Longfellow: My Lost Youth

Longfellow with his wife Frances, and two sons.
Image source

Excerpts from:

My Lost Youth (http://rpo.library.utoronto.ca/poem/1335.html)
　

Often I think of the beautiful town
That is seated by the sea;
Often in thought go up and down
The pleasant streets of that dear old town,
And my youth comes back to me.
And a verse of a Lapland song
Is haunting my memory still:
"A boy's will is the wind's will,
And the thoughts of youth are long, long thoughts."

And Deering's Woods are fresh and fair,
And with joy that is almost pain
My heart goes back to wander there,
And among the dreams of the days that were,
I find my lost youth again.
And the strange and beautiful song,
The groves are repeating it still:
"A boy's will is the wind's will,
And the thoughts of youth are long, long thoughts."

My Lost Youth by Longfellow laments the loss of childhood, but is unique in how the speaker is able to recapture and transform some of it. The poem speaks of his experiences in his hometown of Portland. In the beginning he seeks to revisit his boyhood, but the memories are haunting rather than reconciling. The mind song fails to give comfort, because the boy whose ears are attuned to it is no longer there – he has become a man who has left his memories behind. The poem starts out as a blurry vision of his home town, and as the poem progresses the imagery because sharper.

Initially, Deering’s Woods is described in terms of “shadows”, but in the last stanza it has become “fresh and fair” again. The speaker regains the power of his childhood, by the end the songs he hears are “strange and beautiful” again. Imagination plays a key role in redeeming his lost youth; he invokes his dreams and imagination to reconstruct something that was lost. He appeals to his emotions, and uses imagination to reclaim his youth. Longfellow imparts an optimistic hope for the recovery of innocence lost.