And breathe a prayer for his soul.
So sat they once at Christmas,
And bade the goblet pass; 10
In their beards the red wine glistened
Like dew-drops in the grass.
They drank to the soul of Witlaf,
They drank to Christ the Lord,
And to each of the Twelve Apostles, 15
Who had preached his holy word.
They drank to the Saints and Martyrs
Of the dismal days of yore,
And as soon as the horn was empty
They remembered one Saint more. 20
And the reader droned from the pulpit,
Like the murmur of many bees,
The legend of good Saint Guthlac,
And Saint Basil’s homilies;
Till the great bells of the convent, 25
From their prison in the tower,
Guthlac and Bartholomæus,
Proclaimed the midnight hour.
And the Yule-log cracked in the chimney,
And the Abbot bowed his head, 30
And the flamelets flapped and flickered,
But the Abbot was stark and dead.
Yet still in his pallid fingers
He clutched the golden bowl,
In which, like a pearl dissolving, 35
Had sunk and dissolved his soul.
But not for this their revels
The jovial monks forbore,
For they cried, “Fill high the goblet!
We must drink to one Saint more!” 40
Gaspar Becerra
This poem appears to have been suggested by a passage in Sterling’s Spanish Painters, which Mr. Longfellow was reading at the time with great pleasure. He had some thought of writing a drama based on Sterling’s account of Murillo’s life in Seville.
BY his evening fire the artist
Pondered o’er his secret shame;
Baffled, weary, and disheartened,
Still he mused, and dreamed of fame.
‘T was an image of the Virgin 5
That had tasked his utmost skill;
But, alas! his fair ideal
Vanished and escaped him still.
From a distant Eastern island
Had the precious wood been brought; 10
Day and night the anxious master
At his toil untiring wrought;
Till, discouraged and desponding,
Sat he now in shadows deep,
And the day’s humiliation 15
Found oblivion in sleep.
Then a voice cried, “Rise, O master!
From the burning brand of oak
Shape the thought that stirs within thee!” —
And the startled artist woke, — 20
Woke, and from the smoking embers
Seized and quenched the glowing wood;
And therefrom he carved an image,
And he saw that it was good.
O thou sculptor, painter, poet! 25
Take this lesson to thy heart:
That is best which lieth nearest;
Shape from that thy work of art.
Pegasus in Pound
Written as proem to The Estray, a collection of poems edited by Mr. Longfellow.
ONCE into a quiet village,
Without haste and without heed,
In the golden prime of morning,
Strayed the poet’s wingèd steed.
It was Autumn, and incessant 5
Piped the quails from shocks and sheaves,
And, like living coals, the apples
Burned among the withering leaves.
Loud the clamorous bell was ringing
From its belfry gaunt and grim; 10
‘T was the daily call to labor,
Not a triumph meant for him.
Not the less he saw the landscape,
In its gleaming vapor veiled;
Not the less he breathed the odors 15
That the dying leaves exhaled.
Thus, upon the village common,
By the school-boys he was found;
And the wise men, in their wisdom,
Put him straightway into pound. 20
Then the sombre village crier,
Ringing loud his brazen bell,
Wandered down the street proclaiming
There was an estray to sell.
And the curious country people, 25
Rich and poor, and young and old,
Came in haste to see this wondrous
Wingèd steed, with mane of gold.
Thus the day passed, and the evening
Fell, with vapors cold and dim; 30
But it brought no food nor shelter,
Brought no straw nor stall, for him.
Patiently, and still expectant,
Looked he through the wooden bars,
Saw the moon rise o’er the landscape, 35
Saw the tranquil, patient stars;
Till at length the bell at midnight
Sounded from its dark abode,
And, from out a neighboring farm-yard,
Loud the cock Alectryon crowed. 40
Then, with nostrils wide distended,
Breaking from his iron chain,
And unfolding far his pinions,
To those stars he soared again.
On the morrow, when the village 45
Woke to all its toil and care,
Lo! the strange steed had departed.
And they knew not when nor where.
But they found, upon the greensward
Where his struggling hoofs had trod, 50
Pure and bright, a fountain flowing
From the hoof-marks in the sod.
From that hour, the fount unfailing
Gladdens the whole region round,
Strengthening all who drink its waters, 55
While it soothes them with its sound.
Tegnér’s Drapa
“October 14, 1847. Went to town, after finishing a poem on Tegnér’s death, in the spirit of the old Norse poetry.” In the first edition, the poem bore the title Tegnér’s Death. The word drapa signifies death-song, or dirge.
I HEARD a voice, that cried,
“Balder the Beautiful
Is dead, is dead!”
And through the misty air
Passed like the mournful cry 5
Of sunward sailing cranes.
I saw the pallid corpse
Of the dead sun
Borne through the Northern sky.
Blasts from Niffelheim 10
Lifted the sheeted mists
Around him as he passed.
And the voice forever cried,
“Balder the Beautiful
Is dead, is dead!” 15
And died away
Through the dreary night,
In accents of despair.
Balder the Beautiful,
God of the summer sun, 20
Fairest of all the Gods!
Light from his forehead beamed,
Runes were upon his tongue,
As on the warrior’s sword.
All things in earth and air 25
Bound were by magic spell
Never to do him harm;
Even the plants and stones;
All save the mistletoe,
The sacred mistletoe! 30
Hœder, the blind old God,
Whose feet are shod with silence,
Pierced through that gentle breast
With his sharp spear, by fraud,
Made of the mistletoe, 35
The accursed mistletoe!
They laid him in his ship,
With horse and harness,
As on a funeral pyre.
Odin placed 40
A ring upon his finger,
And whispered in his ear.
They launched the burning ship!
It floated far away
Over the misty sea, 45
Till like the sun it seemed,
&nb
sp; Sinking beneath the waves.
Balder returned no more!
So perish the old Gods!
But out of the sea of Time 50
Rises a new land of song,
Fairer than the old.
Over its meadows green
Walk the young bards and sing.
Build it again, 55
O ye bards,
Fairer than before!
Ye fathers of the new race,
Feed upon morning dew,
Sing the new Song of Love! 60
The law of force is dead!
The law of love prevails!
Thor, the thunderer,
Shall rule the earth no more,
No more, with threats, 65
Challenge the meek Christ.
Sing no more,
O ye bards of the North,
Of Vikings and of Jarls!
Of the days of Eld 70
Preserve the freedom only,
Not the deeds of blood!
Sonnet, on Mrs. Kemble’s Readings from Shakespeare
In the winter of 1849 Mrs. Fanny Kemble Butler was reading Shakespeare in Boston, and Mr. Longfellow was a constant attendant. He notes in his diary under date of February 20: “We did not go last night to hear Othello. I wrote this morning a sonnet on Mrs. Butler’s readings.” A week later the poet entertained Mrs. Butler after a reading in Cambridge, and read his sonnet at the close of the supper.
O PRECIOUS evenings! all too swiftly sped!
Leaving us heirs to amplest heritages
Of all the best thoughts of the greatest sages,
And giving tongues unto the silent dead!
How our hearts glowed and trembled as she read, 5
Interpreting by tones the wondrous pages
Of the great poet who foreruns the ages,
Anticipating all that shall be said!
O happy Reader! having for thy text
The magic book, whose Sibylline leaves have caught 10
The rarest essence of all human thought!
O happy Poet! by no critic vext!
How must thy listening spirit now rejoice
To be interpreted by such a voice!
The Singers
“November 6, 1849. Wrote The Singers to show the excellence of different kinds of song.” No individual poets were intended.
GOD sent his Singers upon earth
With songs of sadness and of mirth,
That they might touch the hearts of men,
And bring them back to heaven again.
The first, a youth with soul of fire, 5
Held in his hand a golden lyre;
Through groves he wandered, and by streams,
Playing the music of our dreams.
The second, with a bearded face,
Stood singing in the market-place, 10
And stirred with accents deep and loud
The hearts of all the listening crowd.
A gray old man, the third and last,
Sang in cathedrals dim and vast,
While the majestic organ rolled 15
Contrition from its mouths of gold.
And those who heard the Singers three
Disputed which the best might be;
For still their music seemed to start
Discordant echoes in each heart. 20
But the great Master said, “I see
No best in kind, but in degree;
I gave a various gift to each,
To charm, to strengthen, and to teach.
“These are the three great chords of might, 25
And he whose ear is tuned aright
Will hear no discord in the three,
But the most perfect harmony.”
Suspiria
TAKE them, O Death! and bear away
Whatever thou canst call thine own!
Thine image, stamped upon this clay,
Doth give thee that, but that alone!
Take them, O Grave! and let them lie 5
Folded upon thy narrow shelves,
As garments by the soul laid by,
And precious only to ourselves!
Take them, O great Eternity!
Our little life is but a gust 10
That bends the branches of thy tree,
And trails its blossoms in the dust!
Hymn for my Brother’s Ordination
The brother was the Rev. Samuel Longfellow, the poet’s biographer. In his diary, February 8, 1848, Mr. Longfellow wrote: “S. returned from Portland. Read to him the chant I wrote for his ordination, — a midnight thought. He likes it, and will have it sung.”
CHRIST to the young man said: “Yet one thing more;
If thou wouldst perfect be,
Sell all thou hast and give it to the poor,
And come and follow me!”
Within this temple Christ again, unseen, 5
Those sacred words hath said
And his invisible hands to-day have been
Laid on a young man’s head.
And evermore beside him on his way
The unseen Christ shall move, 10
That he may lean upon his arm and say,
“Dost thou, dear Lord, approve?”
Beside him at the marriage feast shall be,
To make the scene more fair;
Beside him in the dark Gethsemane 15
Of pain and midnight prayer.
O holy trust! O endless sense of rest!
Like the beloved John
To lay his head upon the Saviour’s breast,
And thus to journey on! 20
THE SONG OF HIAWATHA
Illustrated by Harrison Fischer
First published in 1855, this famous epic poem features the eponymous American Indian hero and is composed in trochaic tetrameter, the same meter as Kalevala, the Finnish epic reconstructed by Elias Lönnrot from fragments of folk poetry. Longfellow had learned some of the Finnish language while spending a summer in Sweden in 1835. The Song of Hiawatha is loosely based on the legends and ethnography of the Ojibwe and other Native American peoples, as described in Algic Researches (1839) and additional writings by Henry Rowe Schoolcraft. However, instead of choosing Schoolcraft’s hero’s name Manabozho, Longfellow opted to use Hiawatha, who was a historical figure associated with the founding of the League of the Iroquois. The poem was an immediate success and in two years it had reportedly sold more than 50,000 copies.
Longfellow chose to set the epic poem at the Pictured Rocks, one of the locations along the south shore of Lake Superior used by narrators of the Manabozho stories. The narrative presents a ‘legend’ of Hiawatha and his lover Minnehaha in 22 chapters prefixed with an Introduction. The first chapter concerns the prophecy of Hiawatha’s arrival, announced by the peace-bringing leader Gitche Manito. Chapter II then proceeds to tell a legend of how the warrior Mudjekeewis became Father of the Four Winds by slaying the Great Bear of the mountains, Mishe-Mokwa.
The first edition
CONTENTS
Introduction
I
II
III
IV
V
VI
VII
VIII
IX
X
XI
XII
XIII
XIV
XV
XVI
XVII
XVIII
XIX
XX
XXI
XXII
VOCABULARY
Ojibwe people in the nineteenth century
Pictured Rocks, Lake Superior — the main setting of the poem
THE SONG OF HIAWATHA
Introduction
Should you ask me, whence these stories?
Whence these legends and traditions,
With the odors of the forest
With the dew and damp of meadows,
With the curling smoke of wigwams,
With the rushing of great rivers,
With
their frequent repetitions,
And their wild reverberations
As of thunder in the mountains?
I should answer, I should tell you,
“From the forests and the prairies,
From the great lakes of the Northland,
From the land of the Ojibways,
From the land of the Dacotahs,
From the mountains, moors, and fen-lands
Where the heron, the Shuh-shuh-gah,
Feeds among the reeds and rushes.
I repeat them as I heard them
From the lips of Nawadaha,
The musician, the sweet singer.”
Should you ask where Nawadaha
Found these songs so wild and wayward,
Found these legends and traditions,
I should answer, I should tell you,
“In the bird’s-nests of the forest,
In the lodges of the beaver,
In the hoofprint of the bison,
In the eyry of the eagle!
“All the wild-fowl sang them to him,
In the moorlands and the fen-lands,
In the melancholy marshes;
Chetowaik, the plover, sang them,
Mahng, the loon, the wild-goose, Wawa,
The blue heron, the Shuh-shuh-gah,
And the grouse, the Mushkodasa!”
If still further you should ask me,
Saying, “Who was Nawadaha?
Tell us of this Nawadaha,”
I should answer your inquiries
Straightway in such words as follow.
Delphi Complete Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (Delphi Poets Series Book 13) Page 33
