Holidays by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

 

The holiest of all holidays are those

Kept by ourselves in silence and apart;

The secret anniversaries of the heart,

When the full river of feeling overflows;--

The happy days unclouded to their close;

The sudden joys that out of darkness start

As flames from ashes; swift desires that dart

Like swallows singing down each wind that blows!

White as the gleam of a receding sail,

White as a cloud that floats and fades in air,

White as the whitest lily on a stream,

These tender memories are;--a fairy tale

Of some enchanted land we know not where,

But lovely as a landscape in a dream