[Illustration: Longfellow and the Bird]
Long-fel-low was a noble boy. He always wanted to do right. He could
not bear to see one person do any wrong to another.
He was very tender-hearted. One day he took a gun and went shooting. He
killed a robin. Then he felt sorry for the robin He came home with
tears in his eyes. He was so grieved, that he never went shooting
again.
He liked to read Irving’s “Sketch Book.” Its strange stories about
Sleepy Hollow and Rip Van Win-kle pleased his fancy.
When he was thirteen he wrote a poem. It was about Love-well’s fight
with the Indians. He sent his verses to a news-paper. He wondered if
the ed-i-tor would print them. He could not think of anything else. He
walked up and down in front of the printing office. He thought that his
poem might be in the printer’s hands.
When the paper came out, there was his poem. It was signed “Henry.”
Long-fel-low read it. He thought it a good poem.
But a judge who did not know whose poem it was talked about it that
evening. He said to young Long-fel-low, “Did you see that poem in the
paper? It was stiff. And all taken from other poets, too.”
This made Henry Long-fel-low feel bad. But he kept on trying. After
many years, he became a famous poet.
For more than fifty years, young people have liked to read his poem
called “A Psalm of Life.” Here are three stanzas of it:—
“Lives of great men all remind us
We can make our lives sub-lime,
And, de-part-ing, leave behind us
Foot-prints on the sands of time,—
“Foot-prints, that perhaps another,
Sailing o’er life’s solemn main,
A forlorn and ship-wrecked brother,
Seeing, may take heart again.
“Let us, then, be up and doing,
With a heart for any fate;
Still a-chiev-ing, still pur-su-ing,
Learn to labor and to wait.”