THE BUILDERS

 

                THE BUILDERS

            ‘The Builders’ is a famous poem written by the American poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. He was born on 27 February at Portland and died in Cambridge on 24 March 1882.

            He was a poet and educator and is better known for narrative poems with lyrical qualities. Some critics have liked  him as  a poet for family reading  and embodying themes of duty, nature, perseverance, hard work, love of prominent  human attitudes and creative qualities of great men.

            His style is simple and lyrical. For common readers he is known for short poems like ‘A Psalm of Life’, ‘The Builders’, “The Rainy Day’ , ‘Excelsior’, ‘The Village Blacksmith’ and the children’s hour.

            The builders is also a short but great poem. It tells the readers ‘how a nation is built from the contributions of each and every individual of the country. The people from both the past and present collectively work for a nation’s advancement.’ Let me also add that human beings are not passive observers. They are active workers with specific duties allotted to them. They are builders, not mere observers and inactive onlookers.

               Here is the full text of the poem;

 All are architects of Fate,
  Working in these walls of Time;
Some with massive deeds and great,
  Some with ornaments of rhyme. 

Nothing useless is, or low;
  Each thing in its place is best;
And what seems but idle show
  Strengthens and supports the rest. 

For the structure that we raise,
  Time is with materials filled;
Our to-days and yesterdays
  Are the blocks with which we build. 

Truly shape and fashion these;
  Leave no yawning gaps between;
Think not, because no man sees,
  Such things will remain unseen. 

In the elder days of Art,
  Builders wrought with greatest care
Each minute and unseen part;
  For the Gods see everywhere. 

Let us do our work as well,
  Both the unseen and the seen;
Make the house, where Gods may dwell,
  Beautiful, entire, and clean. 

Else our lives are incomplete,
  Standing in these walls of Time,
Broken stairways, where the feet
  Stumble as they seek to climb. 

Build to-day, then, strong and sure,
  With a firm and ample base;
And ascending and secure
  Shall to-morrow find its place. 

Thus alone can we attain
  To those turrets, where the eye
Sees the world as one vast plain,
  And one boundless reach of sky.

                   ……..

In the end, three best quotes by H.W.Longfellow:

1.Every man has secret sorrows which the world knows not, and often time we call a man cold when he is only sad.

2. For after all, the best thing one can do when it is raining is let it rain.

3. Music is the universal language of mankind.

G.R.Kanwal

1^st January 2026