HENRY W. LONGFELLOW.
Wherever the English language is spoken, the name of HENRY WADSWORTH
LONGFELLOW has become a household word, and there is scarcely a library,
however humble, but can boast a well-worn volume of his tender
songs,--songs that
"Have power to quiet
The restless pulse of care,
And come like the benediction
That follows after prayer."
He was born in the city of Portland, Maine, on the 27th of February,
1807, and was the son of the Hon. Stephen Longfellow, a distinguished
lawyer of that city. The house in which he was born was a square wooden
structure, built many years before, and large and roomy. It stood upon
the outskirts of the town, on the edge of the sea, and was separated
from the water only by a wide street. From its windows the dreamy boy,
who grew up within its walls, could look out upon the dark, mysterious
ocean, and, lying awake in his little bed in the long winter nights, he
could listen to its sorrowful roar as it broke heavily upon the shore.
That he was keenly alive to the fascination of such close intimacy with
the ocean, we have abundant proof in his writings.
He was carefully educated in the best schools of the city, and at the
age of fourteen entered Bowdoin College, at Brunswick, where he
graduated in his nineteenth year. He was an industrious student, and
stood high in his classes. He gave brilliant promise of his future
eminence as a poet in several productions written during his college
days, which were published in a Boston journal called the "United States
Literary Gazette." Among these were the "Hymn of the Moravian Nuns,"
"The Spirit of Poetry," "Woods in Winter," and "Sunrise on the Hills."
Upon leaving college he entered his father's office, in Portland, with
the half-formed design of studying law, which he never carried into
execution, as more congenial employment soon presented itself to him. In
1826 he was appointed Professor of Modern Languages and Literature at
Bowdoin College, with the privilege of passing several years abroad for
observation and study. He accepted the appointment with unaffected
delight, and promptly went abroad. He passed his first year in France,
studying the language and literature of that country, and the next in
Spain, engaged in similar pursuits. Italy claimed his third year, and
Germany his fourth. He traveled extensively, and made many pleasant
acquaintances among the most gifted men and women of the Old World.
Returning home toward the close of 1829, he entered upon the active
duties of his professorship, and for five years held this position,
winning considerable distinction by his academic labors.
During his professorship our poet married, and the years that followed
were very happy and very quiet. The life he led at Bowdoin was peaceful,
and in a measure retired, giving him ample opportunity for study and for
laying the sure foundation of his future fame. During this period of his
life he contributed articles to the "North American Review," and
extended his acquaintance gradually among the literary men of New
England. He was fond of recalling the experiences of his life abroad,
and being unwilling that they should be lost from his memory, determined
to transmit them to paper before they faded quite away. These sketches
he finally concluded to give to the public, under the title of "Outre
Mer; or, Sketches from Beyond Sea." They appeared originally in numbers,
and were published by Samuel Colman, of Portland. They were well
received, and brought Professor Longfellow into notice in New England.
Soon afterward he published a translation of the ode upon "Coplas de
Manrique," by his son, Don Jose Manrique, which won him additional
credit. His fugitive poems had become very popular, and had made his
name familiar to his countrymen, but as yet he had not collected them in
book form.
In 1835, on the resignation of Mr. George Ticknor, he was appointed
Professor of Modern Languages and Belles Lettres in Harvard College, and
accepted the position. Before entering upon his duties, however, he
resolved to devote two years more to foreign travel and improvement, and
accordingly sailed for Europe the second time. Before leaving America,
however, he committed the publication of "Outre Mer" to the Harpers, of
New York, who issued it complete in two volumes in 1835. Its popularity
was very decided. Soon after reaching Europe, Mr. Longfellow was visited
with a sad bereavement in the loss of his wife, who died at Rotterdam.
He devoted this European visit to the northern part of the continent,
Denmark, Sweden, Germany, and Holland, and to England, and spent some
time in Paris. Returning in the autumn of 1836, he entered upon his
duties at Harvard, and made his home in Cambridge. He continued his
contributions to the "North American Review," and a number of fugitive
pieces flowed from his pen into print.
In the summer of 1837 he went to live in the house which has ever since
been his home. This is the old Craigie House, in Cambridge, famous in
our history as having been the headquarters of Washington during the
siege of Boston. It had been built by Colonel John Vassal about the
middle of the last century, and had finally passed into the hands of
Andrew Craigie, "Apothecary General to the Northern Provincial Army" of
the infant Republic. Craigie had ruined himself by his lavish
hospitality, and his widow, a stately old lady, and worthy in every
respect of a better fate, had been reduced to the necessity of letting
rooms and parting with the greater portion of the lands which had
belonged to the mansion. Mr. Longfellow had been attracted to the house
not only by its winning and home-like appearance, but by its historical
associations. Mrs. Craigie had decided at the time to let no more rooms,
but the young professor's gentle, winning manner conquered her
determination, and she not only received him into the old mansion, but
installed him in the south-east corner room in the second story, which
had been used by Washington as his bed-chamber.
It was just the home for our poet. Its windows looked out upon one of
the loveliest landscapes in New England, with the bright river winding
through the broad meadow beyond the house, and the blue Milton Hills
dotting the distant background. The bright verdure of New England
sparkled on every side, and the stately old elms that stood guard by the
house screened it from the prying eyes of the passers on the public
road. The whole place was hallowed to its new inmate by the memories of
the brave soldiers, wise statesmen, and brilliant ladies who had graced
its heroic age, and of which the stately hostess was the last and worthy
representative. The old house was as serene and still as the dearest
lover of quiet could wish. The mistress lived quite apart from her
lodger, and left him to follow the bent of his own fancies; and rare
fancies they were, for it was of them that some of his best works were
born in this upper chamber. Here he wrote "Hyperion," in 1838 and 1839.
Its publication, which was undertaken by John Owen, the University
publisher in Cambridge, marked an era in American literature. Every body
read the book, and every body talked of it. It was a poem in prose, and
none the less the work of a poet because professedly "a romance of
travel." The young read it with enthusiasm, and it sent hundreds to
follow Paul Flemming's footsteps in the distant Fatherland, where the
"romance of travel" became their guidebook. The merchant and the lawyer,
the journalist and the mechanic, reading its pages, found that the stern
realities of life had not withered up all the romance of their natures,
and under its fascinations they became boys again. Even Horace Greeley,
that most practical and unimaginative of men, became rapturous over it.
It was a great success, and established the poet's fame beyond all
question, and since then its popularity has never waned.
In 1840, he published the "Voices of the Night," which he had heard
sounding to him in his haunted chamber. This was his first volume, and
its popularity was even greater than that of "Hyperion," although some
of the poems had appeared before, in the "Knickerbocker Magazine." In
1841, he published his volume of "Ballads, and Other Poems," which but
added to his fame, and the next year bade the old house under the elms
a temporary adieu, and sailed for Europe, where he passed the summer on
the Rhine. On the voyage home, he composed his "Poems on Slavery," and
soon after his return wrote "The Spanish Student," a drama, "which
smells of the utmost South, and was a strange blossoming for the garden
of Thomas Tracy."
In 1843 the stately mistress of the old house died, and Professor
Longfellow bought the homestead of Andrew Craigie, with eight acres of
land, including the meadow, which sloped down to the pretty river. There
have been very few prouder or happier moments in his life than that in
which he first felt that the old house under the elms was his. Yet he
must have missed the stately old lady who first had admitted him to a
place in it, and whom he had grown to love as a dear friend. She seemed
so thoroughly a part and parcel of the place, that he must have missed
the rustle of her heavy silks along the wide and echoing halls, and have
listened some time for the sound of her old-fashioned spinet in the huge
drawing-room below, and, entering the room where she was wont to receive
her guests, he must have missed her from the old window where she was
accustomed to sit, with the open book in her lap, and her eyes fixed on
the far-off sky, thinking, no doubt, of the days when in her royal
beauty, she moved a queen through the brilliant home of Andrew Craigie. A
part of the veneration which he felt for the old house had settled upon
its ancient mistress, and the poet doubtless felt that the completeness
of the quaint old establishment was broken up when she passed away.
In 1846, Mr. Longfellow published "The Belfry of Bruges, and Other
Poems;" in 1847, "Evangeline" (by many considered his greatest work); in
1850, "Seaside and Fireside;" in 1851, "The Golden Legend;" in 1855,
"The Song of Hiawatha;" in 1858, "The Courtship of Miles Standish;" in
1863, "The Wayside Inn;" in 1866, "The Flower de Luce;" in 1867, his
translation of the "Divina Commedia," in three volumes; and in 1868,
"The New England Tragedies." Besides these, he published, in 1845, a
work on the "Poets and Poetry of Europe," and in 1849, "Kavanagh," a
novel.
Mr. Longfellow continued to discharge his duties in the University for
seventeen years, winning fresh laurels every year, and in 1854 resigned
his position, and was succeeded in it by Mr. James Russell Lowell. He
now devoted himself exclusively to his profession, the income from his
writings affording him a handsome maintenance. In 1855. "The Song of
Hiawatha" was given to the public, and its appearance may be styled an
event in the literary history of the world. It was not only original in
the story it told, and in the method of treatment, but the rhythm was
new. It was emphatically an American poem, and was received by the
people with delight. It met with an immense sale, and greatly increased
its author's popularity with his countrymen.
In 1861 a terrible affliction befell the poet in his family. He had
married, some years after the death of his first wife, a lady whose many
virtues had endeared her to all who knew her. She was standing by the
open fire in the sitting-room, one day in the winter of 1861, when her
clothing took fire, and before her husband, summoned by her cries, could
extinguish the flames, she was terribly burned. Her injuries were
internal, and she soon afterwards died.
In 1868, Mr. Longfellow again visited Europe, and remained abroad more
than a year. His reception by all classes of the people of the Old World
was eminently gratifying to his countrymen. This welcome, so genuine and
heartfelt, was due, however, to the genius of the man, and not to his
nationality.
He had overstepped the bounds of country, and had made himself the poet
of the English-speaking race. A man of vast learning and varied
acquirements, thoroughly versed in the ways of the world, he is still as
simple and unaffected in thought and ways as when he listened to and
wondered at the dashing of the wild waves on the shore in his boyhood's
home. A most gifted and accomplished artist, he has been faithful to
nature in all things. Earnest and aspiring himself, he has given to his
poems the ring of a true manhood. There is nothing bitter, nothing
sarcastic in his writings. He views all things with a loving eye, and it
is the exquisite tenderness of his sympathy with his fellow-men that has
enabled him to find his way so readily to their hearts. Without seeking
to represent the intensity of passion, he deals with the fresh, simple
emotions of the human soul, and in his simplicity lies his power. He
touches a chord that finds an echo in every heart, and his poems have a
humanity in them that is irresistible. We admire the "grand old
masters," but shrink abashed from their sublime measures. Longfellow is
so human, he understands us so well, that we turn instinctively to his
simple, tender songs for comfort in sorrow, or for the greater
perfection of our happiness.
Perhaps I can not better illustrate the power of his simplicity than by
the following quotations:
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 farewell 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;
What 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.
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 grow 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.
And though at times impetuous with emotion,
And anguish long suppressed,
The swelling heart heaves, moaning like the ocean,
That can not be at rest--
We will be patient, and assuage the feeling
We can not wholly stay;
By silence sanctifying, not concealing,
The grief that must have way.
FROM THE GOLDEN LEGEND.
SCENE.--_The Chamber of_ GOTTLIEB _and_ URSULA.--_Midnight_.--ELSIE
_standing by their bedside weeping_.
GOTTLIEB. The wind is roaring; the rushing rain
Is loud upon the roof and window-pane,
As if the wild Huntsman of Rodenstein,
Boding evil to me and mine,
Were abroad to-night with his ghostly train!
In the brief lulls of the tempest wild,
The dogs howl in the yard; and hark!
Some one is sobbing in the dark,
Here in the chamber.
ELSIE. It is I.
URSULA. Elsie! What ails thee, my poor child?
ELSIE. I am disturbed and much distressed,
In thinking our dear Prince must die;
I can not close my eyes, nor rest.
GOTTLIEB. What wouldst thou? In the Power Divine
His healing lies, not in our own;
It is in the hand of God alone.
ELSIE. Nay, He has put it into mine,
And into my heart.
GOTTLIEB. Thy words are wild.
URSULA. What dost thou mean? my child! my child!
ELSIE. That for our dear Prince Henry's sake
I will myself the offering make,
And give my life to purchase his.
URSULA. Am I still dreaming, or awake?
Thou speakest carelessly of death,
And yet thou knowest not what it is.
ELSIE. 'Tis the cessation of our breath.
Silent and motionless we lie;
And no one knoweth more than this.
I saw our little Gertrude die;
She left off breathing, and no more
I smoothed the pillow beneath her head.
She was more beautiful than before.
Like violets faded were her eyes;
By this we knew that she was dead.
Through the open window looked the skies
Into the chamber where she lay,
And the wind was like the sound of wings,
As if angels came to bear her away.
Ah! when I saw and felt these things,
I found it difficult to stay;
I longed to die, as she had died,
And go forth with her, side by side.
The saints are dead, the martyrs dead,
And Mary, and our Lord; and I
Would follow in humility
The way by them illumined.
URSULA. My child I my child! thou must not die.
ELSIE. Why should I live? Do I not know
The life of woman is full of woe?
Toiling on, and on, and on,
With breaking heart, and tearful eyes,
And silent lips, and in the soul
The secret longings that arise,
Which this world never satisfies!
Some more, some less, but of the whole
Not one quite happy; no, not one!
URSULA. It is the malediction of Eve!
ELSIE. In place of it, let me receive
The benediction of Mary, then.
GOTTLIEB. Ah, woe is me! Ah, woe is me!
Most wretched am I among men.
URSULA. Alas! that I should live to see
Thy death, beloved, and to stand
Above thy grave! Ah, woe the day!
ELSIE. Thou wilt not see it. I shall lie
Beneath the flowers of another land;
For at Salerno, far away
Over the mountains, over the sea,
It is appointed me to die!
And it will seem no more to thee
Than if at the village on market day
I should a little longer stay
Than I am used.
URSULA. Even as thou sayest!
And how my heart beats when thou stayest!
I can not rest until my sight
Is satisfied with seeing thee.
What, then, if thou wert dead?
GOTTLIEB. Ah me,
Of our old eyes thou art the light!
The joy of our old hearts art thou!
And wilt thou die?
URSULA. Not now! not now!
ELSIE. Christ died for me, and shall not I
Be willing for my Prince to die?
You both are silent; you can not speak.
This said I, at our Saviour's feast,
After confession, to the priest,
And even he made no reply.
Does he not warn us all to seek
The happier, better land on high,
Where flowers immortal never wither;
And could he forbid me to go thither?
GOTTLIEB. In God's own time, my heart's delight!
When He shall call thee, not before!
ELSIE. I heard Him call. When Christ ascended
Triumphantly, from star to star,
He left the gates of heaven ajar.
I had a vision in the night,
And saw Him standing at the door
Of His Father's mansion, vast and splendid,
And beckoning to me from afar.
I can not stay!
GOTTLIEB. She speaks almost
As if it were the Holy Ghost
Spake through her lips and in her stead!
What if this were of God?
URSULA. Ah, then
Gainsay it dare we not.
GOTTLIEB. Amen!
The old house under the elms is still the poet's home, and dear, as
such, to every lover of poetry. It is a stately building, of the style
of more than one hundred years ago, and is a very home-like place in its
general appearance. Entering by the main door-way, which is in the
center of the house, the visitor finds himself in a wide, old-fashioned
hall, with doors opening upon it on either hand.
"The library of the poet is the long north-eastern room upon the lower
floor," said a writer seventeen years ago. "It opens upon the garden,
which retains still the quaint devices of an antique design, harmonious
with the house. The room is surrounded with handsome book-cases, and one
stands also between two Corinthian columns at one end, which imparts
dignity and richness to the apartment. A little table by the northern
window, looking upon the garden, is the usual seat of the poet. A bust
or two, the rich carvings of the cases, the spaciousness of the room, a
leopard-skin lying upon the floor, and a few shelves of strictly
literary curiosities, reveal not only the haunt of the elegant scholar
and poet, but the favorite resort of the family circle. But the northern
gloom of a New England winter is intolerant of this serene delight, this
beautiful domesticity, and urges the inmates to the smaller room in
front of the house, communicating with the library, and the study of
General Washington. This is still distinctively 'the study,' as the rear
room is 'the library,' Books are here, and all the graceful detail of an
elegant household, and upon the walls hang crayon portraits of Emerson,
Sumner, and Hawthorne.
"Emerging into the hall, the eyes of the enamored visitor fall upon the
massive old staircase, with the clock upon the landing. Directly he
hears a singing in his mind:
'Somewhat back from the village street,
Stands the old-fashioned country-seat;
Across its antique portico
Tall poplar trees their shadows throw,
And from its station in the hall
An ancient time-piece says to all,
"Forever--never!
Never--forever!"'
"But he does not see the particular clock of the poem, which stood upon
another staircase, in another quaint old mansion,--although the verse
belongs truly to all old clocks in all old country-seats, just as the
'Village Blacksmith' and his smithy are not alone the stalwart man and
dingy shop under the 'spreading chestnut-tree' which the Professor daily
passes on his way to his college duties, but belong wherever a smithy
stands. Through the meadows in front flows the placid Charles."
So calmly flows the poet's life. The old house has other charms for him
now besides those with which his fancy invested it when he first set
foot within its walls, for here have come to him the joys and sorrows of
his maturer life, and here, "when the evening lamps are lighted," come
to him the memories of the loved and lost, who but wait for him in the
better land. Here, too, cluster the memories of those noble achievements
in his glorious career which have made him now and for all times the
people's poet. Others, as the years go by, will woo us with their lays,
but none so winningly and tenderly as this our greatest master. There
was but one David in Israel, and when he passed away no other filled his
place.