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.