HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW
M. '^-^A^<Ju,!lA>iw
HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW
A SKETCH OF HIS LIFE
BY CHARLES ELIOT NORTON
TOGETHER WITH
LONGFELLOW'S
CHIEF AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL
POEMS
BOSTON AND NEW YORK
HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANY
MDCCCCVII
COr Y RIGHT 1906 BY CHARLES ELIOT NORTON
COPYRIGHT 1S75, 1S7S AND 1S79 BY HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW
COPYRIGHT 1903 AND 1906 BY ERNEST W. LONGFELLOW
COPYRIGHT 18S5 BY TICKNOR & CO.
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
NOTE
The proposed commemoration, under the auspices of the
Cambridge Historical Society, on the 27th of February,
1907, of the one hundredth anniversary of Longfellow's
birthday, accounts for the character of this little volume.
Besides the sketch of the life of the Poet, it contains most
of those of his shorter poems which are referred to in the
narrative, and also those which have a distinctly auto-
biographical character, and those which relate to his
special friends and to the places of his birth and abode.
Thus, the little booh gives the story of the Poet's life
briefly narrated in prose by a friend, and partially re-
corded in verse by himself
CONTENTS
HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW:
A SKETCH OF HIS LIFE . 1
AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL POEMS
THE BATTLE OF LOVELL's POND (1820) . . 43
PRELUDE TO VOICES OF THE NIGHT (1839) . . 44
A PSALM OF LIFE (1838) 49
THE WRECK OF THE HESPERUS (1839) . . . 50
THE VILLAGE BLACKSMITH (1839) . . . 54
TO THE RIVER CHARLES (1841) . . . .56
THE BRIDGE (1845) 58
THE ROPEWALK (1854) 61
A GLEAM OF SUNSHINE (1846) . . . . 63
TO A CHILD (1845) 66
THE OPEN WINDOW (1848) .... 73
IN THE CHURCHYARD AT CAMBRIDGE (1851) . . 74
THE BURIAL OF THE POET (1879) ... 75
THE TWO ANGELS (1855) 76
RESIGNATION (1848) 78
DEDICATION TO " SEASIDE AND FIRESIDE " (1849) 80
MY LOST YOUTH (1855) 82
[ vii ]
CONTENTS
THE FIFTIETH BIRTHDAY OF AGASSIZ (1857)
HAWTHORNE (1864)
THREE FRIENDS OF MINE (1874) .
THE HERONS OF ELMWOOD (1876)
THE CHILDREN'S HOUR (1859)
TRAVELS BY THE FIRESIDE (1874)
AMALFI (1875)
CASTLES IN SPAIN (1877) .
FROM MY ARM-CHAIR (1879)
POSSIBILITIES (1882)
THE CROSS OF SNOW (1879) .
PALINGENESIS (1864)
MORITURI SALUTAMUS (1874)
. 86
87
. 89
92
. 94
96
. 97
101
. 104
107
, 107
108
. Ill
NOTE
The frontispiece portrait of Longfellow in 1842 is from the original
painting by G. P. A. Healy in the Boston Museum of Fine Arts. The
autograph, from a letter dated 1840, is in the Charles Folsom Collection,
Boston Public Library. The portrait which faces page 4t% is from a
photograph taken in 1879. The autograph is from a letter dated
1880.
HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW
A SKETCH OF HIS LIFE
HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW
At the beginning of the nineteenth century
New England was a good land in which to be
born. It was still sparsely settled. There were
no large towns. Boston, the largest, had scarcely
twenty-five thousand inhabitants. The people
were homogeneous, of unmixed English stock.
They were mainly farmers or seamen. They
were intelligent, industrious, and religious.
There was great equality of condition, none
were very rich, none very poor. Everybody
was well off, for the poorest were free from
the fear of oppression or starvation. The re-
lations between man and man were natural
and friendly. The general habits of life were
simple and frugal; but even in the smaller
towns there were often a few families which
maintained a traditional comparatively high
standard of refinement, of intellectual culture,
and of moderate though genuine elegance.
There was never a more truly democratic
community, nor one in which the advantages
[ 1 ]
LONGFELLOW
and opportunities of a society based upon
democratic principles were more fully and
freely enjoyed. Its interests were, indeed,
comparatively narrow, for it had small share
in the great life of the world, it had little con-
sciousness of relation to the historic past even
of its own race, and it seemed to have in-
herited few of its burdens. It had separated
itself from the Old World, and was possessed
with the spirit of its own independence. It
was full of self-confidence, and looked forward
into the future with an unbounded hope, which
appeared even to the wisest not an illusion, but
to rest on a solid foundation of reason. Here
men held possession of a field in which to show
what they could do unhampered by hereditary
prescriptions and privileges, and here, in New
England especially, the new order of society,
based on justice and liberty, not only gave
promise of fairer results than had ever before
been achieved, but already exhibited actual
results in blessings which seemed but a fore-
taste of those which might be legitimately
anticipated. It is not strange that the whole
temper of the community became optimistic
[ 2 1
LONGFELLOW
and kindly; that the severities of the Calvin-
istic creed of earlier days were relaxed; and
that both this world and the next took on a
Utopian aspect.
The perils of prosperity, of unlimited demo-
cracy, of unchecked immigration, were not fore-
seen; they were gradually to manifest them-
selves. The generation which grew up before
1830 had neither the experience nor the dread
of them.
This condition of society in New England
deserves to be set forth in much greater detail,
not only as an exceptional, instructive, and
interesting passage in the history of mankind,
but also as accounting in large measure for
the spirit and form of the works of the poets
and men of letters who gave distinction to the
country in the middle of the century. It is
worth noting that all of them were born within
its first twenty years, and grew to manhood
before the problems which now perplex us had
begun to present themselves with the threaten-
ings of the Sphinx.1
1 The list with its dates is curiously significant: Emerson, bom
1803; Hawthorne, 1804 ; Longfellow and Whittier, 1807 ; Holmes,
[ 3 ]
LONGFELLOW
One of the pleasantest towns in New Eng-
land at this time was Portland, now the chief
seaport of the State of Maine. It is an old town
according to the reckoning of the United States,
having been first settled in 1632; it is old
enough to have traditions, and to have known
many generations of seafaring men, and in
former days, when its commerce was of more
importance than it is now, its people gained
some sense, such as those of inland towns
seldom acquire, of the largeness of the world,
of the interest and romance of foreign lands,
and of the mystery and perils of the sea. Here
on the 27th of February, 1807, Henry Wads-
worth Longfellow was born. His parents were
of English stock, long settled in America. His
father was a lawyer, a man of pure, upright
character, a good heart, and an old-time
courtesy. He became one of the foremost
men in his community, honored for his public
spirit, sound judgment, integrity, and ability.
1809 ; Lowell, 1819. The general spirit and optimistic disposition of
the land had already found expression in Irving, born 1783, and in
Channing (1780), but the original characteristic New England quality,
the distinctive temper of a cultivated democracy, waited for its full
expression for the men of the succeeding generation.
[ 4 ]
LONGFELLOW
"In his family," wrote his youngest son, "he
was at once kind and strict, bringing up his
children in habits of respect and obedience,
of unselfishness, the dread of debt, and the
faithful performance of duty."1 The boy's
mother must have been a woman of uncom-
mon sweetness and charm. Her letters, of
which a few have been preserved, mainly to
her son, are evidences of her tenderness, re-
finement, and culture. She was a lover of
nature, and of the poets; she had a sincere
and cheerful piety; she was a kind neighbor
and a devoted mother. Her household of eight
children, four brothers and four sisters, was a
happy one. Henry was the second child.
To those who have not had the blessing of
knowing it, it may be difficult to give the true
impression of the pleasantness and wholesome-
ness of an old-time New England home. There
has never elsewhere been anything exactly like
it. The natural relations shaping the society of
which it was an element, the absence of arti-
1 I take this sentence from the excellent Life of the poet by his
brother, the late Rev. Samuel Longfellow. My obligations to this
authoritative biography are constant throughout the following sketch.
[ 5 ]
LONGFELLOW
ficial distinctions, the universal sense of inde-
pendence and ease, the common kindliness and
good-nature which resulted from the general
well-being, all affected the intimate spirit of
the household. Domestic virtues flourish in
such an atmosphere. The union of simplicity
in modes of living and thinking with respect
and desire for culture showed itself in a love
of reading, by which the narrow outlook of
a somewhat primitive and provincial view of
the world was modified and enlarged. It was
through books that the household mainly felt
its connection with the wide life of mankind,
with the poetic and historic past. The books
were indeed comparatively few, but they were
for the most part those of which the worth
had been tested by the approval of many gen-
erations. Music, too, of a simple kind was one
of the common domestic pleasures. Manners
were carefully regarded ; and though there was
little of the finer social art, there was often
much good talk to be heard around the hospi-
table table, or by the winter-evening fireside.
In fact, the old New England home at its best
was a happy place, with a special, if slender,
[ • ]
LONGFELLOW
charm and grace of its own. There was, in-
deed, a lack of richness in the intellectual no
less than in the material life, and seldom a
sufficient variety of condition, or difficulty of
circumstance, or collision of interests to de-
velop the finer resources of the mind. The
land had not been settled long enough to pos-
sess a soil — the product of the lives of count-
less, generations — of depth enough to afford
nourishment to the deepest reaching roots of
the imagination and intelligence.
Such a home as I have described was that of
the Longfellows, and its influence was strong
for good on a sensitive nature like that of the
boy Henry. He was a bright, pleasant boy,
active, industrious, ardent, and according to
his mother's report "remarkably solicitous
always to do right." When he was five years
old he was sent to a day-school, close by his
home, and a certificate from his master has
been preserved, given him when he was not
much over six, which shows how early the little
boy began to be what he always remained:
"Master Henry Longfellow is one of the best
boys we have in school. He spells and reads
[ 7 ]
LONGFELLOW
very well. He also can add and multiply num-
bers. His conduct last quarter was very correct
and amiable. June 30, 1813."
His taste for reading was early manifest. He
took delight in "Don Quixote" and in Ossian,
but, as he himself has recorded, the first book
which "fascinated his imagination, and ex-
cited and satisfied the desires of his mind,"
was the "Sketch-Book" of Washington Irving.
"I was a schoolboy when it was published"
[the first number appeared in 1819], "and read
each succeeding number with ever increasing
wonder and delight." He had himself already
begun writing, and when he was thirteen years
old some verses of his were printed in the
local newspaper. They were of no special
promise, but they were not destitute of merit
in versification, and showed that the boy had
been reading Campbell and Scott. With these
verses his literary life began.
In 1822 he was sent to Bowdoin College
at Brunswick, then, as now, the chief college
in Maine, about thirty miles from Portland.
He entered it as a Sophomore, in a class of
which Hawthorne was a member. His college
[ 8 ]
LONGFELLOW
years were well spent; it was a period of rapid
maturing both of character and of powers.
Longfellow, as he had been at school, so here
was "one of the best boys." He had a charm-
ing social disposition, and was a general fa-
vorite; but, while he enjoyed the companion-
ship of his fellows, he had principles strong
enough to resist the temptations of college
life. He was a faithful and industrious student;
he became a wide reader; and he wrote much
prose and verse, some of which found accept-
ance in the " United States Literary Gazette,"
published in Boston, to which he became,
during his last year in college, a frequent con-
tributor. The poems are mostly trial pieces.
They show a singularly sweet and pure nature ;
but the poet had not yet found his true voice,
and what he wrote was often in the mood and
with the tone of elder poets, especially of
Bryant, whose grave and moral verse, the
expression of his New England temperament,
exercised a strong and acknowledged influence
upon his younger contemporary. The best
poetic fruit of his college years was not ga-
thered till fifty years later, when, on the anni-
[ 9 ]
LONGFELLOW
versary of the graduation of his Class, Long-
fellow read at Bowdoin his beautiful and
characteristic poem entitled Morituri Saluta-
mus, in which, beginning with tender recol-
lections of the days of youth, he went on with
a profoundly sweet and touching survey of
life, and closed with a noble assertion of the
significance and opportunities of old age.
Before he left college he had come to a
clear recognition of his true vocation in life.
"The fact is," he wrote to his father, "the
fact is, I most eagerly aspire after future
eminence in literature. . . . Nature has given
me a very strong predilection for literary pur-
suits." And in this he was not making the
mistake which young men so often make, of
supposing their powers to justify their pre-
dilection. He had a right to confidence in his
gifts, and Fortune smiled upon him with sur-
prising graciousness. At the very moment of
his graduation, in 1825, the Board of Trus-
tees of the college determined to establish a
Professorship of Modern Languages. The re-
sources of the college were narrow, and the
salary which it was proposed to attach to the
[ 10 ]
LONGFELLOW
professorship was too small to allow the hope
that a scholar of established repute could be
induced to take the chair. " The eyes of the
trustees," says his brother, "turned upon
the young graduate, whose literary tastes and
attainments had attracted their attention and
gained him reputation." His character, no
less than his attainments, inspired confidence
in his ability, after due preparation, to fill
such a position with credit, and an informal
proposal was made to him that he should visit
Europe for a period of preparatory study, with
the understanding that on his return he should
be appointed to the professorship. There could
be no stronger evidence of the impression
which, though not yet nineteen years old, he
had already made as a youth, not merely of
uncommon promise, but of still more uncom-
mon desert.
The proposal was accepted with delight.
Nothing could have better favored his desires
and his projects. The opportunity of study in
Europe was an unhoped-for felicity, and he
embraced it with a serious resolve to get from
it the best that it could give. He left home
[ n ]
LONGFELLOW
in May, 1826, and he remained abroad till
July, 1829.
Europe was then much more remote from
America than it is to-day. It was a month or
more distant, and it was a much fresher land
then than now to a young American. Its
paths had not yet been made dusty by Ameri-
can feet. In outward aspect, in social order,
in standards of life, in modes of thought, the
Old and the New World were far more dis-
tinct than they have since become. The great
advantage which an American still derives
from a visit to Europe, beside the enlarging
of his experience of life, is the quickening of
his imagination by the awakening of the sense
of his relation to the long historic life of his
race. Longfellow's youth and poetic tempera-
ment, as well as the literary culture which he
had already acquired, made him peculiarly
sensible to the strong and novel influence of a
residence in foreign lands. His first months
abroad were spent in France, and thence he
went in succession to Spain, Italy, and Ger-
many, ending his period of absence with a
brief stay in England. Everywhere on the Con-
[ 12 ]
LONGFELLOW
tinent he devoted himself to acquiring the
languages of the different countries which he
visited, and to studying their literature. He
had an exceptional facility in learning a new
language, and his industry was great. He
mastered three of the four great foreign lan-
guages so thoroughly as to speak them with
facility and correctness, and to write them
with comparative ease, and he returned to
America fitted to discharge competently the
duties of the professorship to which he had
been called. But Europe had done much more
for him than merely make him an accom-
plished scholar. It had enlarged his view of
life, fertilized his mind, and given him a social
cultivation which he could not have gained at
home. These three years abroad did much
to give color to his future.
To come back from the exciting interests
and delights of Paris, Madrid, and Rome,
and from the deep sources of intellectual life
at a German university, to the monotonous
routine of a teacher's existence within the
narrow limits of a small country college, was
a somewhat sharp test of character. Long-
[ 13 ]
LONGFELLOW
fellow stood it well, for his rare gifts and ac-
complishments rested upon a solid basis of
manliness and common sense, and his long
residence abroad had not weakened his love
of home. He entered on his new duties with
zest, and with a high estimate of the respon-
sibilities and opportunities of his profession as
teacher. In a letter written in 1830, — he was
then twenty-three years old, — he describes the
course of his life: "I rise at six in the morn-
ing, and hear a French recitation immediately.
At seven I breakfast and am then master of
my time till eleven, when I hear a Spanish
lesson. After that I take a lunch, and at
twelve I go into the library " [he was the act-
ing librarian of the college], "where I remain
till one. I am then at leisure for the after-
noon till five, when I have a French recitation.
At six I take coffee, then walk and visit friends
till nine; study till twelve, and sleep till six,
when I begin the same round again. Such is
the daily routine of my life. The intervals of
college duty I fill up with my own studies.
Last term I was publishing text-books for the
use of my pupils, in whom I take a deep in-
[ 14 ]
LONGFELLOW
terest. This term I am writing a course of
lectures on French, Spanish, and Italian litera-
tures. ... I am delighted more and more with
the profession I have embraced. . . . Since my
return I have written one piece of poetry, but
have not published a line. ... If I ever pub-
lish a volume it will be many years first."
It was, indeed, nearly ten years before he
published his first slender volume of collected
poems. But these ten years were well filled
with literary work, mainly the result of his
travel and his professional studies. He wrote
numerous articles upon topics of mediaeval
and modern literature; he made many poeti-
cal translations; he published in 1833 a series
of sketches of tales and literary essays under
the title of " Outre Mer," and six years later,
after a second visit to Europe, appeared
"Hyperion," in which this later experience of
travel was presented in a more consecutive
form than that of his earlier book, and with
a deeper interest from the thread of romance
connecting its various episodes, as well as
from its riper expression of more personal and
intimate experience.
[ 15 ]
LONGFELLOW
All this work has many excellent qualities;
it is the writing of a cultivated man of letters,
possessed of poetic sensibility, of a somewhat
romantic vein of sentiment, and of a sweet
nature, refined, gentle, and of high aims. It
is essentially the work of a man of letters,
who sees life not directly, but rather as it
comes reflected to him through books and
colored by literary associations. "Outre Mer"
is a lineal descendant of the " Sketch-Book; "
"Hyperion" traces back to Jean Paul. The
books have not the charm of primitive nature,
but they are full of the pleasantness of the
garden, with its abundance of sweet-scented
herbs and exotic flowers.
It was not strange that Longfellow was slow
in discovering his native vein of poetry and
in trusting to it. The intellectual conditions
of America did not give self-confidence to her
authors, and in his case the opening to him,
at the most sensitive period of youth, of the
treasures of the Continental literatures, trea-
sures much less familiar eighty years ago than
now, the excitement of what was practically
literary discovery, and the attractiveness of the
[ 16 ]
LONGFELLOW
form no less than of the substance of this
newly revealed art, — all tended at first to
choke the natural current of his poetic vein,
and to substitute for the direct expression of
himself the reproduction by transfusion or
translation of what was so delightful to him.
During these years, from 1827 to 1839, his
life had had a varied course. In 1831 he had
been married with every promise of happiness
to Miss Potter of Portland. In 1834, having
established his reputation as an accomplished
scholar and teacher, he was invited to succeed
Mr. Ticknor, as Professor of Belles-Lettres
at Harvard College. He accepted with satis-
faction the larger opportunities for study and
the wider social relations which a position
at the oldest and best equipped of American
colleges afforded; but before entering upon
his new duties, he went again to Europe for
further study, especially of the northern lan-
guages and literature. He was accompanied
by his wife, but they had been abroad hardly
more than six months before her health failed,
and she died at Rotterdam, in December,
1835. Longfellow returned home in the
[ 17 ]
LONGFELLOW
autumn of 1836, and in December took up his
residence in Cambridge, where his home was
thenceforth to be till the end of life, a period of
more than forty-five years.
Cambridge in 1836 was a pleasant little
town, some of the characteristics of which
Mr. Lowell has preserved in his picturesque
essay, "Cambridge Thirty Years Ago." For
so small a town it contained an unusual num-
ber of people of considerable intellectual and
more or less social culture whom the college
brought together upon easy terms. It was a
very simple society, conservative in its general
spirit, but liberalized by its neighborhood to
Boston, which had long possessed an intellect-
ual leadership among the cities of America, and
which, as it grew in numbers and in wealth, did
not lose its traditional hospitality to thought.
The moment was one of moral and mental
ferment. The anti-slavery campaign had be-
gun in earnest, and the so-called "transcen-
dental" movement, to which Emerson was be-
ginning to give its best direction, was already,
in spite of many extravagances and absurdi-
ties, exercising a potent influence of intellectual
[ 18 ]
LONGFELLOW
emancipation. Longfellow at once found him-
self at home in these wider conditions than
Bowdoin had afforded. He sympathized with
the prevailing liberal temper of his own gen-
eration, but he took no leading part in the de-
bates of the times. His disposition had nothing
controversial in it. His life soon settled into a
pleasant regularity. His college duties were
arduous and often irksome, but they left him
leisure for his favorite studies, and for the en-
joyment of friendly intercourse.
It was at this time that my own acquaintance
with Mr. Longfellow began. He was then
twenty-nine years old, and I was a boy some-
what more than twenty years younger. But
from the first he was a most kind and pleasant
friend to me. He was a frequent and familiar
visitor at my father's house, and the younger
members of the family were as glad as their
elders to see him. He entered into the interests
of our lives and added to their pleasures. I
should not speak of this were it not for the il-
lustration it affords of his nature, and of the
affection in which he was held by all, old or
young, with whom he was brought into famil-
[ 19 ]
LONGFELLOW
iar relation. As life went on his kindness never
changed, and now, almost twenty-five years
after his death, I look back on the friendship
which he gave to me for forty-five years as
one of their great blessings. It still is one of
the lights of life. I wish I could give to others
the true image of him which remains in my
heart. It may be learned from his own sweet-
est verse, for no poet ever wrote with more
unconscious and complete sincerity of self-
expression.
No profession is at once more depressing
and more stimulating than that of the teacher
of youth just entering on manhood. The more
keenly he sympathizes with them and desires
to aid them, the more keenly he feels how far
the best that he can do for them falls short of
their needs and of his own ideal of service. He
would fain save them from errors of which by
experience he knows the harm, would fain not
only supply them with learning, but inspire
them with a love of it by instructing them in
its right use for the building of character, as
well as for the enlargement of those mental
resources which contribute to the permanent
[ 20 ]
LONGFELLOW
enjoyment and utility of life. Longfellow's ex-
ample wrought upon his pupils no less than
his words. He stood before them as the pat-
tern of an accomplished man of letters, who
exhibited in his life the worth of his own
instructions.
His college duties, regular and constant as
they were, did not prevent him from carrying
on literary work of his own. In the summer
of 1839, as I have already mentioned, "Hy-
perion," begun a year before, was completed
and published. It was received with favor; it
appealed to the romantic sentiment of youth,
and it gratified the taste, natural to American
readers, for the varied resources and the poetic
suggestion of the Old World.
"Hyperion" marks the close of the first stage
of Longfellow's intellectual life, the stage of
youthful impressibility and experiment, of
uncertainty of aim, of the control of foreign
influence on the direction of his powers. The
foreign materials of his culture had now been
assimilated so as to become vital elements of
his genius, and the little volume of poems
published in the autumn of 1839 under the
[ 21 ]
LONGFELLOW
title of "Voices of the Night" marks the
beginning of the stage in which that genius
was to find its full and free expression. The
Prelude with which the volume opens gives
evidence that the poet himself was conscious
of the change. He bids farewell to the visions
of childhood; no longer what is external shall
be his theme, but, adopting the noble injunc-
tion of Sidney's Muse, he says to himself,
"Look then into thy heart and write," and
thenceforth he spoke to the hearts of men. It
is not surprising that he had been so long
in acquiring trust in his own powers. His
modesty, his admiration for the work of con-
temporary poets in Europe, — Goethe, Man-
zoni, Victor Hugo, — had made him hesitate.
Moreover, in the life of New England there
was little to quicken the poetic imagination;
its experience was of homespun quality, the
element of passion was scanty in the tempera-
ment of its people, there was no great oppor-
tunity in their relations and habits for marked
variety of sentiment and emotion. Our best
poetry had been patterned on foreign models.
Such fresh and original voices as had tried to
[ 22 ]
LONGFELLOW
make themselves heard, had had for the most
part but a faint tone, and had been listened
to without popular approval. The prevailing
spirit was of critical distrust of native powers,
a spirit unfavorable for the discovery of a poet
either by himself or by others.
But in "Voices of the Night" were poems
which appealed at once to the consciousness
of the public as expressions of its own hitherto
unexpressed interior moods, and dimly recog-
nized ideals. The " Psalm of Life," a voice,
as the poet called it, from his inmost heart,
proved to be the voice of many hearts. It be-
came instantly popular. Its moral lesson, con-
veyed in simple but musical verse, was accepted
by its readers as the teaching of their own ex-
perience which they had failed to formulate
for themselves. It was a help and encourage-
ment to depressed souls, a stimulus to the am-
bitious and the hopeful. The world cares more
for morality than for poetry, but it likes to
have its moral sentiment expressed in poetic
form. Perhaps no verses of the century have
had wider acceptance than these. But it was
not only their moral tone which secured for
[ 23 ]
LONGFELLOW
this and other poems in the volume an imme-
diate cordial reception, but also their beauty
of form. His long preparatory studies had
made Longfellow such a master of versifica-
tion as America had not before known, and
his art gave a rare charm to his words.
From this time forth Longfellow wrote lit-
tle prose for publication, his only subsequent
prose work being the brief tale of " Kavanagh,"
a pretty, semi-romantic, semi-realistic story,
brightened by touches of humor, and suffused
with delicate sentiment. It embodied many
fancies and reflections which had long been
gathered in his note-books or loosely floating
in his brain, but it has no great significance in
the record of his intellectual life.
Two years after the publication of the
"Voices of the Night," he gathered into an-
other volume the pieces which he had written
in the interval, some of which, such as "The
Wreck of the Hesperus" and "The Village
Blacksmith," became at once and have con-
tinued to be favorites of the great public.
In 1842 the regular current of his life was
interrupted by a third visit to Europe, under-
[ 24 ]
LONGFELLOW
taken for the benefit of his health. The sum-
mer was spent at Marienberg, near Boppard
on the Rhine. While here he made acquaint-
ance, which ripened into a cordial and per-
manent friendship, with Ferdinand Freili-
grath, then one of the most distinguished of
the younger German poets. In October, on
his way home, he went to London, where he
spent the last weeks of his stay abroad with
Dickens, -always a most genial and sympa-
thetic host. Dickens was just bringing out
his "American Notes," and Longfellow wrote
to Sumner of it, "You will read it with delight
and, for the most part, approbation. He has
a grand chapter on Slavery."
The topic was perilous for a man of letters;
the debate upon it had become too hot. Yet
Longfellow, on his homeward voyage, wrote
a number of poems on Slavery, which he pub-
lished in a pamphlet soon after his return.
They brought upon him harsh denunciation.
He was charged with being an Abolitionist,
and his popularity as a poet suffered diminu-
tion at the North as well as in the slavehold-
ing community. By these poems Longfellow
[ 25 ]
LONGFELLOW
had ranged himself in line with his intimate
friend, Charles Sumner, then at the beginning
of his great anti-slavery career, and he readily
accepted such measure of obloquy and of un-
popularity as the taking of this position might
bring to him.
In 1843, the happiness of his life was re-
newed and confirmed by his marriage to Miss
Frances Appleton, a woman worthy to be a
poet's wife. She had great beauty, and a pre-
sence of dignity and distinction, the true image
of a beautiful nature. He had met her first in
Switzerland, six years before, when she was a
girl of nineteen, and something of her as she
then was, is embodied in the Mary Ashburton
of "Hyperion." She brought him abundant
means as well as happiness.
Craigie House in Cambridge, a fine old colo-
nial mansion, which had been Washington's
headquarters for some months after he took
command of the Continental Army in 1775,
and in which Longfellow, almost ever since
his first coming to Cambridge had had his
abode, now became their permanent home.
The traditions, the associations, the surround-
[ 26 ]
LONGFELLOW
ings of the house well befitted its aspect, while
the view upon which it looked toward the
southwest across open fields to the Charles,
and beyond the river and its marshes to the
pleasant hills of Brighton and Brookline, af-
forded it the setting of an appropriate land-
scape. Thus fortunate in all externals, the
home within was exceptionally happy. The
joys of domestic life, the pleasures of social
life, found their pattern and example here.
The rare social gifts with which Nature had
endowed him, cultivated by his experience in
Europe, made Longfellow a delightful host,
or guest, or companion. He possessed the first
requisite of all fine social art, — a real desire
to give pleasure; he was quite free from van-
ity, and while he was master of large resources
in conversation, he did not use them for dis-
play, but with the light touch and the kindly
humor which give ease and grace to talk. He
never uttered a bitter or cynical word. No
one enjoyed more than he the beauty and ele-
gance which contribute, nay, which are es-
sential, to the charm of society at its best, and
without extravagance or ostentation he se-
[ 27 ]
LONGFELLOW
cured them so far as possible in his own sur-
roundings. Like the scholar in the Prelude to
the "Tales of a Wayside Inn," he was
"A man of such a genial mood
The heart of all things he embraced,
And yet of such fastidious taste,
He never found the best too good."
It was, indeed, the best company that
Longfellow gathered round the hospitable
Craigie House table, and pleasanter dinners
or suppers were never given than those over
which, for many years, Mrs. Longfellow
presided with sweet, gracious dignity, and at
which the familiar guests were not unworthy
of their hosts. Among the most familiar were
Lowell, the near neighbor and constant friend;
Tom Appleton, the brother of Mrs. Longfel-
low, the wit, the humorist, possessed, as he
with but partial truth complained, of the
temperament of genius without the genius;
Agassiz, with his fine amplitude of person,
intelligence, and sympathy; Felton, the most
genial and jovial of professors of Greek;
George W. Greene of Rhode Island, a friend
from the old days of Longfellow's first visit
[ 28 ]
LONGFELLOW
to Rome in 1827 ; while rarer but always wel-
come guests were Emerson, Hawthorne, Sum-
ner, Fields, Howells, and now and then Child
and George William Curtis, two of the plea-
santest and most lovable of men. Strangers
of distinction, foreign or native born, found
place at a table which culture and good-breed-
ing made cosmopolitan. Longfellow kept his
friendships in excellent repair; even those
which might seem to an outsider to cost more
than they were worth. He was true to what
had been ; remembrance maintained life in the
ashes of the old affection, and he never made
his own fame or his many occupations an excuse
for disregarding the claims of a dull acquaint-
ance, or of one fallen in the world.
In the peaceful warmth and light of domes-
tic joys and social pleasures, the genius
of the poet found its true atmosphere. His
voice took on a fuller tone, the range of his
expression became wider and its mode more
confident, and when in 1847 he published
"Evangeline," a longer and more elaborate
composition than he had hitherto attempted,
his reputation was largely enhanced, and his
[ 29 ]
LONGFELLOW
position as the most popular poet of his gener-
ation was assured. The picturesque charm,
the tender sentiment, the imaginative sympa-
thy, the purity of tone of this sweetest of idyllic
poems, are known to all readers of English
poetry.
Happy at home, conscious of the ripening
of his own powers, in the enjoyment of well-
deserved fame, the course of Longfellow's
life ran smoothly on. His college duties gave
a regular routine to his days, but left him time
for his poetic pursuits, and for those occu-
pations and interests to which his disposition
most strongly inclined, and in which the fine
qualities of his nature were most attractively
displayed. He had his share in the common
experience of trials and sorrows. The death
of one of his little children touched his heart
deeply; but now as in the later time of abid-
ing sorrow, as Lowell truly said, —
"the more
Fate tried his bastions, she but forced a door
Leading to sweeter manhood and more sound."
His journal, printed in the "Life" by his
brother, contains the record of the events of
[ 30 ]
LONGFELLOW
these fortunate years, while the poems which
appeared in 1849 under the title of "The
Seaside and the Fireside" reveal the course of
his spiritual experience. In the beautiful
verses of "Dedication," with which this little
volume begins, he addressed the multitude
of his known and unknown readers with such
frank and cordial recognition of his relation
to them as to make them more than ever his
friends, and in the noble poem of "The Build-
ing of the Ship," which immediately follows
the "Dedication," he rendered a great public
service, in appealing to the national sentiment
of his people with such an inspiring passion
of patriotic fervor as quickened faith and
strengthened confidence in the already threat-
ened union of the States.
No living poet had now so wide a circle of
readers, and his readers could not but enter-
tain for him a sentiment more personal and
affectionate than that which any other poet
awakened. It was not by depth or novelty
of thought that he interested them, nor did he
move them by passionate intensity of emotion,
or by profound spiritual insight, or by power
[ 31 ]
LONGFELLOW
of dramatic representation and interpretation
of life. He set himself neither to propound
nor to solve the enigmas of existence. No, the
briefer poems by which he won and held the
hearts of his readers were the expression of
simple feeling, of natural emotion, not of ex-
ceptional spiritual experience, but of such as is
common to men of good intent. In exquisitely
modulated verse he continued to give form to
their vague ideals, and utterance to their
stammering aspirations. In revealing his own
pure and sincere nature, he helped others to
recognize their own better selves. The strength
and simplicity of his moral sentiment made his
poems the more attractive and helpful to the
mass of men, who care, as I have said, rather
for the ethical significance than for the art of
poetry; but the beauty of his verse enforced
its teaching, and the melody of its form was
consonant with the sweetness of its spirit. In
the series of delightful stories which year after
year he told in the successive parts of "The
Wayside Inn," there were few which did not
have for motive some wise lesson of life, some
doctrine of charity, gentleness, and faith. The
[ 32 ]
LONGFELLOW
spirit of humanity, of large hope, of cheerful
confidence in good, — this spirit into which he
was born, and of which his own nature was
one of the fairest outcomes, — this spirit of the
New England of the early nineteenth century,
— is embodied in his verse.
And the charm which his verse exercised
over its readers, especially over its American
readers, continued to be enhanced by the
variety and abundance of its sources. From
Sicily to Norway, from the castles of Spain to
the vineyards of France, from the strongholds
of the Rhine to the convents of Italy, the poet
was everywhere at home, not as a passing
guest, but as an intimate familiar with the
landscape, the life, and the legends of the land.
He begins one of his poems, —
"Sweet the memory is to me
Of a land beyond the sea,"
and he made his readers sharers in the sweet-
ness. In thus enlarging the field of vision for
his readers, in stimulating their historic imagi-
nation, and in quickening their sympathies
with their fellows of other lands, Longfellow
was unrivalled. His poems were a large con-
[ 33 ]
LONGFELLOW
tribution to that world-literature, on which
Goethe set such store as the means of bring-
ing the nations into closer relations with each
other, by the increase of their mutual under-
standing and of their common sentiments.
Gratefully as the worth and beauty of his
work were generally recognized, Longfellow
did not escape from the penalties of success.
He had critics who, blinding themselves to the
essentially characteristic individuality of his
poetry, denied to him the possession of gen-
uine original powers, and sought to discover
defects alike in the substance and in the form
of his verse. His modest and sensitive nature
was hurt by their attacks, but his serenity
was little disturbed. The verdict of the more
competent judges, no less than that of the
uncritical public, went against them, and by
degrees the voices of depreciation and de-
traction became faint and silent.
"The Golden Legend," "The Song of
Hiawatha," "The Courtship of Miles Stand-
ish," were written and published between 1850
and 1860, and the peaceful, genial, hospitable
life ran on in its sunny and prosperous course,
[ 34 ]
LONGFELLOW
for the greater part of each year at Craigie
House, and during the summer at Newport or
Nahant. In 1854 Longfellow resigned his
professorship, but happy domestic cares, the
frequent company of friends, many social en-
gagements, the ever fresh companionship of
books, the writing of poetry, filled the days with
various interests and abundant occupation.
On a day in June, 1861, he wrote in his
Journal: "A delicious summer-day. Stroll
in the sunshine, thanking God." The words
are, as it were, the summary of his happy life,
and mark its close. On the ninth of July
Mrs. Longfellow was in the library with her
two little girls, engaged in amusing them by
sealing up small packages of their curls which
she had just cut off. The windows were open,
and the summer air was blowing through the
room. A drop of the sealing-wax fell on her
light muslin dress and set it on fire. To save
her children she fled from them to the hall.
Her husband sped from his study to her help.
He succeeded in extinguishing the flames but
he was severely burned, and for her there was
no recovery. The next morning she died.
[ 35 ]
LONGFELLOW
Calmly and resolutely Longfellow took up
the burden of life. He bore his grief with
manliness and silence. The admirable quali-
ties of his nature were never more apparent.
By degrees he resumed so far as was possible
his old habits of life, but with an ennobled
bearing, and unaffected serenity. In Febru-
ary, 1862, he writes in his journal: "The days
pass in dull monotony, and having nothing
to record I record nothing. A newspaper, a
novel, a vain attempt at more serious study,
and weariness — that is all." But a week later
comes the entry "Translated the beautiful
Canto XXV of the Paradiso" and there could
not have been a more appropriate or more
healing task. For the next five years the trans-
lation of the "Divine Comedy" was to be his
chief occupation, and the main restorative of
health. In May, 1867, the work was finished,
and on its publication it at once took its place,
a place which it is likely to hold, as the most
faithful and scholarly of the metrical verses of
the poem.
As the years went on Longfellow became to
all outward seeming cheerful as of old, and
[ 36 ]
LONGFELLOW
with perfect simplicity took his customary
delightful part in the society of his friends.
Again the life at Craigie House flowed on
in a peaceful current, but it was no longer a
summer stream. The light upon it was that
of the autumnal sun. Longfellow's fame was
steadily widening, and brought with it an
ever increasing burden of demands made upon
his time and strength by the visits or the let-
ters of a numberless host of strangers. The
penalty had its humorous side, but it was none
the less a penalty, exacted of the poet by the
great democracy of America and England
whose hearts he had touched, and who as-
sumed that the notoriety of his works justified
the treatment of their author as a public char-
acter. His courtesy and kindness were unfail-
ing, and his imaginative sympathy often led
him to make sacrifice of his time and strength
for the sake of giving pleasure to others. I
have told the story before, but it is worth re-
peating as an illustration of his invincible con-
siderateness for the feelings of men whom the
world is apt to rebuff, how one day when I
ventured to remonstrate with him for permit-
[ 37 ]
LONGFELLOW
ting the devastation of his hours by one of the
most pertinacious and undeserving of habitual
visitors, he listened with a humorous smile, and
then rebuked me by saying, "Why, Charles,
who will be kind to him if I am not?"
In 1868, in company with his daughters
and other friends, he once more, after an in-
terval of twenty-six years, visited Europe. He
was everywhere received with the heartiest
welcome, and as a guest of the highest distinc-
tion. The universities of Cambridge and of
Oxford each gave to him an honorary degree;
the Queen summoned him to Windsor; he
spent "two happy days with Tennyson;" he
made a short visit to Dickens at Gadshill.
Expressions of regard and affection flowed in
upon him from high and low, and not only in
England, but on the Continent as well, he met
with constant evidence of honor and regard.
He returned to America in the autumn of 1869,
and speedily resumed the old habits of life at
home. "It is pleasant to get back to it," he
wrote, "and yet sad."
He had enjoyed the experience of fame, but
adulation and the knowledge of the admira-
[ 38 ]
LONGFELLOW
tion in which he was held abroad as well as at
home, had not the least effect to quicken van-
ity or self-consciousness. The essential quali-
ties of his nature preserved him from all evil
consequences of flattery. He remained un-
touched by them, as simple in manner as in
heart, intrinsically modest and sound-minded.
He was "a man not to be spoiled by prosperity."
The approach of old age did not chill Long-
fellow's heart or diminish his poetic impulse
and skill. The poems in the little volume of
"Ultima Thule," published in 1880, bore wit-
ness that the prayer of the motto from Horace
on the title-page had been granted, — the
prayer for an old age with unimpaired mind,
not without honor nor lacking song.
Attended by all that should accompany old
age, life drew to its close. In the autumn of
1881 he had an attack of illness, which left
him in a condition of nervous prostration and
suffering. Neither pain nor sleeplessness could
overcome his patience ; the serenity of his soul
was unclouded, but his desire for death was
strong. In March, 1882, a chill caught in an
afternoon walk on his veranda brought on a
[ 39 ]
LONGFELLOW
sharp attack of illness, — his strength failed
rapidly, and after five days, on Friday, the 24th
of March, he died. Never had a poet been so
widely loved, never was the death of a poet
so widely mourned.
At the burial, Mr. Emerson, whose own
death was to follow in less than five weeks,
and whose powers of memory were already
shattered, standing near the grave, said to his
companion, "I cannot recall the name of our
friend, but he was a good man." Longfellow's
poetry is the image of his goodness. Its music,
the harmony of its verse and thought, the sim-
plicity of its expression, the sincerity of its sen-
timent, are all traits of character no less than
of genius. Like most other poets he doubt-
less wrote much that will not last, and as his
barque floats down the current of time there
will be jettison of part of the cargo. But what
remains will be dear to future generations
as to ours, and the lovers of the poetry will
then, as now, be lovers of the poet.
AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL POEMS
W S~^a, \l^ * O Cj-^-i^A-O^AjO-e^
THE BATTLE OF LOVELL'S POND1
Cold, cold is the north wind and rude is the blast
That sweeps like a hurricane loudly and fast,
As it moans through the tall waving pines lone and
drear,
Sighs a requiem sad o'er the warrior's bier.
The war-whoop is still, and the savage's yell
Has sunk into silence along the wild dell;
The din of the battle, the tumult, is o'er,
And the war-clarion's voice is now heard no more.
1 These verses were written by Longfellow in his fourteenth year,
and have interest as the first of his writing to appear in print. They
were published in the Portland Gazette November 17, 1820.
The battle to which they refer was famous in the annals of
Maine and New Hampshire, and the story of it was fitted to touch
a boy's fancy. It was one in the long series of unhappy fights be-
tween the settlers in the wild border region of Maine and the Indians
whom they dispossessed and maltreated. In the spring of 1724 a
volunteer company of forty-six men, under the command of Captain
John Lovewell, who in the preceding winter had conducted two suc-
cessful expeditions against the Indians, set out to attack the Indian
villages on the upper part of the Saco River. On the third of May,
near a large pond, they met a considerable body of Indians and en-
gaged in a battle in which Lovewell and more than thirty of his men
were killed. It was the last serious fight with the Indians in this
part of the country.
In 1825 the hundredth anniversary of the battle was commemorated
at Fryeburg, Maine, and the still youthful poet wrote an Ode for the
occasion.
[ 43 ]
PRELUDE TO
The warriors that fought for their country, and bled,
Have sunk to their rest; the damp earth is their bed;
No stone tells the place where their ashes repose,
Nor points out the spot from the graves of their foes.
They died in their glory, surrounded by fame,
And Victory's loud trump their death did proclaim;
They are dead; but they live in each Patriot's breast,
And their names are engraven on honor's bright crest.
PRELUDE TO VOICES OF THE NIGHT
Pleasant it was, when woods were green
And winds were soft and low,
To lie amid some sylvan scene,
Where, the long drooping boughs between,
Shadows dark and sunlight sheen
Alternate come and go;
Or where the denser grove receives
No sunlight from above,
But the dark foliage interweaves
In one unbroken roof of leaves,
Underneath whose sloping eaves
The shadows hardly move.
Beneath some patriarchal tree
I lay upon the ground;
His hoary arms uplifted he,
And all the broad leaves over me
[ 44 ]
VOICES OF THE NIGHT
Clapped their little hands in glee,
With one continuous sound ; —
A slumberous sound, a sound that brings
The feelings of a dream,
As of innumerable wings,
As, when a bell no longer swings,
Faint the hollow murmur rings
O'er meadow, lake, and stream.
And dreams of that which cannot die,
Bright visions, came to me,
As lapped in thought I used to lie,
And gaze into the summer sky,
Where the sailing clouds went by,
Like ships upon the sea;
Dreams that the soul of youth engage
Ere Fancy has been quelled;
Old legends of the monkish page,
Traditions of the saint and sage,
Tales that have the rime of age,
And chronicles of eld.
And, loving still these quaint old themes,
Even in the city's throng
I feel the freshness of the streams,
That, crossed by shades and sunny gleams,
Water the green land of dreams,
The holy land of song.
[ 45 ]
PRELUDE TO
Therefore, at Pentecost, which brings
The Spring, clothed like a bride,
When nestling buds unfold their wings,
And bishop's-caps have golden rings,
Musing upon many things,
I sought the woodlands wide.
The green trees whispered low and mild;
It was a sound of joy!
They were my playmates when a child,
And rocked me in their arms so wild!
Still they looked at me and smiled,
As if I were a boy;
And ever whispered, mild and low,
" Come, be a child once more ! "
And waved their long arms to and fro,
And beckoned solemnly and slow;
Oh, I could not choose but go
Into the woodlands hoar, —
Into the blithe and breathing air,
Into the solemn wood,
Solemn and silent everywhere!
Nature with folded hands seemed there,
Kneeling at her evening prayer!
Like one in prayer I stood.
Before me rose an avenue
Of tall and sombrous pines;
t 46 ]
VOICES OF THE NIGHT
Abroad their fan-like branches grew,
And, where the sunshine darted through,
Spread a vapor soft and blue,
In long and sloping lines.
And, falling on my weary brain,
Like a fast-falling shower,
The dreams of youth came back again, —
Low lispings of the summer rain,
Dropping on the ripened grain,
As once upon the flower.
Visions of childhood! Stay, oh, stay!
Ye were so sweet and wild!
And distant voices seemed to say,
"It cannot be! They pass away!
Other themes demand thy lay;
Thou art no more a child!
" The land of Song within thee lies,
Watered by living springs;
The lids of Fancy's sleepless eyes
Are gates unto that Paradise;
Holy thoughts, like stars, arise;
Its clouds are angels' wings.
"Learn, that henceforth thy song shall be,
Not mountains capped with snow,
Nor forests sounding like the sea,
Nor rivers flowing ceaselessly,
[ 47 ]
VOICES OF THE NIGHT
Where the woodlands bend to see
The bending heavens below.
"There is a forest where the din
Of iron branches sounds;
A mighty river roars between,
And whosoever looks therein
Sees the heavens all black with sin,
Sees not its depths nor bounds.
"Athwart the swinging branches cast,
Soft rays of sunshine pour;
Then comes the fearful wintry blast;
Our hopes, like withered leaves, fall fast;
Pallid lips say, 'It is past!
We can return no more!'
" Look, then, into thy heart, and write !
Yes, into life's deep stream!
All forms of sorrow and delight,
All solemn Voices of the Night,
That can soothe thee, or affright, —
Be these henceforth thy theme."
[ 48 ]
A PSALM OF LIFE
A PSALM OF LIFE
WHAT THE HEART OF THE YOUNG MAN SAID TO THE
PSALMIST
Tell me not, in mournful numbers,
Life is but an empty dream ! —
For the soul is dead that slumbers,
And things are not what they seem.
Life is real! Life is earnest!
And the grave is not its goal;
Dust thou art, to dust returnest,
Was not spoken of the soul.
Not enjoyment, and not sorrow,
Is our destined end or way;
But to act, that each to-morrow
Find us farther than to-day.
Art is long, and Time is fleeting,
And our hearts, though stout and brave,
Still, like muffled drums, are beating
Funeral marches to the grave.
In the world's broad field of battle,
In the bivouac of Life,
Be not like dumb, driven cattle!
Be a hero in the strife!
[ 49 ]
WRECK OF THE HESPERUS
Trust no Future, howe'er pleasant!
Let the dead Past bury its dead !
Act, — act in the living Present !
Heart within, and God o'erhead!
Lives of great men all remind us
We can make our lives sublime,
And, departing, leave behind us
Footprints on the sands of time;
Footprints, that perhaps another,
Sailing o'er life's solemn main,
A forlorn and shipwrecked brother,
Seeing, shall take heart again.
Let us, then, be up and doing,
With a heart for any fate;
Still achieving, still pursuing,
Learn to labor and to wait.
THE WRECK OF THE HESPERUS
It was the schooner Hesperus,
That sailed the wintry sea;
And the skipper had taken his little daughter,
To bear him company.
Blue were her eyes as the fairy-flax,
Her cheeks like the dawn of day,
[ 50 ]
WRECK OF THE HESPERUS
And her bosom white as the hawthorn buds,
That ope in the month of May.
The skipper he stood beside the helm,
His pipe was in his mouth,
And he watched how the veering flaw did blow
The smoke now West, now South.
Then up and spake an old Sailor,
Had sailed to the Spanish Main,
" I pray thee, put into yonder port,
For I fear a hurricane.
" Last night, the moon had a golden ring,
And to-night no moon we see!"
The skipper, he blew a whiff from his pipe,
And a scornful laugh laughed he.
Colder and louder blew the wind,
A gale from the Northeast,
The snow fell hissing in the brine,
And the billows frothed like yeast.
Down came the storm, and smote amain
The vessel in its strength;
She shuddered and paused, like a frighted steed,
Then leaped her cable's length.
"Come hither! come hither! my little daughter,
And do not tremble so;
[ 51 ]
WRECK OF THE HESPERUS
For I can weather the roughest gale
That ever wind did blow."
He wrapped her warm in his seaman's coat
Against the stinging blast;
He cut a rope from a broken spar,
And bound her to the mast.
" O father ! I hear the church-bells ring,
Oh say, what may it be ? "
" 'T is a fog-bell on a rock-bound coast ! " —
And he steered for the open sea.
" O father ! I hear the sound of guns,
Oh say, what may it be ? "
" Some ship in distress, that cannot live
In such an angry sea!"
" O father ! I see a gleaming light,
Oh say, what may it be ? "
But the father answered never a word,
A frozen corpse was he.
Lashed to the helm, all stiff and stark,
With his face turned to the skies,
The lantern gleamed through the gleaming snow
On his fixed and glassy eyes.
Then the maiden clasped her hands and prayed
That saved she might be;
[ 52 ]
WRECK OF THE HESPERUS
And she thought of Christ who stilled the wave,
On the Lake of Galilee.
And fast through the midnight dark and drear,
Through the whistling sleet and snow,
Like a sheeted ghost, the vessel swept
Tow'rds the reef of Norman's Woe.
And ever the fitful gusts between
A sound came from the land;
It was the sound of the trampling surf
On the rocks and the hard sea-sand.
The breakers were right beneath her bows,
She drifted a dreary wreck,
And a whooping billow swept the crew
Like icicles from her deck.
She struck where the white and fleecy waves
Looked soft as carded wool,
But the cruel rocks, they gored her side
Like the horns of an angry bull.
Her rattling shrouds, all sheathed in ice,
With the masts went by the board;
Like a vessel of glass, she stove and sank,
Ho! ho! the breakers roared!
At daybreak, on the bleak sea-beach,
A fisherman stood aghast,
[ 53 ]
THE VILLAGE BLACKSMITH
To see the form of a maiden fair,
Lashed close to a drifting mast.
The salt sea was frozen on her breast,
The salt tears in her eyes;
And he saw her hair, like the brown seaweed,
On the billows fall and rise.
Such was the wreck of the Hesperus,
In the midnight and the snow!
Christ save us all from a death like this,
On the reef of Norman's Woe!
THE VILLAGE BLACKSMITH1
Under a spreading chestnut-tree
The village smithy stands;
The smith, a mighty man is he,
With large and sinewy hands;
And the muscles of his brawny arms
Are strong as iron bands.
His hair is crisp, and black, and long,
His face is like the tan;
1 The suggestion of this poem came from the smithy which the
poet passed daily, and which stood beneath a horse-chestnut tree
not far from his house in Cambridge. The tree, against the pro-
tests of Mr. Longfellow and others, was removed in 1876, on the
ground that it took up too much of the road.
[ 54 ]
THE VILLAGE BLACKSMITH
His brow is wet with honest sweat,
He earns whate'er he can,
And looks the whole world in the face,
For he owes not any man.
Week in, week out, from morn till night,
You can hear his bellows blow;
You can hear him swing his heavy sledge,
With measured beat and slow,
Like a sexton ringing the village bell,
When the evening sun is low.
And children coming home from school
Look in at the open door;
They love to see the flaming forge,
And hear the bellows roar,
And watch the burning sparks that fly
Like chaff from a threshing-floor.
He goes on Sunday to the church,
And sits among his boys;
He hears the parson pray and preach.
He hears his daughter's voice,
Singing in the village choir,
And it makes his heart rejoice.
It sounds to him like her mother's voice,
Singing in Paradise!
He needs must think of her once more,
How in the grave she lies;
[ 55 ]
TO THE RIVER CHARLES
And with his hard, rough hand he wipes
A tear out of his eyes.
Toiling, — rejoicing, — sorrowing,
Onward through life he goes;
Each morning sees some task begin,
Each evening sees it close;
Something attempted, something done,
Has earned a night's repose.
Thanks, thanks to thee, my worthy friend,
For the lesson thou hast taught!
Thus at the flaming forge of life
Our fortunes must be wrought;
Thus on its sounding anvil shaped
Each burning deed and thought.
TO THE RIVER CHARLES
River! that in silence windest
Through the meadows, bright and free,
Till at length thy rest thou findest
In the bosom of the sea!
Four long years of mingled feeling,
Half in rest, and half in strife,
I have seen thy waters stealing
Onward, like the stream of life.1
1 The river Charles flows in view of Craigie House, which Mr.
Longfellow began to occupy in the summer of 1837.
[ 56 ]
TO THE RIVER CHARLES
Thou hast taught me, Silent River!
Many a lesson, deep and long;
Thou hast been a generous giver;
I can give thee but a song.
Oft in sadness and in illness,
I have watched thy current glide,
Till the beauty of its stillness
Overflowed me, like a tide.
And in better hours and brighter,
When I saw thy waters gleam,
I have felt my heart beat lighter,
And leap onward with thy stream.
Not for this alone I love thee,
Nor because thy waves of blue
From celestial seas above thee
Take their own celestial hue.
Where yon shadowy woodlands hide thee,
And thy waters disappear,
Friends I love have dwelt beside thee,
And have made thy margin dear.
More than this ; — thy name reminds me
Of three friends,1 all true and tried;
And that name, like magic, binds me
Closer, closer to thy side.
1 These three friends were Charles Sumner, Charles Folsom, and
Charles Amory.
[ 57 ]
THE BRIDGE
Friends my soul with joy remembers !
How like quivering flames they start,
When I fan the living embers
On the hearthstone of my heart !
'Tis for this, thou Silent River!
That my spirit leans to thee;
Thou hast been a generous giver,
Take this idle song from me.
THE BRIDGE.1
I stood on the bridge at midnight,
As the clocks were striking the hour,
And the moon rose o'er the city,
Behind the dark church-tower.
I saw her bright reflection
In the waters under me,
Like a golden goblet falling
And sinking into the sea.
And far in the hazy distance
Of that lovely night in June,
1 The poem when first published in 1845 was entitled The Bridge
over the Charles, the river which separates Cambridge from Boston.
The old wooden bridge has now, 1906, given place to one of stone.
The " flaming furnace " referred to in the third stanza was that of
an iron foundry on the so-called Milldam between Boston and
Brookline.
[ 58 ]
THE BRIDGE
The blaze of the flaming furnace
Gleamed redder than the moon.
Among the long, black rafters
The wavering shadows lay,
And the current that came from the ocean
Seemed to lift and bear them away;
As, sweeping and eddying through them,
Rose the belated tide,
And, streaming into the moonlight,
The seaweed floated wide.
And like those waters rushing
Among the wooden piers,
A flood of thoughts came o'er me
That filled my eyes with tears.
How often, oh how often,
In the days that had gone by,
I had stood on that bridge at midnight
And gazed on that wave and sky!
How often, oh how often,
I had wished that the ebbing tide
Would bear me away on its bosom
O'er the ocean wild and wide !
For my heart was hot and restless,
And my life was full of care,
[ 59 ]
THE BRIDGE
And the burden laid upon me
Seemed greater than I could bear.
But now it has fallen from me,
It is buried in the sea;
And only the sorrow of others
Throws its shadow over me.
Yet whenever I cross the river
On its bridge with wooden piers,
Like the odor of brine from the ocean
Comes the thought of other years.
And I think how many thousands
Of care-encumbered men,
Each bearing his burden of sorrow,
Have crossed the bridge since then.
I see the long procession
Still passing to and fro,
The young heart hot and restless,
And the old subdued and slow!
And forever and forever,
As long as the river flows,
As long as the heart has passions,
As long as life has woes;
The moon and its broken reflection
And its shadows shall appear,
As the symbol of love in heaven,
And its wavering image here.
[ 60 ]
THE ROPEWALK
THE ROPEWALK.1
In that building, long and low,
With its windows all a-row,
Like the port-holes of a hulk,
Human spiders spin and spin,
Backward down their threads so thin
Dropping, each a hempen bulk.
At the end, an open door;
Squares of sunshine on the floor
Light the long and dusky lane;
And the whirring of a wheel,
Dull and drowsy, makes me feel
All its spokes are in my brain.
As the spinners to the end
Downward go and reascend,
Gleam the long threads in the sun;
While within this brain of mine
Cobwebs brighter and more fine
By the busy wheel are spun.
Two fair maidens in a swing,
Like white doves upon the wing,
First before my vision pass;
Laughing, as their gentle hands
1 The Ropewalk stood on the further end of the open tract, of
which the greater part is now, 1906, known as the Soldiers' Field.
[ 61 ]
THE ROPEWALK
Closely clasp the twisted strands,
At their shadow on the grass.
Then a booth of mountebanks,
With its smell of tan and planks,
And a girl poised high in air
On a cord, in spangled dress,
With a faded loveliness,
And a weary look of care.
Then a homestead among farms,
And a woman with bare arms
Drawing water from a well;
As the bucket mounts apace,
With it mounts her own fair face,
As at some magician's spell.
Then an old man in a tower,
Ringing loud the noontide hour,
While the rope coils round and round
Like a serpent at his feet,
And again, in swift retreat,
Nearly lifts him from the ground.
Then within a prison-yard,
Faces fixed, and stern, and hard,
Laughter and indecent mirth;
Ah ! it is the gallows-tree !
Breath of Christian charity,
Blow, and sweep it from the earth!
[ 62 ]
A GLEAM OF SUNSHINE
Then a school-boy, with his kite
Gleaming in a sky of light,
And an eager, upward look;
Steeds pursued through lane and field;
Fowlers with their snares concealed;
And an angler by a brook.
Ships rejoicing in the breeze,
Wrecks that float o'er unknown seas,
Anchors dragged through faithless sand ;
Sea-fog drifting overhead,
And, with lessening line and lead,
Sailors feeling for the land.
All these scenes do I behold,
These, and many left untold,
In that building long and low;
While the wheel goes round and round,
With a drowsy, dreamy sound,
And the spinners backward go.
A GLEAM OF SUNSHINE
This is the place. Stand still, my steed,
Let me review the scene,
And summon from the shadowy Past
The forms that once have been.
The Past and Present here unite
Beneath Time's flowing tide,
[ 63 ]
A GLEAM OF SUNSHINE
Like footprints hidden by a brook,
But seen on either side.
Here runs the highway to the town;
There the green lane descends,
Through which I walked to church with thee,
O gentlest of my friends!1
The shadow of the linden-trees
Lay moving on the grass;
Between them and the moving boughs,
A shadow, thou didst pass.
Thy dress was like the lilies,
And thy heart as pure as they:
One of God's holy messengers
Did walk with me that day.
I saw the branches of the trees
Bend down thy touch to meet,
The clover-blossoms in the grass
Rise up to kiss thy feet.
"Sleep, sleep to-day, tormenting cares,
Of earth and folly born ! "
Solemnly sang the village choir
On that sweet Sabbath morn.
1 The scene of this poem is mentioned in the poet's diary under
date of August 31, 1846. "In the afternoon a delicious drive with F.
and C. through Brookline, by the church and ' the green lane,' and
homeward through a lovelier lane, with barberries and wild vines
clustering over the old stone walls."
[ 64 ]
A GLEAM OF SUNSHINE
Through the closed blinds the golden sun
Poured in a dusty beam,
Like the celestial ladder seen
By Jacob in his dream.
And ever and anon, the wind
Sweet-scented with the hay,
Turned o'er the hymn-book's fluttering leaves
That on the window lay.
Long was the good man's sermon,
Yet it seemed not so to me;
For he spake of Ruth the beautiful,
And still I thought of thee.
Long was the prayer he uttered,
Yet it seemed not so to me;
For in my heart I prayed with him,
And still I thought of thee.
But now, alas ! the place seems changed ;
Thou art no longer here :
Part of the sunshine of the scene
With thee did disappear.
Though thoughts, deep-rooted in my heart,
Like pine-trees dark and high,
Subdue the light of noon, and breathe
A low and ceaseless sigh;
[ 65 ]
TO A CHILD
This memory brightens o'er the past,
As when the sun, concealed
Behind some cloud that near us hangs,
Shines on a distant field.
TO A CHILD
Dear Child ! how radiant on thy mother's knee,
With merry-making eyes and jocund smiles,
Thou gazest at the painted tiles,
Whose figures grace,
With many a grotesque form and face,
The ancient chimney of thy nursery!
The lady with the gay macaw,
The dancing girl, the brave bashaw
With bearded lip and chin;
And, leaning idly o'er his gate,
Beneath the imperial fan of state,
The Chinese mandarin.
With what a look of proud command
Thou shakest in thy little hand
The coral rattle with its silver bells,
Making a merry tune !
Thousands of years in Indian seas
That coral grew, by slow degrees,
Until some deadly and wild monsoon
Dashed it on Coromandel's sand!
Those silver bells
[ 66 ]
TO A CHILD
Reposed of yore,
As shapeless ore,
Far down in the deep-sunken wells
Of darksome mines,
In some obscure and sunless place,
Beneath huge Chimborazo's base,
Or Potosi's o'erhanging pines!
And thus for thee, O little child,
Through many a danger and escape,
The tall ships passed the stormy cape;
For thee in foreign lands remote,
Beneath a burning, tropic clime,
The Indian peasant, chasing the wild goat,
Himself as swift and wild,
In falling, clutched the frail arbute,
The fibres of whose shallow root,
Uplifted from the soil, betrayed
The silver veins beneath it laid,
The buried treasures of the miser, Time.
But, lo! thy door is left ajar;
Thou hearest footsteps from afar;
And, at the sound,
Thou turnest round
With quick and questioning eyes,
Like one who, in a foreign land,
Beholds on every hand
Some source of wonder and surprise !
And, restlessly, impatiently,
Thou strivest, strugglest, to be free.
[ 67 ]
TO A CHILD
The four walls of thy nursery
Are now like prison walls to thee.
No more thy mother's smiles,
No more the painted tiles,
Delight thee, nor the playthings on the floor,
That won thy little, beating heart before;
Thou strugglest for the open door.
Through these once solitary halls
Thy pattering footstep falls.
The sound of thy merry voice
Makes the old walls
Jubilant, and they rejoice
With the joy of thy young heart,
O'er the light of whose gladness
No shadows of sadness
From the sombre background of memory start.
Once, ah! once, within these walls,
One whom memory oft recalls,
The Father of his Country, dwelt. ,
And yonder meadows broad and damp
The fires of the besieging camp
Encircled with a burning belt.
Up and down these echoing stairs,
Heavy with the weight of cares,
Sounded his majestic tread;
Yes ! within this very room
Sat he in those hours of gloom,
Weary both in heart and head.
[ 68 ]
TO A CHILD
But what are these grave thoughts to thee ?
Out, out! into the open air!
Thy only dream is liberty,
Thou carest little how or where.
I see thee eager at thy play,
Now shouting to the apples on the tree,
With cheeks as round and red as they;
And now among the yellow stalks,
Among the flowering shrubs and plants,
As restless as the bee.
Along the garden walks,
The tracks of thy small carriage-wheels I trace;
And see at every turn how they efface
Whole villages of sand-roofed tents,
That rise like golden domes
Above the cavernous and secret homes
Of wandering and nomadic tribes of ants.
Ah, cruel little Tamerlane,
Who, with thy dreadful reign,
Dost persecute and overwhelm
These hapless Troglodytes of thy realm!
What ! tired already ! with those suppliant looks,
And voice more beautiful than a poet's books
Or murmuring sound of water as it flows,
Thou comest back to parley with repose!
This rustic seat in the old apple-tree,
With its o'erhanging golden canopy
Of leaves illuminate with autumnal hues,
And shining with the argent light of dews,
t 69 ]
TO A CHILD
Shall for a season be our place of rest.
Beneath us, like an oriole's pendent nest,
From which the laughing birds have taken wing,
By thee abandoned, hangs thy vacant swing.
Dream-like the waters of the river gleam ;
A sailless vessel drops adown the stream,
And like it, to a sea as wide and deep,
Thou driftest gently down the tides of sleep.
0 child! O new-born denizen
Of life's great city ! on thy head
The glory of the morn is shed,
Like a celestial benison!
Here at the portal thou dost stand,
And with thy little hand
Thou openest the mysterious gate
Into the future's undiscovered land.
1 see its valves expand,
As at the touch of Fate!
Into those realms of love and hate,
Into that darkness blank and drear,
By some prophetic feeling taught,
I launch the bold, adventurous thought,
Freighted with hope and fear;
As upon subterranean streams,
In caverns unexplored and dark,
Men sometimes launch a fragile bark,
Laden with flickering fire,
And watch its swift receding beams,
[ 70 ]
TO A CHILD
Until at length they disappear,
And in the distant dark expire.
By what astrology of fear or hope
Dare I to cast thy horoscope !
Like the new moon thy life appears;
A little strip of silver light,
And widening outward into night
The shadowy disk of future years;
And yet upon its outer rim,
A luminous circle, faint and dim,
And scarcely visible to us here,
Rounds and completes the perfect sphere;
A prophecy and intimation,
A pale and feeble adumbration,
Of the great world of light, that lies
Behind all human destinies.
Ah ! if thy fate, with anguish fraught,
Should be to wet the dusty soil
With the hot tears and sweat of toil, —
To struggle with imperious thought,
Until the overburdened brain,
Weary with labor, faint with pain,
Like a jarred pendulum, retain
Only its motion, not its power, —
Remember, in that perilous hour,
When most afflicted and oppressed,
From labor there shall come forth rest.
[ 71 ]
TO A CHILD
And if a more auspicious fate
On thy advancing steps await,
Still let it ever be thy pride
To linger by the laborer's side;
With words of sympathy or song
To cheer the dreary march along
Of the great army of the poor,
O'er desert sand, o'er dangerous moor.
Nor to thyself the task shall be
Without reward; for thou shalt learn
The wisdom early to discern
True beauty in utility;
As great Pythagoras of yore,
Standing beside the blacksmith's door,
And hearing the hammers, as they smote
The anvils with a different note,
Stole from the varying tones, that hung
Vibrant on every iron tongue,
The secret of the sounding wire,
And formed the seven-chorded lyre.
Enough! I will not play the Seer;
I will no longer strive to ope
The mystic volume, where appear
The herald Hope, forerunning Fear,
And Fear, the pursuivant of Hope.
Thy destiny remains untold;
For, like Acestes* shaft of old,
The swift thought kindles as it flies,
And burns to ashes in the skies.
[ 72 ]
THE OPEN WINDOW
THE OPEN WINDOW
The old house by the lindens l
Stood silent in the shade,
And on the gravelled pathway
The light and shadow played.
I saw the nursery windows
Wide open to the air;
But the faces of the children,
They were no longer there.
The large Newfoundland house-dog
Was standing by the door;
He looked for his little playmates,
Who would return no more.
They walked not under the lindens,
They played not in the hall;
But shadow, and silence, and sadness
Were hanging over all.
The birds sang in the branches,
With sweet, familiar tone;
1 The old house by the lindens is what was known as the Lechmere
house which stood on Brattle Street, at the corner of Sparks Street,
in Cambridge. It was in this house that Baron Riedesel was quartered
as prisoner of war after the surrender of Burgoyne, and the window-
pane used to be shown on which the Baroness wrote her name with a
diamond.
[ 73 ]
CHURCHYARD AT CAMBRIDGE
But the voices of the children
Will be heard in dreams alone!
And the boy that walked beside me,
He could not understand
Why closer in mine, ah ! closer,
I pressed his warm, soft hand!
IN THE CHURCHYARD AT CAMBRIDGE
In the village churchyard she lies,
Dust is in her beautiful eyes,
No more she breathes, nor feels, nor stirs;
At her feet and at her head
Lies a slave to attend the dead,
But their dust is white as hers.
Was she, a lady of high degree,
So much in love with the vanity
And foolish pomp of this world of ours ?
Or was it Christian charity,
And lowliness and humility,
The richest and rarest of all dowers ?
Who shall tell us ? No one speaks ;
No color shoots into those cheeks,
Either of anger or of pride,
At the rude question we have asked;
Nor will the mystery be unmasked
By those who are sleeping at her side.
[ 74 ]
THE BURIAL OF THE POET
Hereafter ? — And do you think to look
On the terrible pages of that Book
To find her failings, faults, and errors ?
Ah, you will then have other cares,
In your own shortcomings and despairs,
In your own secret sins and terrors!
THE BURIAL OF THE POET1
In the old churchyard of his native town,
And in the ancestral tomb beside the wall,
We laid him in the sleep that comes to all,
And left him to his rest and his renown.
The snow was falling, as if Heaven dropped down
White flowers of Paradise to strew his pall; —
The dead around him seemed to wake, and call
His name, as worthy of so white a crown.
And now the moon is shining on the scene,
And the broad sheet of snow is written o'er
With shadows cruciform of leafless trees,
As once the winding-sheet of Saladin
With chapters of the Koran ; but, ah ! more
Mysterious and triumphant signs are these.
1 The Poet was Richard Henry Dana, author of "The Buccaneer"
and other memorable poems. He died in 1879.
[ 75 ]
THE TWO ANGELS
THE TWO ANGELS1
Two angels, one of Life and one of Death,
Passed o'er our village as the morning broke;
The dawn was on their faces, and beneath,
The sombre houses hearsed with plumes of smoke.
Their attitude and aspect were the same,
Alike their features and their robes of white;
But one was crowned with amaranth, as with flame,
And one with asphodels, like flakes of light.
I saw them pause on their celestial way;
Then said I, with deep fear and doubt oppressed,
" Beat not so loud, my heart, lest thou betray
The place where thy beloved are at rest!"
And he who wore the crown of asphodels,
Descending, at my door began to knock,
And my soul sank within me, as in wells
The waters sink before an earthquake's shock.
I recognized the nameless agony,
The terror and the tremor and the pain,
That oft before had filled or haunted me,
And now returned with threefold strength again.
1 This poem was written, as Mr. Longfellow told in a letter, " on
the birth of my younger daughter, and the death of the young and
beautiful wife of my neighbor and friend, the poet Lowell." The
date was the twenty-seventh of October, 1853.
[ 76 ]
THE TWO ANGELS
The door I opened to my heavenly guest,
And listened, for I thought I heard God's voice;
And, knowing whatsoe'er he sent was best,
Dared neither to lament nor to rejoice.
Then with a smile, that filled the house with light,
"My errand is not Death, but Life," he said;
And ere I answered, passing out of sight,
On his celestial embassy he sped.
'T was at thy door, O friend ! and not at mine,
The angel with the amaranthine wreath,
Pausing, descended, and with voice divine
Whispered a word that had a sound like Death.
Then fell upon the house a sudden gloom,
A shadow on those features fair and thin;
And softly, from that hushed and darkened room,
Two angels issued, where but one went in.
All is of God ! If he but wave his hand,
The mists collect, the rain falls thick and loud,
Till, with a smile of light on sea and land,
Lo! he looks back from the departing cloud.
Angels of Life and Death alike are his;
Without his leave they pass no threshold o'er;
Who, then, would wish or dare, believing this,
Against his messengers to shut the door ?
[ 77 ]
RESIGNATION
RESIGNATION 1
There is no flock, however watched and tended,
But one dead lamb is there!
There is no fireside, howsoe'er defended,
But has one vacant chair!
The air is full of farewells to the dying,
And mournings for the dead;
The heart of Rachel, for her children crying,
Will not be comforted!
Let us be patient! These severe afflictions
Not from the ground arise,
But oftentimes celestial benedictions
Assume this dark disguise.
We see but dimly through the mists and vapors;
Amid these earthly damps
WTiat seem to us but sad, funereal tapers
May be heaven's distant lamps.
There is no Death ! What seems so is transition ;
This life of mortal breath
Is but a suburb of the life elysian,
Whose portal we call Death.
1 Written in the autumn of 1848, after the death of his little daughter
Fanny. There is a passage in the poet's diary, under date of Novem-
ber 12, in which he says: "I feel very sad to-day. I miss very much
my dear little Fanny. An inappeasable longing to see her comes over
me at times, which I can hardly control."
[ 78 ]
RESIGNATION
She is not dead, — the child of our affection, —
But gone unto that school
Where she no longer needs our poor protection,
And Christ himself doth rule.
In that great cloister's stillness and seclusion,
By guardian angels led,
Safe from temptation, safe from sin's pollution,
She lives, whom we call dead.
Day after day we think what she is doing
In those bright realms of air;
Year after year, her tender steps pursuing,
Behold her grown more fair.
Thus do we walk with her, and keep unbroken
The bond which nature gives,
Thinking that our remembrance, though unspoken,
May reach her where she lives.
Not as a child shall we again behold her;
For when with raptures wild
In our embraces we again enfold her,
She will not be a child;
But a fair maiden, in her Father's mansion,
Clothed with celestial grace;
And beautiful with all the soul's expansion
Shall we behold her face.
[ 79 ]
SEASIDE AND FIRESIDE
And though at times impetuous with emotion
And anguish long suppressed,
The swelling heart heaves moaning like the ocean,
That cannot be at rest, —
We will be patient, and assuage the feeling
We may not wholly stay;
By silence sanctifying, not concealing,
The grief that must have way.
DEDICATION TO THE VOLUME ENTITLED
« THE SEASIDE AND THE FIRESIDE "
As one who, walking in the twilight gloom,
Hears round about him voices as it darkens,
And seeing not the forms from which they come,
Pauses from time to time, and turns and hearkens ;
So walking here in twilight, O my friends!
I hear your voices, softened by the distance,
And pause, and turn to listen, as each sends
His words of friendship, comfort, and assistance.
If any thought of mine, or sung or told,
Has ever given delight or consolation,
Ye have repaid me back a thousand-fold,
By every friendly sign and salutation.
Thanks for the sympathies that ye have shown !
Thanks for each kindly word, each silent token,
[ 80 ]
SEASIDE AND FIRESIDE
That teaches me, when seeming most alone,
Friends are around us, though no word be spoken.
Kind messages, that pass from land to land;
Kind letters, that betray the heart's deep history,
In which we feel the pressure of a hand, —
One touch of fire, — and all the rest is mystery !
The pleasant books, that silently among
Our household treasures take familiar places,
And are to us as if a living tongue
Spake from the printed leaves or pictured faces!
Perhaps on earth I never shall behold,
With eye of sense, your outward form and semblance;
Therefore to me ye never will grow old,
But live forever young in my remembrance !
Never grow old, nor change, nor pass away!
Your gentle voices will flow on forever,
When life grows bare and tarnished with decay,
As through a leafless landscape flows a river.
Not chance of birth or place has made us friends,
Being oftentimes of different tongues and nations,
But the endeavor for the selfsame ends,
With the same hopes, and fears, and aspirations.
Therefore I hope to join your seaside walk,
Saddened, and mostly silent, with emotion;
[ 81 ]
MY LOST YOUTH
Not interrupting with intrusive talk
The grand, majestic symphonies of ocean.
Therefore I hope, as no unwelcome guest,
At your warm fireside, when the lamps are lighted,
To have my place reserved among the rest,
Nor stand as one unsought and uninvited!
MY LOST YOUTH
Often I think of the beautiful town
That is seated by the sea; 1
Often in thought go up and down
The pleasant streets of that dear old town,
And my youth comes back to me.
And a verse of a Lapland song
Is haunting my memory still:
"A boy's will is the wind's will,
And the thoughts of youth are long, long thoughts."
1 Under the date of March 29, 1855, Longfellow notes in his f)iary:
" At night, as I lie in bed, a poem comes into my mind — a memory
of Portland, my native town, the city by the sea." And the next day
he makes the following entry: "Wrote the poem, and am rather
pleased with the bringing in of the two lines of the old Lapland song
A boy's will is the wind's will
And the thoughts of youth are long, long thoughts."
The lines are to be found in a Latin treatise entitled Lapponea,
published in 1674, being a description of Lapland and its people,
by Johannes Scheffer, Professor at Upsala. Chapter xxv relates to
the marriage customs of the Lapps, and a nuptial song is given in
the original Lappish in which the words occur that are translated as
follows: "Puerorum voluntas, voluntas venti, juvenum cogitationes,
longae cogitationes."
[ 82 ]
MY LOST YOUTH
I can see the shadowy lines of its trees,
And catch, in sudden gleams,
The sheen of the far-surrounding seas,
And islands that were the Hesperides
Of all my boyish dreams.
And the burden of that old song,
It murmurs and whispers still:
"A boy's will is the wind's will,
And the thoughts of youth are long, long thoughts."
I remember the black wharves and the slips,
And the sea-tides tossing free;
And Spanish sailors with bearded lips,
And the beauty and mystery of the ships,
And the magic of the sea.
And the voice of that wayward song
Is singing and saying still:
"A boy's will is the wind's will,
And the thoughts of youth are long, long thoughts."
I remember the bulwarks by the shore,
And the fort upon the hill;
The sunrise gun, with its hollow roar,
The drum -beat repeated o'er and o'er,
And the bugle wild and shrill.
And the music of that old song
Throbs' in my memory still:
"A boy's will is the wind's will,
And the thoughts of youth are long, long thoughts."
[ 83 ]
MY LOST YOUTH
I remember the sea-fight * far away,
How it thundered o'er the tide !
And the dead captains, as they lay
In their graves, o'erlooking the tranquil bay
Where they in battle died.
And the sound of that mournful song
Goes through me with a thrill:
"A boy's will is the wind's will,
And the thoughts of youth are long, long thoughts."
I can see the breezy dome of groves,
The shadows of Deering's Woods;
And the friendships old and the early loves
Come back with a Sabbath sound, as of doves
In quiet neighborhoods.
And the verse of that sweet old song,
It flutters and murmurs still:
"A boy's will is the wind's will,
And the thoughts of youth are long, long thoughts."
I remember the gleams and glooms that dart
Across the school-boy's brain;
The song and the silence in the heart,
That in part are prophecies, and in part
Are longings wild and vain.
And the voice of that fitful song
1 In 1813, when Longfellow was a boy of six, there was an engage-
ment off the harbor of Portland between the American brig Enter-
prise and the English brig Boxer. Both captains were slain, but the
Enterprise won the day, and after a fight of three quarters of an hour
came into the harbor, bringing the Boxer with her.
[ 84 ]
MY LOST YOUTH
Sings on, and is never still*
"A boy's will is the wind's will,
And the thoughts of youth are long, long thoughts."
There are things of which I may not speak;
There are dreams that cannot die;
There are thoughts that make the strong Jieart weak,
And bring a pallor into the cheek,
And a mist before the eye.
And the words of that fatal song
Come over me like a chill:
"A boy's will is the wind's will,
And the thoughts of youth are long, long thoughts."
Strange to me now are the forms I meet,
When I visit the dear old town;
But the native air is pure and sweet,
And the trees that o'ershadow each well-known street,
As they balance up and dowrf,
Are singing the beautiful song,
Are sighing and whispering still:
"A boy's will is the wind's will,
And the thoughts of youth are long, long thoughts."
And Deering's Woods are fresh and fair,
And with joy that is almost pain
My heart goes back to wander there,
And among the dreams of the days that were,
I find my lost youth again.
And the strange and beautiful song,
[ 85 ]
BIRTHDAY OF AGASSIZ
The groves are repeating it still:
"A boy's will is the wind's will,
And the thoughts of youth are long, long thoughts."
THE FIFTIETH BIRTHDAY OF AGASSIZ1
MAY 28,1857.
It was fifty years ago
In the pleasant month of May,
In the beautiful Pays de Vaud,
A child in its cradle lay.
And Nature, the old nurse, took
The child upon her knee,
Saying: "Here is a story-book
Thy Father has written for thee."
" Come, wander with me," she said,
"Into regions yet untrod;
And read what is still unread
In the manuscripts of God."
And he wandered away and away
With Nature, the dear old nurse,
Who sang to him night and day
The rhymes of the universe.
1 Louis John Rudolph Agassiz, the great naturalist and teacher,
was born in Switzerland, May 28, 1807, and died at Cambridge,
Massachusetts, December 14, 1873.
[ 86 ]
HAWTHORNE
And whenever the way seemed long,
Or his heart began to fail,
She would sing a more wonderful song,
Or tell a more marvellous tale.
So she keeps him still a child,
And will not let him go,
Though at times his heart beats wild
For the beautiful Pays de Vaud;
Though at times he hears in his dreams
The Ranz des Vaches of old,
And the rush of mountain streams
From glaciers clear and cold;
And the mother at home says, " Hark !
For his voice I listen and yearn ;
It is growing late and dark,
And my boy does not return!"
HAWTHORNE
MAY 23, 1864.1
How beautiful it was, that one bright day
In the long week of rain !
1 The date is that of the burial of Hawthorne. The poem was writ-
ten just a month later. Mr. Longfellow wrote to Mr. Fields : "I have
only tried to describe the state of mind I was in on that day. Did you
not feel so likewise ?" In sending a copy of the lines at the same time
to Mrs. Hawthorne, he wrote: "I feel how imperfect and inadequate
they are; but I trust you will pardon their deficiencies for the love
I bear his memory."
[ 87 ]
HAWTHORNE
Though all its splendor could not chase away
The omnipresent pain.
The lovely town was white with apple-blooms,
And the great elms o'erhead
Dark shadows wove on their aerial looms
Shot through with golden thread.
Across the meadows, by the gray old manse,
The historic river flowed :
I was as one who wanders in a trance,
Unconscious of his road.
The faces of familiar friends seemed strange;
Their voices I could hear,
And yet the words they uttered seemed to change
Their meaning to my ear.
For the one face I looked for was not there,
The one low voice was mute;
Only an unseen presence filled the air,
And baffled my pursuit.
Now I look back, and meadow, manse, and stream
Dimly my thought defines;
I only see — a dream within a dream —
The hill-top hearsed with pines.
I only hear above his place of rest
Their tender undertone,
[ 88 ]
THREE FRIENDS OF MINE
The infinite longings of a troubled breast,
The voice so like his own.
There in seclusion and remote from men
The wizard hand lies cold,
Which at its topmost speed let fall the pen,
And left the tale half told.
Ah ! who shall lift that wand of magic power,
And the lost clew regain ?
The unfinished window in Aladdin's tower
Unfinished must remain!
THREE FRIENDS OF MINE1
When I remember them, those friends of mine,
Who are no longer here, the noble three,
Who half my life were more than friends to me,
And whose discourse was like a generous wine,
I most of all remember the divine
Something, that shone in them, and made us see
The archetypal man, and what might be
The amplitude of Nature's first design.
In vain I stretch my hands to clasp their hands;
1 These sonnets record the poet's friendship with Cornelius Con-
way Felton, once Professor of Greek, afterward President of Harvard
College, Louis Agassiz and Charles Sumner. The second and third
sonnets were written at Nahant, where both Longfellow and Agassiz
had cottages.
[ 89 ]
THREE FRIENDS OF MINE
I cannot find them. Nothing now is left
But a majestic memory. They meanwhile
Wander together in Elysian lands,
Perchance remembering me, who am bereft
Of their dear presence, and,, remembering, smile.
ii
In Attica thy birthplace should have been,
Or the Ionian Isles, or where the seas
Encircle in their arms the Cyclades,
So wholly Greek wast thou in thy serene
And childlike joy of life, O Philhellene!
Around thee would have swarmed the Attic bees;
Homer had been thy friend, or Socrates,
And Plato welcomed thee to his demesne.
For thee old legends breathed historic breath;
Thou sawest Poseidon in the purple sea,
And in the sunset Jason's fleece of gold !
Oh, what hadst thou to do with cruel Death,
Who wast so full of life, or Death with thee,
That thou shouldst die before thou hadst grown old !
in
I stand again on the familiar shore,
And hear the waves of the distracted sea
Piteously calling and lamenting thee,
And waiting restless at thy cottage door.
The rocks, the seaweed on the ocean floor,
The willows in the meadow, and the free
Wild winds of the Atlantic welcome me;
[ 90 ]
THREE FRIENDS OF MINE
Then why shouldst thou be dead, and come no more ?
Ah, why shouldst thou be dead, when common men
Are busy with their trivial affairs,
Having and holding ? Why, when thou hadst read
Nature's mysterious manuscript, and then
Wast ready to reveal the truth it bears,
Why art thou silent ? Why shouldst thou be dead ?
IV
River, that stealest with such silent pace
Around the City of the Dead,1 where lies
A friend who bore thy name, and whom these eyes
Shall see no more in his accustomed place,
Linger and fold him in thy soft embrace,
And say good night, for now the western skies
Are red with sunset, and gray mists arise
Like damps that gather on a dead man's face.
Good night ! good night ! as we so oft have said
Beneath this roof at midnight, in the days
That are no more, and shall no more return.
Thou hast but taken thy lamp and gone to bed;
I stay a little longer, as one stays
To cover up the embers that still burn.
The doors are all wide open; at the gate
The blossomed lilacs counterfeit a blaze,
And seem to warm the air; a dreamy haze
Hangs o'er the Brighton meadows like a fate,
1 Mount Auburn Cemetery lies near the river bank.
[ 91 ]
THE HERONS OF ELMWOOD
And on their margin, with sea-tides elate,
The flooded Charles, as in the happier days,
Writes the last letter of his name, and stays
His restless steps, as if compelled to wait.
I also wait; but they will come no more,
Those friends of mine, whose presence satisfied
The thirst and hunger of my heart. Ah me !
They have forgotten the pathway to my door!
Something is gone from nature since they died,
And summer is not summer, nor can be.
THE HERONS OF ELMWOOD
Warm and still is the summer night,
As here by the river's brink I wander;
White overhead are the stars, and white
The glimmering lamps on the hillside yonder.
Silent are all the sounds of day;
Nothing I hear but the chirp of crickets,
And the cry of the herons winging their way
O'er the poet's house in the Elmwood * thickets.
Call to him, herons, as slowly you pass
To your roosts in the haunts of the exiled thrushes,
Sing him the song of the green morass,
And the tides that water the reeds and rushes.
1 Elmwood, a short distance from Ixmgfellow's house, was the
home of his brother poet and friend, James Russell Lowell.
[ 92 ]
THE HERONS OF ELMWOOD
Sing him the mystical Song of the Hern,
And the secret that baffles our utmost seeking;
For only a sound of lament we discern,
And cannot interpret the words you are speaking.
Sing of the air, and the wild delight
Of wings that uplift and winds that uphold you,
The joy of freedom, the rapture of flight
Through the drift of the floating mists that enfold you;
Of the landscape lying so far below,
With its towns and rivers and desert places;
And the splendor of light above, and the glow
Of the limitless, blue, ethereal spaces.
Ask him if songs of the Troubadours,
Or of Minnesingers in old black-letter,
Sound in his ears more sweet than yours,
And if yours are not sweeter and wilder and better.
Sing to him, say to him, here at his gate, ,
Where the boughs of the stately elms are meeting,
Some one hath lingered to meditate,
And send him unseen this friendly greeting;
That many another hath done the same,
Though not by a sound was the silence broken;
The surest pledge of a deathless name
Is the silent homage of thoughts unspoken.
[ 93 ]
THE CHILDREN'S HOUR
THE CHILDREN'S HOUR
Between the dark and the daylight,
When the night is beginning to lower,
Comes a pause in the day's occupations,
That is known as the Children's Hour.
I hear in the chamber above me
The patter of little feet,
The sound of a door that is opened,
And voices soft and sweet.
From my study I see in the lamplight,
Descending the broad hall stair,
Grave Alice, and laughing Allegra,
And Edith with golden hair.
A whisper, and then a silence:
Yet I know by their merry eyes,
They are plotting and planning together
To take me by surprise.
A sudden rush from the stairway,
A sudden raid from the hall!
By three doors left unguarded
They enter my castle wall !
They climb up into my turret,
O'er the arms and back of my chair;
[ 94 ]
THE CHILDREN'S HOUR
If I try to escape, they surround me;
They seem to be everywhere.
They almost devour me with kisses,
Their arms about me entwine,
Till I think of the Bishop of Bingen 1
In his Mouse-Tower on the Rhine!
Do you think, O blue-eyed banditti,
Because you have scaled the wall,
Such an old moustache as I am
Is not a match for you all ?
I have you fast in my fortress,
And will not let you depart,
But put you down into the dungeon
In the round-tower of my heart.
And there will I keep you forever,
Yes, forever and a day,
Till the walls shall crumble to ruin,
And moulder in dust away!
1 Near Bingen on the Rhine is a little square Mouse-Tower, so
called from an old word meaning toll, since it was used as a toll-house;
but there is an old tradition that a certain Bishop Hatto, who had
been cruel to the people, was attacked in the tower by a great army
of rats and mice. See Southey's famous poem, Bishop Hatto.
[ 95 ]
TRAVELS BY THE FIRESIDE
TRAVELS BY THE FIRESIDE
The ceaseless rain is falling fast,
And yonder gilded vane,
Immovable for three days past,
Points to the misty main.
It drives me in upon myself
And to the fireside gleams,
To pleasant books that crowd my shelf,
And still more pleasant dreams.
I read whatever bards have sung
Of lands beyond the sea,
And the bright days when I was young
Come thronging back to me.
In fancy I can hear again
The Alpine torrent's roar,
The mule-bells on the hills of Spain,
The sea at Elsinore.
I see the convent's gleaming wall
Rise from its groves of pine,
And towers of old cathedrals tall,
And castles by the Rhine.
I journey on by park and spire,
Beneath centennial trees,
[ 96 ]
AMALFI
Through fields with poppies all on fire,
And gleams of distant seas.
I fear no more the dust and heat,
No more I feel fatigue,
While journeying with another's feet
O'er many a lengthening league.
Let others traverse sea and land,
And toil through various climes,
I turn the world round with my hand
Reading these poets' rhymes.
From them I learn whatever lies
Beneath each changing zone,
And see, when looking with their eyes,
Better than with mine own.
AMALFI
Sweet the memory is to me
Of a land beyond the sea,
Where the waves and mountains meet,
Where amid her mulberry-trees
Sits Amalfi in the heat,
Bathipg ever her white feet
In the tideless summer seas.
In the middle of the town,
From its fountains in the hills,
[ 97 ]
AMALFI
Tumbling through the narrow gorge,
The Canneto rushes down,
Turns the great wheels of the mills,
Lifts the hammers of the forge.
'T is a stairway, not a street,
That ascends the deep ravine,
Where the torrent leaps between
Rocky walls that almost meet.
Toiling up from stair to stair
Peasant girls their burdens bear;
Sunburnt daughters of the soil,
Stately figures tall and straight,
What inexorable fate
Dooms them to this life of toil ?
Lord of vineyards and of lands,
Far above the convent stands.
On its terraced walk aloof
Leans a monk with folded hands.
Placid, satisfied, serene,
Looking down upon the scene
Over wall and red-tiled roof;
Wondering unto what good end
All this toil and traffic tend,
And why all men cannot be
Free from care and free from pain,
And the sordid love of gain,
And as indolent as he.
[ 98 ]
AMALFI
Where are now the freighted barks
From the marts of east and west ?
Where the knights in iron sarks
Journeying to the Holy Land,
Glove of steel upon the hand,
Cross of crimson on the breast ?
Where the pomp of camp and court ?
Where the pilgrims with their prayers ?
Where the merchants with their wares,
And their gallant brigantines
Safely sailing into port
Chased by corsair Algerines ?
Vanished like a fleet of cloud,
Like a passing trumpet-blast,
Are those splendors of the past,
And the commerce and the crowd!
Fathoms deep beneath the seas
Lie the ancient wharves and quays,
Swallowed by the engulfing waves;
Silent streets and vacant halls,
Ruined roofs and towers and walls;
Hidden from all mortal eyes
Deep the sunken city lies:
Even cities have their graves !
This is an enchanted land!
Round the headlands far away
Sweeps the blue Salernian bay
[ 99 ]
AMALFI
With its sickle of white sand:
Further still and furthermost
On the dim discovered coast
Paestum with its ruins lies,
And its roses all in bloom
Seem to tinge the fatal skies
Of that lonely land of doom.
On his terrace, high in air,
Nothing doth the good monk care
For such worldly themes as these.
From the garden just below
Little puffs of perfume blow,
And a sound is in his ears
Of the murmur of the bees
In the shining chestnut-trees;
Nothing else he heeds or hears.
All the landscape seems to swoon
In the happy afternoon;
Slowly o'er his senses creep
The encroaching waves of sleep,
And he sinks as sank the town,
Unresisting, fathoms down,
Into caverns cool and deep!
Walled about with drifts of snow,
Hearing the fierce north-wind blow,
Seeing all the landscape white
And the river cased in ice,
Comes this memory of delight,
[ 100 ]
(CASTLES IN SPAIN
Comes this vision unto me
Of a long-lost Paradise
In the land beyond the sea.
CASTLES IN SPAIN
How much of my young heart, O Spain,
Went out to thee in days of yore !
What dreams romantic filled my brain,
And summoned back to life again
The Paladins of Charlemagne,
The Cid Campeador!
And shapes more shadowy than these,
In the dim twilight half revealed;
Phoenician galleys on the seas,
The Roman camps like hives of bees,
The Goth uplifting from his knees
Pelayo on his shield.
It was these memories perchance,
From annals of remotest eld,
That lent the colors of romance
To every trivial circumstance,
And changed the form and countenance
Of all that I beheld.
Old towns, whose history lies hid
In monkish chronicle or rhyme, —
[ 101 ]
CASTLES IN SPAIN
Burgos, the birthplace of the Cid,
Zamora and Valladolid,
Toledo, built and walled amid
The wars of Wamba's time;
The long, straight line of the highway,
The distant town that seems so near,
The peasants in the fields, that stay
Their toil to cross themselves and pray,
When from the belfry at midday
The Angelus they hear;
White crosses in the mountain pass,
Mules gay with tassels, the loud din
Of muleteers, the tethered ass
That crops the dusty wayside grass,
And cavaliers with spurs of brass
Alighting at the inn;
White hamlets hidden in fields of wheat,
White cities slumbering by the sea,
White sunshine flooding square and street,
Dark mountain ranges, at whose feet
The river beds are dry with heat, —
All was a dream to me.
Yet something sombre and severe
O'er the enchanted landscape reigned;
A terror in the atmosphere
As if King Philip listened near,
[ 102 ]
CASTLES IN SPAIN
Or Torquemada, the austere,
His ghostly sway maintained.
The softer Andalusian skies
Dispelled the sadness and the gloom;
There Cadiz by the seaside lies,
And Seville's orange-orchards rise,
Making the land a paradise
Of beauty and of bloom.
There Cordova is hidden among
The palm, the olive, and the vine;
Gem of the South, by poets sung,
And in whose mosque Almanzor hung
As lamps the bells that once had rung
At Compostella's shrine.
But over all the rest supreme,
The star of stars, the cynosure,
The artist's and the poet's theme,
The young man's vision, the old man's dream,
Granada by its winding stream,
The city of the Moor!
And there the Alhambra still recalls
Aladdin's palace of delight:
Allah il Allah ! through its halls
Whispers the fountain as it falls,
The Darro darts beneath its walls,
The hills with snow are white.
[ 103 ]
FROM MY ARM-CHAIR
Ah yes, the hills are white with snow,
And cold with blasts that bite and freeze;
But in the happy vale below
The orange and pomegranate grow,
And wafts of air toss to and fro
The blossoming almond trees.
The Vega cleft by the Xenil,
The fascination and allure
Of the sweet landscape chains the will;
The traveller lingers on the hill,
His parted lips are breathing still
The last sigh of the Moor.
How like a ruin overgrown
With flowers that hide the rents of time,
Stands now the Past that I have known;
Castles in Spain, not built of stone
But of white summer clouds, and blown
Into this little mist of rhyme!
FROM MY ARM-CHAIR
TO THE CHILDREN OF CAMBRIDGE
WHO PRESENTED TO ME, ON MY SEVENTY-SECOND BIRTHDAY, FEB-
RUARY 27, 1879, THIS CHAIR MADE FROM THE WOOD OF THE VD>
LAGE BLACKSMITH'S CHESTNCT-TREE
Am I a king, that I should call my own
This splendid ebon throne ?
[ 104 ]
FROM MY ARM-CHAIR
Or by what reason, or what right divine,
Can I proclaim it mine ?
Only, perhaps, by right divine of song
It may to me belong;
Only because the spreading chestnut-tree
Of old was sung by me.
Well I remember it in all its prime
When in the summer-time
The affluent foliage of its branches made
A cavern of cool shade.
There, by the blacksmith's forge, beside the street,
Its blossoms white and sweet
Enticed the bees, until it seemed alive,
And murmured like a hive.
And when the winds of autumn, with a shout,
Tossed its great arms about,
The shining chestnuts, bursting from the sheath,
Dropped to the ground beneath.
And now some fragments of its branches bare,
Shaped as a stately chair,
Have by my hearthstone found a home at last,
And whisper of the past.
The Danish king could not in all his pride
Repel the ocean tide,
[ 105 ]
FROM MY ARM-CHAIR
But, seated in this chair, I can in rhyme
Roll back the tide of Time.
I see again, as one in vision sees,
The blossoms and the bees,
And hear the children's voices shout and call,
And the brown chestnuts fall.
I see the smithy with its fires aglow,
I hear the bellows blow,
And the shrill hammers on the anvil beat
The iron white with heat!
And thus, dear children, have ye made for me
This day a jubilee,
And to my more than threescore years and ten
Brought back my youth again.
The heart hath its own memory, like the mind,
And in it are enshrined
The precious keepsakes, into which is wrought
The giver's loving thought.
Only your love and your remembrance could
Give life to this dead wood,
And make these branches, leafless now so long,
Blossom again in song.
[ 106 ]
POSSIBILITIES-CROSS OF SNOW
POSSIBILITIES
Where are the Poets, unto whom belong
The Olympian heights; whose singing shafts were
sent
Straight to the mark, and not from bows half bent,
But with the utmost tension of the thong ?
Where are the stately argosies of song,
Whose rushing keels made music as they went
Sailing in search of some new continent,
With all sail set, and steady winds and strong ?
Perhaps there lives some dreamy boy, untaught
In schools, some graduate of the field or street
Who shall become a master of the art,
An admiral sailing the high seas of thought,
Fearless and first, and steering with his fleet
For lands not yet laid down in any chart.
THE CROSS OF SNOW
In the long, sleepless watches of the night,
A gentle face — the face of one long dead —
Looks at me from the wall, where round its head
The night-lamp casts a halo of pale light.
Here in this room she died; and soul more white
Never through martyrdom of fire was led
To its repose; nor can in books be read
The legend of a fife more benedight.
[ 107 ]
PALINGENESIS
There is a mountain in the distant West
That, sun-defying, in its deep ravines
Displays a cross of snow upon its side.
Such is the cross I wear upon my breast
These eighteen years, through all the changing scenes
And seasons, changeless since the day she died.
PALINGENESIS
I lay upon the headland-height, and listened
To the incessant sobbing of the sea
In caverns under me,
And watched the waves, that tossed and fled and glis-
tened,
Until the rolling meadows of amethyst
Melted away in mist.
Then suddenly, as one from sleep, I started;
For round about me all the sunny capes
Seemed peopled with the shapes
Of those whom I had known in days departed,
Apparelled in the loveliness which gleams
On faces seen in dreams.
A moment only, and the light and glory
Faded away, and the disconsolate shore
Stood lonely as before;
And the wild-roses of the promontory
Around me shuddered in the wind, and shed
Their petals of pale red.
[ W8 ]
PALINGENESIS
There was an old belief that in the embers
Of all things their primordial form exists,
And cunning alchemists
Could re-create the rose with all its members
From its own ashes, but without the bloom,
Without the lost perfume.
Ah me! what wonder-working, occult science
Can from the ashes in our hearts once more
The rose of youth restore ?
What craft of alchemy can bid defiance
To time and change, and for a single hour
Renew this phantom-flower?
"Oh, give me back," I cried, "the vanished splendors,
The breath of morn, and the exultant strife,
When the swift stream of life
Bounds o'er its rocky channel, and surrenders
The pond, with all its lilies, for the leap
Into the unknown deep!"
And the sea answered, with a lamentation,
Like some old prophet wailing, and it said,
" Alas ! thy youth is dead !
It breathes no more, its heart has no pulsation;
In the dark places with the dead of old
It lies forever cold!"
Then said I, "From its consecrated cerements
I will not drag this sacred dust again,
Only to give me pain;
[ 109 ]
PALINGENESIS
But, still remembering all the lost endearments,
Go on my way, like one who looks before,
And turns to weep no more."
Into what land of harvests, what plantations
Bright with autumnal foliage and the glow
Of sunsets burning low;
Beneath what midnight skies, whose constellations
Light up the spacious avenues between
This world and the unseen;
Amid what friendly greetings and caresses,
What households, though not alien, yet not mine,
What bowers of rest divine;
To what temptations in lone wildernesses,
What famine of the heart, what pain and loss,
The bearing of what cross, —
I do not know; nor will I vainly question
Those pages of the mystic book which hold
The story still untold,
But without rash conjecture or suggestion
Turn its last leaves in reverence and good heed,
Until "The End" I read.
[ 110 ]
MORITURI SALUTAMUS
MORITURI SALUTAMUS
POEM FOR THE FIFTIETH ANNIVERSARY OF THE
CLASS OF 1825 IN BOWDOIN COLLEGE
" O Caesar, we who are about to die
Salute you!" was the gladiators' cry
In the arena, standing face to face
With death and with the Roman populace.
O ye familiar scenes, — ye groves of pine,
That once were mine and are no longer mine, —
Thou river, widening through the meadows green
To the vast sea, so near and yet unseen, —
Ye halls, in whose seclusion and repose
Phantoms of fame, like exhalations, rose
And vanished, — we who are about to die
Salute you; earth and air and sea and sky,
And the Imperial Sun that scatters down
His sovereign splendors upon grove and town.
Ye do not answer us! ye do not hear!
We are forgotten; and in your austere
And calm indifference, ye little care
Whether we come or go, or whence or where.
What passing generations fill these halls,
What passing voices echo from these walls,
Ye heed not; we are only as the blast,
A moment heard, and then forever past.
[ i" ]
MORITURI SALUTAMUS
Not so the teachers who in earlier days
Led our bewildered feet through learning's maze;
They answer us — alas ! what have I said ?
What greetings come there from the voiceless dead ?
What salutation, welcome, or reply ?
What pressure from the hands that lifeless lie ?
They are no longer here ; they all are gone
Into the land of shadows, — all save one.
Honor and reverence, and the good repute
That follows faithful service as its fruit,
Be unto him, whom living we salute.
The great Italian poet, when he made
His dreadful journey to the realms of shade,
Met there the old instructor of his youth,
And cried in tones of pity and of ruth:
" Oh, never from the memory of my heart
Your dear, paternal image shall depart,
Who while on earth, ere yet by death surprised,
Taught me how mortals are immortalized;
How grateful am I for that patient care
All my life long my language shall declare."
To-day we make the poet's words our own,
And utter them in plaintive undertone;
Nor to the living only be they said,
But to the other living called the dead,
Whose dear, paternal images appear
Not wrapped in gloom, but robed in sunshine here;
[ H2 ]
MORITURI SALUTAMUS
Whose simple lives, complete and without flaw,
Were part and parcel of great Nature's law;
Who said not to their Lord, as if afraid,
"Here is thy talent in a napkin laid,"
But labored in their sphere, as men who live
In the delight that work alone can give.
Peace be to them ! eternal peace and rest,
And the fulfilment of the great behest:
"Ye have been faithful over a few things,
Over ten cities shall ye reign as kings."
And ye who fill the places we once filled,
And follow in the furrows that we tilled,
Young men, whose generous hearts are beating high,
We who are old, and are about to die,
Salute you; hail you; take your hands in ours,
And crown you with our welcome as with flowers !
How beautiful is youth ! how bright it gleams
With its illusions, aspirations, dreams!
Book of Beginnings, Story without End,
Each maid a heroine, and each man a friend !
Aladdin's Lamp, and Fortunatus' Purse
That holds the treasures of the universe !
All possibilities are in its hands,
No danger daunts it, and no foe withstands;
In its sublime audacity of faith,
"Be thou removed!" it to the mountain saith,
And with ambitious feet, secure and proud,
Ascends the ladder leaning on the cloud !
[ US ]
MORITURI SALUTAMUS
As ancient Priam at the Scaean gate
Sat on the walls of Troy in regal state
With the old men, too old and weak to fight,
Chirping like grasshoppers in their delight
To see the embattled hosts, with spear and shield,
Of Trojans and Achaians in the field;
So from the snowy summits of our years
We see you in the plain, as each appears,
And question of you ; asking, " Who is he
That towers above the others ? Which may be
Atreides, Menelaus, Odysseus,
Ajax the great, or bold Idomeneus ? "
Let him not boast who puts his armor on
As he who puts it off, the battle done.
Study yourselves; and most of all note well
Wherein kind Nature meant you to excel.
Not every blossom ripens into fruit;
Minerva, the inventress of the flute,
Flung it aside, when she her face surveyed
Distorted in a fountain as she played;
The unlucky Marsyas found it, and his fate
Was one to make the bravest hesitate.
Write on your doors the saying wise and old,
Be bold! be bold!" and everywhere, "Be bold;
Be not too bold!" Yet better the excess
Than the defect; better the more than less;
Better like Hector in the field to die,
Than like a perfumed Paris turn and fly.
[ 114 ]
MORITURI SALUTAMUS
And now, my classmates; ye remaining few
That number not the half of those we knew,
Ye, against whose familiar names not yet
The fatal asterisk of death is set,
Ye I salute ! The horologe of Time
Strikes the half-century with a solemn chime,
And summons us together once again,
The joy of meeting not unmixed with pain.
Where are the others ? Voices from the deep
Caverns of darkness answer me: "They sleep!"
I name no names; instinctively I feel
Each at some well-remembered grave will kneel,
And from the inscription wipe the weeds and moss,
For every heart best knoweth its own loss.
I see their scattered gravestones gleaming white
Through the pale dusk of the impending night;
O'er all alike the impartial sunset throws
Its golden lilies mingled with the rose;
We give to each a tender thought, and pass
Out of the graveyards with their tangled grass,
Unto these scenes frequented by our feet
When we were young, and life was fresh and sweet.
What shall I say to you ? What can I say
Better than silence is ? When I survey
This throng of faces turned to meet my own,
Friendly and fair, and yet to me unknown,
Transformed the very landscape seems to be;
It is the same, yet not the same to me.
[ US ]
MORITURI SALUTAMUS
So many memories crowd upon my brain,
So many ghosts are in the wooded plain,
I fain would steal away, with noiseless tread,
As from a house where some one lieth dead.
I cannot go ; — I pause ; — I hesitate ;
My feet reluctant linger at the gate;
As one who struggles in a troubled dream
To speak and cannot, to myself I seem.
Vanish the dream ! Vanish the idle fears !
Vanish the rolling mists of fifty years !
Whatever time or space may intervene,
I will not be a stranger in this scene.
Here every doubt, all indecision, ends;
Hail, my companions, comrades, classmates, friends !
Ah me ! the fifty years since last we met
Seem to me fifty folios bound and set
By Time, the great transcriber, on his shelves,
Wherein are written the histories of ourselves.
What tragedies, what comedies, are there;
What joy and grief, what rapture and despair!
What chronicles of triumph and defeat,
Of struggle, and temptation, and retreat!
What records of regrets, and doubts, and fears!
What pages blotted, blistered by our tears !
What lovely landscapes on the margin shine,
What sweet, angelic faces, what divine
And holy images of love and trust,
Undimmed by age, unsoiled by damp or dust!
[ 116 ]
MORITURI SALUTAMUS
Whose hand shall dare to open and explore
These volumes, closed and clasped forevermore?
Not mine. With reverential feet I pass;
I hear a voice that cries, " Alas ! alas !
Whatever hath been written shall remain,
Nor be erased nor written o'er again;
The unwritten only still belongs to thee:
Take heed, and ponder well what that shall be."
As children frightened by a thunder-cloud
Are reassured if some one reads aloud
A tale of wonder, with enchantment fraught,
Or wild adventure, that diverts their thought,
Let me endeavor with a tale to chase
The gathering shadows of the time and place,
And banish what we all too deeply feel
Wholly to say, or wholly to conceal.
In mediaeval Rome, I know not where,
There stood an image with its arm in air,
And on its lifted finger, shining clear,
A golden ring with the device, "Strike here!"
Greatly the people wondered, though none guessed
Tfce meaning that these words but half expressed,
Until a learned clerk, who at noonday
With downcast eye was passing on his way,
Paused, and observed the spot, and marked it well,
Whereon the shadow of the finger fell;
And, coming back at midnight, delved, and found
A secret stairway leading under ground.
[ 117 ]
MORITURI SALUTAMUS
Down this he passed into a spacious hall,
Lit by a flaming jewel on the wall;
And opposite, in threatening attitude,
With bow and shaft a brazen statue stood.
Upon its forehead, like a coronet,
Were these mysterious words. of menace set:
That which I am, I am; my fatal aim
None can escape, not even yon luminous flame!"
Midway the hall was a fair table placed,
With cloth of gold, and golden cups enchased
With rubies, and the plates and knives were gold,
And gold the bread and viands manifold.
Around it, silent, motionless, and sad,
Were seated gallant knights in armor clad,
And ladies beautiful with plume and zone,
But they were stone, their hearts within were stone;
And the vast hall was filled in every part
With silent crowds, stony in face and heart.
Long at the scene, bewildered and amazed,
The trembling clerk in speechless wonder gazed;
Then from the table, by his greed made bold,
He seized a goblet and a knife of gold,
And suddenly from their seats the guests upsprang,
The vaulted ceiling with loud clamors rang,
The archer sped his arrow, at their call,
Shattering the lambent jewel on the wall,
And all was dark around and overhead; —
Stark on the floor the luckless clerk lay dead!
[ 118 ]
MORITURI SALUTAMUS
The writer of this legend then records
Its ghostly application in these words:
The image is the Adversary old,
Whose beckoning ringer points to realms of gold ;
Our lusts and passions are the downward stair
That leads the soul from a diviner air;
The archer, Death; the flaming jewel, Life;
Terrestrial goods, the goblet and the knife;
The knights and ladies, all whose flesh and bone
By avarice have been hardened into stone ;
The clerk, the scholar whom the love of pelf
Tempts from his books and from his nobler self.
The scholar and the world ! The endless strife,
The discord in the harmonies of life!
The love of learning, the sequestered nooks,
And all the sweet serenity of books !
The market-place, the eager love of gain,
Whose aim is vanity, and whose end is pain !
But why, you ask me, should this tale be told
To men grown old, or who are growing old ?
It is too late ! Ah, nothing is too late
Till the tired heart shall cease to palpitate.
Cato learned Greek at eighty; Sophocles
Wrote his grand (Edipus, and Simonides
Bore off the prize of verse from his compeers,
When each had numbered more than fourscore years,
And Theophrastus at fourscore and ten,
Had but begun his Characters of Men.
[ HO ]
MORITURI SALUTAMUS
Chaucer, at Woodstock with the nightingales,
At sixty wrote the Canterbury Tales;
Goethe at Weimar, toiling to the last,
Completed Faust when eighty years were past.
These are indeed exceptions; but they show
How far the gulf-stream of our youth may flow
Into the arctic regions of our lives,
Where little else than life itself survives.
As the barometer foretells the storm
While still the skies are clear, the weather warm,
So something in us, as old age draws near,
Betrays the pressure of the atmosphere.
The nimble mercury, ere we are aware,
Descends the elastic ladder of the air;
The telltale blood in artery and vein
Sinks from its higher levels in the brain;
Whatever poet, orator, or sage
May say of it, old age is still old age.
It is the waning, not the crescent moon;
The dusk of evening, not the blaze of noon;
It is not strength, but weakness; not desire,
But its surcease; not the fierce heat of fire,
The burning and consuming element,
But that of ashes and of embers spent,
In which some living sparks we still discern,
Enough to warm, but not enough to burn.
What then ? Shall we sit idly down and say
The night hath come ; it is no longer day ?
[ 120 ]
MORITURI SALUTAMUS
The night hath not yet come; we are not quite
Cut off from labor by the failing light;
Something remains for us to do or dare;
Even the oldest tree some fruit may bear;
Not (Edipus Coloneus, or Greek Ode,
Or tales of pilgrims that one morning rode
Out of the gateway of the Tabard Inn,
But other something, would we but begin ;
For age is opportunity, no less
Than youth itself, though in another dress,
And as the evening twilight fades away
The sky is filled with stars, invisible by day.
FOUR HUNDRED COPIES PRINTED AT
THE RIVERSIDE PRESS CAMBRIDGE
MASSACHUSETTS IN DECEMBER 1906
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