Hyperion by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow - Books

Hyperion

By Henry Wadsworth Longfellow Poetry 24/03/1882

The book Hyperion is a collection of Poetry. I must prepare for this sudden journey". On the following morning, Flemming and Berkley started on their way to Innsbruck, like Huon of Bordeaux and Scherasmin on their way to Babylon. Berkley's self-assumed duty was to console his companion; a duty which he performed like an ancient Spanish Despenadora, whose business was to attend the sick, and put her elbow into the stomach of the dying, to shorten their agony. In the Orlando Innamorato, Malagigi, the necromancer, puts all the company to sleep by reading to them from a book. Some books have this power of themselves and need no necromancer. Fearing, Gentle Reader, that mine may be of this kind, provided these introductory chapters from time to time, like stalls or Misereres in a church, with flowery canopies and poppy-heads over them, where thou mayest sit down and sleep. No, --the figure is not a bad one. This book does somewhat resemble a minster, in the Romanesque style, with pinnacles, and flying buttresses, and roofs, Gargoyled with greyhounds, and with many lions Made of fine gold, with divers sundry dragons. You step into its shade and coolness out of the hot streets of life; a mysterious light streams through the painted glass of the marigold windows, staining the cusps and crumpled leaves of the windowshafts, and the cherubs and holy-water-stoups below. Here and there is an image of the Virgin Mary.