As a fond mother, when the day is o’er,

Leads by the hand her little child to bed,

Half willing, half reluctant to be led,

And leave his broken playthings on the floor,

Still gazing at them through the open door,

Nor wholly reassured and comforted

By promises of others in their stead,

Which, though more splendid, may not please him more;

So Nature deals with us, and takes away

Our playthings one by one, and by the hand

Leads us to rest so gently, that we go

Scarce knowing if we wish to go or stay,

Being too full of sleep to understand

How far the unknown transcends the what we know.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow was born 200 years ago on Feb. 27, 1807, in Portland. He graduated from Bowdoin College, later taught at Harvard, and by the time of his death in 1882 had become one of the most widely read American poets of all time. His verse fell more or less into disfavor among academic critics after World War II, due in large part to its lack of hard-edged and multifaceted irony. But his deftness with diction, rhythm and rhyme, though antique-sounding to our postmodern ears, is nonetheless superb, and from time to time he discloses through his gifted similes a deep sense of how large the universe must actually be, as in this sonnet.