FREEDOM all winged expands, 30 Whose dark sky sheds the snowflake down, The snowflake is her banner's star, She will not refuse to dwell Hid from men of Northern brain, For freedom he will strike and strive, 40 60 When Duty whispers low, Thou must, The youth replies, I can.1 IV Он, well for the fortunate soul Yet happier he whose inward sight, But best befriended of the God Heeds not the darkness and the dread, And the sweet heaven his deed secures. 80 90 100 110 1 These lines, a moment after they were written, seemed as if they had been carved on marble for a thousand years. (HOLMES, Life of Emerson.) Compare Emerson's Address at the Dedication of the Soldiers' Monument in Concord,' especially the paragraph beginning: All sorts of men went to the war; and his Harvard Commemoration Speech, July 21, 1865.' 2 Emerson wrote to Carlyle, May 14, 1846: I, too, have a new plaything, the best I ever had, - a woodlot. Last fall I bought a piece of more than forty acres, on the border of a little lake half a mile wide and more, called Walden Pond; -a place to which my feet have for years been accustomed to bring me once or twice a week at all seasons.' See the whole letter, in the Carlyle-Emerson Correspondence, vol. ii, pp. 123–125. Canst thou copy in verse one chime Wonderful verse of the gods, Ever the words of the gods resound; Wandering voices in the air When the shadow fell on the lake, Air-bells of fortune that shine and break, But the meanings cleave to the lake, These the fates of men forecast, TERMINUS1 It is time to be old, To take in sail: The god of bounds, 30 40 50 60 1866. 1 In the last days of the year 1866, when I was returning from a long stay in the Western States, I met my father in New York just starting for his usual win Who sets to seas a shore, Came to me in his fatal rounds, And said: 'No more! No farther shoot Thy broad ambitious branches, and thy root. Fancy departs: no more invent; Contract thy firmament To compass of a tent. There's not enough for this and that, Not the less revere the Giver, Leave the many and hold the few. Still plan and smile, The needful sinew stark as once, As the bird trims her to the gale, I trim myself to the storm of time, Right onward drive unharmed; The port, well worth the cruise, is near, And every wave is charmed.' 1866. 10 20 3་ 40 1867. ter lecturing trip, in those days extending beyond the Mississippi. We spent the night together at the St. Denis Hotel, and as we sat by the fire, he read me two or three of his poems for the new May-Day volume, among them 'Terminus.' It almost startled me. No thought of his ageing had ever come to me, and there he sat, with no apparent abatement of bodily vigor, and young in spirit, recognizing with serene acquiescence his failing forces; I think he smiled as he read. He recognized, as none of us did, that his working days were nearly done. They lasted about five years longer, although he lived, in comfortable health, yet ten years beyond those of his activity. Almost at the time when he wrote Terminus' he wrote in his journal: Within I do not find wrinkles and used heart, but unspent youth.' (E. W. EMERSON, in the Centenary Edition.) 2 Longfellow's work as a translator extended from almost the beginning to the end of his poetical career, included versions from the French, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese, Latin, German, Danish, and Anglo-Saxon, and culminated in his rendering of Dante's Divine Comedy. This work unquestionably played an impor tant part in his development, increasing the range and suppleness of his powers, and keeping the poet alive in him during the long period when he was completely absorbed by teaching, lecturing, prose writing, the composition and editing of text-books, and foreign travel. For twelve or thirteen years, between his early poems and the new beginning of his poetical work in the Psalm of Life,' he wrote practically nothing in verse except translations. Toward the end of his life (in a letter of March 7, 1879) he said of translation: And what a difficult work! There is evidently a great and strange fascination in translating. It seizes people with irresistible power, and whirls them away till they are beside themselves. It is like a ghost beckoning one to follow.' (Life, vol. iii, p. 298.) (In all notes on Longfellow's poems, the Life' referred to is Samuel Longfellow's Life of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, 3 volumes 1887.) |