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<div style="background:#fff;border:#bbb dashed 1px;padding:5px"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=409512" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"><div style="margin:10px 0"><strong>In The Harbour: The Children's Crusade</strong></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=409512" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">I.<br>What is this I read in history,<br>Full of marvel, full of mystery,<br>Difficult to understand?<br>Is it fiction, is it truth?<br>Children in the flower of youth,<br>Heart in heart, and hand in hand,<br>Ignorant of what helps or harms,<br>Without armor, without arms,<br>Journeying to the Holy Land! </a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=409512" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">Who shall answer or divine?<br>Never since the world was made<br>Such a wonderful crusade<br>Started forth for Palestine.<br>Never while the world shall last<br>Will it reproduce the past;<br>Never will it see again<br>Such an army, such a band,<br>Over mountain, over main,<br>Journeying to the Holy Land. </a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=409512" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">Like a shower of blossoms blown<br>From the parent trees were they;<br>Like a flock of birds that fly<br>Through the unfrequented sky,<br>Holding nothing as their own,<br>Passed they into lands unknown,<br>Passed to suffer and to die. </a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=409512" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">O the simple, child-like trust!<br>O the faith that could believe<br>What the harnessed, iron-mailed<br>Knights of Christendom had failed,<br>By their prowess, to achieve,<br>They, the children, could and must!</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=409512" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">Little thought the Hermit, preaching<br>Holy Wars to knight and baron,<br>That the words dropped in his teaching,<br>His entreaty, his beseeching,<br>Would by children's hands be gleaned,<br>And the staff on which he leaned<br>Blossom like the rod of Aaron. </a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=409512" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">As a summer wind upheaves<br>The innumerable leaves<br>In the bosom of a wood,--<br>Not as separate leaves, but massed<br>All together by the blast,--<br>So for evil or for good<br>His resistless breath upheaved<br>All at once the many-leaved,<br>Many-thoughted multitude. </a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=409512" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">In the tumult of the air<br>Rock the boughs with all the nests<br>Cradled on their tossing crests;<br>By the fervor of his prayer<br>Troubled hearts were everywhere<br>Rocked and tossed in human breasts. </a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=409512" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">For a century, at least,<br>His prophetic voice had ceased;<br>But the air was heated still<br>By his lurid words and will,<br>As from fires in far-off woods,<br>In the autumn of the year,<br>An unwonted fever broods<br>In the sultry atmosphere. </a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=409512" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">II.<br>In Cologne the bells were ringing,<br>In Cologne the nuns were singing<br>Hymns and canticles divine;<br>Loud the monks sang in their stalls,<br>And the thronging streets were loud<br>With the voices of the crowd;--<br>Underneath the city walls<br>Silent flowed the river Rhine. </a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=409512" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">From the gates, that summer day,<br>Clad in robes of hodden gray,<br>With the red cross on the breast,<br>Azure-eyed and golden-haired,<br>Forth the young crusaders fared;<br>While above the band devoted<br>Consecrated banners floated,<br>Fluttered many a flag and streamer,<br>And the cross o'er all the rest!<br>Singing lowly, meekly, slowly,<br>'Give us, give us back the holy<br>Sepulchre of the Redeemer!'<br>On the vast procession pressed,<br>Youths and maidens. . . . </a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=409512" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">III.<br>Ah! what master hand shall paint<br>How they journeyed on their way,<br>How the days grew long and dreary,<br>How their little feet grew weary,<br>How their little hearts grew faint! </a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=409512" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">Ever swifter day by day<br>Flowed the homeward river; ever<br>More and more its whitening current<br>Broke and scattered into spray,<br>Till the calmly-flowing river<br>Changed into a mountain torrent,<br>Rushing from its glacier green<br>Down through chasm and black ravine.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=409512" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">Like a phoenix in its nest,<br>Burned the red sun in the West,<br>Sinking in an ashen cloud;<br>In the East, above the crest<br>Of the sea-like mountain chain,<br>Like a phoenix from its shroud,<br>Came the red sun back again. </a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=409512" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">Now around them, white with snow,<br>Closed the mountain peaks. Below,<br>Headlong from the precipice<br>Down into the dark abyss,<br>Plunged the cataract, white with foam;<br>And it said, or seemed to say:<br>'Oh return, while yet you may,<br>Foolish children, to your home,<br>There the Holy City is!' </a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=409512" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">But the dauntless leader said:<br>'Faint not, though your bleeding feet<br>O'er these slippery paths of sleet<br>Move but painfully and slowly;<br>Other feet than yours have bled;<br>Other tears than yours been shed<br>Courage! lose not heart or hope;<br>On the mountains' southern slope<br>Lies Jerusalem the Holy!' <br>As a white rose in its pride,<br>By the wind in summer-tide<br>Tossed and loosened from the branch,<br>Showers its petals o'er the ground,<br>From the distant mountain's side,<br>Scattering all its snows around,<br>With mysterious, muffled sound,<br>Loosened, fell the avalanche.<br>Voices, echoes far and near,<br>Roar of winds and waters blending,<br>Mists uprising, clouds impending,<br>Filled them with a sense of fear,<br>Formless, nameless, never ending. <br>* * * * * * * * * * * *</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><br /></a><a href="http://poems.citatepedia.com/">poem</a> by <strong><a rel="author" href="http://authors.citatepedia.com/by.php?a=Henry+Wadsworth+Longfellow">Henry Wadsworth Longfellow</a></strong></div>