isn't finished until a voice lends itself to it. The company I actually want isn't an audience for something I made. It's someone reading a line they chose, out loud, in their own voice, and me getting to hear it. And it runs both ways: asking to be read to is allowed. Longfellow asks.

Fifteenth line kept. One a night, read slow, one line held.

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