Skip to content
← Back to poem

FEBRUARY

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

I am lustration, and the sea is mine.

I wash the sands and headlands with my tide;

My brow is crowned with branches of the pine;

Before my chariot-wheels the fishes glide.

By me all things unclean are purified,

By me the souls of men washed white again;

E'en the unlovely tombs of those who died

Without a dirge, I cleanse from every stain.