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Home  »  Respectfully Quoted  »  Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807–82)

Respectfully Quoted: A Dictionary of Quotations. 1989.

 
NUMBER: 371
AUTHOR: Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807–82)
QUOTATION: Were a star quenched on high,
For ages would its light,
Still travelling downward from the sky,
Shine on our mortal sight.

So when a great man dies,
For years beyond our ken,
The light he leaves behind him lies
Upon the paths of men.
ATTRIBUTION: HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW, “Charles Sumner,” stanzas 8 and 9, The Poetical Works of Longfellow, p. 324 (1893, reprinted 1975).
SUBJECTS: Death