Fire
Sonnet 2.
Fire - meaning Summary
Fire as Spiritual Purifier
Longfellow uses fire as a controlling metaphor for necessary purification and transformation. The speaker argues that fire refines metal and revives mythic life, so death—likened to a fortunate, renovating fire—might purify and lift the self toward the divine. The sonnet contemplates mortality with hopeful yearning that the element which kindles the speaker will carry them upward after life ends, merging physical image and spiritual aspiration.
Read Complete AnalysesNot without fire can any workman mould The iron to his preconceived design, Nor can the artist without fire refine And purify from all its dross the gold; Nor can revive the phoenix, we are told, Except by fire. Hence if such death be mine I hope to rise again with the divine, Whom death augments, and time cannot make old. O sweet, sweet death! O fortunate fire that burns Within me still to renovate my days, Though I am almost numbered with the dead! If by its nature unto heaven returns This element, me, kindled in its blaze, Will it bear upward when my life is fled.
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