The Crowd by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

This brief yet powerful excerpt from Longfellow's verse drama *Christus: A Mystery* depicts the moment Jesus brings Jairus's daughter back to life. A crowd stands in silent wonder as Christ approaches the girl, takes her hand, and tells her to rise. In just a few lines, Longfellow captures the sheer intensity of the miracle — the command itself.

The tone is both reverent and charged with tension. The crowd’s murmurs reflect the nervous energy of those witnessing the moment — short, urgent, and barely able to process what they are witnessing. Then, Christ’s single command shatters the noise, plunging everything into stillness. The contrast between the crowd’s excited buzz and the calm authority of "Maiden, arise!" is where the poem draws its strength.

This excerpt comes from *Christus: A Mystery* (1872), Longfellow's ambitious three-part verse drama that explores the history of Christianity, starting from the life of Christ, moving through the medieval period, and ending with the Puritan era in New England. Longfellow dedicated decades to this project, viewing it as his most significant work, even though it isn't widely read today. "The Crowd" is part of the first section, *The Divine Tragedy*, which dramatizes events from the Gospels. This particular scene depicts the raising of Jairus's daughter, as described in Mark 5 and Luke 8. Longfellow favored dramatic verse throughout his career, and *Christus* showcases both his profound Christian faith and his appreciation for European verse dramas, such as Goethe's *Faust*. The poem's stage-direction format — featuring a speaker label for Christ — serves as a reminder that this was intended to be performed as drama rather than as lyric poetry.