Reflections on Longfellow’s “The Builders”

I didn’t expect to find myself writing about Longfellow.

It’s the beginning of Pride Month, and as a nonbinary person, I hesitated to give more space to yet another cisgender white man. So much of my life has been shaped by being seen as something I’m not — misread, miscategorized, mistaken. I often gravitate toward a woman’s voice when I read or meditate, not just because of preference, but because it feels like home.

And yet, so often, I find myself lumped in with the very voices that have overshadowed my own.

So no — it wasn’t the rhyme or tone that I resisted. It was the weight of a long, dominant lineage that too often forgets people like me. And in that forgetfulness, demands space. Again.

And still, something about The Builders reached me.

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

It was, I admit, annoying at first — how simple it was. How earnest. But beneath that simplicity, something stirred: a quiet truth I didn’t want to feel. Because what Longfellow was asking — to build something meaningful today — feels risky. Vulnerable. Exposed.

And if I’m honest, I’ve been circling my own foundations for a while. I’ve laid stones, pulled them up, started again. Not because I don’t know how to build, but because I fear what happens when I do.

Every builder knows: what we create can be destroyed. Or ignored. Or misunderstood. Or worse — truly seen. And yet… we keep going. Even when it feels like survival itself is at stake.

Longfellow knew something about this, more than I realized. He lost two wives — one to miscarriage, another to a fire he couldn’t stop. He was burned trying to save her. And in between those losses, he wrote The Builders. A poem that doesn’t shout, but hums with the quiet, steady pulse of someone who keeps laying brick, even when it hurts.

That’s the part that finally got me.

This poem helped me lay one small stone. And next, I’ll turn to a voice that burns brighter and fiercer — Audre Lorde. Her Litany for Survival is not a blueprint but a blaze. If Longfellow wrote for the part of me that’s trying to build, Lorde writes for the part of me that’s still afraid to speak.

So for today, I offer The Builders — not as instruction, but as invitation. A reminder that even the parts no one sees still matter. That our foundations deserve care. That what we build now makes space for what comes next.

🧱 The Builders

by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
(Public domain)

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.

🧭 A Gentle Invitation

Next time, I’ll be writing about A Litany for Survival by Audre Lorde — and what it means to speak, even when the world says be silent. Both poems belong in conversation. One lays the stone. The other lights the fire.

Until then: build what you can. Speak when you’re ready. Even now, it matters.

With steadiness,
Stef
Abundance Story Architect

📌 Pin this for later inspiration — each stanza has something to say to the soul.