All is finished! and at length Has come the bridal day Of beauty and of strength. To-day the vessel shall be launched! With fleecy clouds the sky is blanched, And o'er the bay, Slowly, in all his splendors dight, The great sun rises to behold the sight. Strong as youth, and as uncontrolled, Up and down the sands of gold. His beating heart is not at rest; With ceaseless flow, His beard of snow Heaves with the heaving of his breast. He waits impatient for his bride. There she stands, With her foot upon the sands, Decked with flags and streamers gay, In honor of her marriage day, 260 270 280 Her snow-white signals fluttering, blending, Round her like a veil descending, The bride of the gray old sea. Kisses his daughter's glowing cheek Down his own the tears begin to run. The shepherd of that wandering flock, Of the sailor's heart, All its pleasures and its griefs, 301 31 And lift and drift, with terrible force, Outward or homeward bound, are we. Floats and swings the horizon's bound, 320 And climb the crystal wall of the skies, As if we could slide from its outer brink. It is not the sea that sinks and shelves, 380 Thou, too, sail on, O Ship of State ! ! 390 THE LADDER OF SAINT AUGUSTINE SAINT AUGUSTINE! well hast thou said,3 Beneath our feet each deed of shame! All common things, each day's events, The low desire, the base design, That makes another's virtues less; The revel of the ruddy wine, And all occasions of excess; The longing for ignoble things; The strife for triumph more than truth; The hardening of the heart, that brings Irreverence for the dreams of youth; All thoughts of ill; all evil deeds, That have their root in thoughts of ill; Whatever hinders or impedes The action of the nobler will; 20 1 These lines, written twelve years before the beginning of the Civil War (and substituted for a weaker ending with which Longfellow was dissatisfied - see the Life, vol. iii, pp. 363, 443-4), seemed word by word to fit the circumstances and feelings of the nation in that great struggle, and during its progress rouse thousands of audiences to passionate enthusiasm. Lincoln's feeling for them typifies that of the whole people. Mr. Noah Brooks in his paper on Lincoln's Inagination (Scribner's Monthly, August, 1879), mentions that he found the President one day attracted by these stanzas, quoted in a political speech. Knowing the whole poem,' he adds, as one of my early exercises in recitation, I began, at his request, with the description of the launch of the ship, and repeated it to the end. As he listened to the last lines, his eyes filled with tears, and his cheeks were wet. He did not speak for some minutes, but finally said, with simplicity: "It is a wonderful gift to be able to stir men like that."' (Quoted in the Cambridge Edition of Longfellow.) The first public reading of the poem, by Fanny Kemble, is described in Longfellow's Journal, February 12, 1850. Life, vol. ii, p. 172. The Seaside and the Fireside, in which The Building of the Ship' holds the first place, is dated 1850; but the book was actually published late in 1849. The words of St. Augustine are, De vitiis nostris. scalam nobis facimus, si vitia ipsa calcamus.' - Sermon III. De Ascensione. (LONGFELLOW.) Two angels, one of Life and one of Death, Passed o'er our village as the morning broke; 1 In a letter of April 25, 1855, Longfellow speaks of this poem as written on the birth of my younger daughter, and the death of the young and beautiful wife of my neighbor and friend, the poet Lowell. It will serve as an answer to one of your questions about life and its many mysteries. To these dark problems there is no other solution possible, except the one word Pro vidence.' (Life, vol. ii, p. 285.) SHOULD you ask me, whence these stories? 1 Those to whom Hiawatha' is familiar from their childhood, but who feel it to be hardly fit food for mature intellects, and those who are wearied by its repetitions, its simplicity, and the monotony of its rhythm, should reread at least the Introduction, and Cantos iii (Hiawatha's Childhood), vii (His Sailing), x (His Wooing), xx (The Famine), and xxii (Hiawatha's Departure). The whole poem, however, without omissions, is necessary to any real knowledge of Longfellow's work or of American poetry. The simplicity of his own character enabled him to reproduce the effects of primitive poetry and legend better than other modern poets have done, and to create what is at least our nearest approach to an American epic. It is greatly superior to all other attempts at epic treatment of the Indian legends. Bayard Taylor said of it: It will be parodied, perhaps ridiculed, in many quarters, but it will live after the Indian race has vanished from our Continent, and there will be no parodies then.' Emerson called it 'sweet and wholesome as maize.' Longfellow wrote 'Hiawatha' with more enthusiasm than any other of his poems. Cf. the Journal, October 19, 1854: Hiawatha" occupies and delights me. Have I no misgivings about it? Yes, sometimes. Then the theme seizes me and hurries me away, and they vanish.' (Life, vol. ii, p. 277.) The hero,' he wrote to Freiligrath (who afterward translated "Hiawatha" into German), is a kind of American Prometheus.' From the first he felt sure of his subject and his metre: 'I have at length hit upon a plan for a poem on the American Indians, which seems to me the right one, and the only. It is to weave together their beautiful traditions into a whole. I have hit upon a measure, too, which I think the right and only one for such a theme.' (Journal, June 22, 1854.) The metre was avowedly taken from that of the Finnish epic Kalevala, which he had read with Freiligrath twelve years before. See Freiligrath's letter in the London Athenæum, December 22, 1855. On the sources from which Longfellow drew his maerial, see his own notes given below. Further, on Hiawatha,' see: Life, vol. i1, pp. 272-311. Longfellow (Alice M.), A Visit to Hiawatha's People. Schoolcraft (Henry R.), The Myth of Hiawatha and With the rushing of great rivers, From the mountains, moors, and fenlands ΤΟ other Oral Legends, Mythologic and Allegoric, of the North American Indians. Broili (Otto), Die Hauptquellen Longfellows Song of Hiawatha. Wurzburg, 1898. Lang (Andrew), Letters on Literature. Cracroft, Essays, vol. ii (on the translation of parts of 'Hiawatha' into Latin, for school use, by F. W. Newmen). Hale (E. E.), in the North American Review, January, 1856. Chasles (Philarète), in the Journal des Débats, April 20, 1856. Montégut (Emile), in the Revue des Deux Mondes, June, 1857. Hale (Henry), Hiawatha played by real Indians,' in the Critic, July, 1905. 2 This Indian Edda - if I may so call it is founded on a tradition, prevalent among the North American Indians, of a personage of miraculous birth, who was sent among them to clear their rivers, forests, and fishing-grounds, and to teach them the arts of peace. He was known among different tribes by the several names of Michabou, Chiabo, Manabozo, Tarenya-wagon and Hiawatha. Mr. Schoolcraft gives an account of him in his Algic Researches, vol. i, p. 134, and in his History, Condition, and Prospects of the Indian Tribes of the United States, part iii, p. 314, may be found the Iroquois form of the tradition, derived from the verbal narrations of an Onondaga chief. Into this old tradition I have woven other curious Indian legends, drawn chiefly from the various and valuable writings of Mr. Schoolcraft, to whom the literary world is greatly indebted for his indefatigable zeal in rescuing from oblivion so much of the legendary lore of the Indians. The scene of the poem is among the Ojibways on the southern shore of Lake Superior, in the region betweer. the Pictured Rocks and the Grand Sable. (LONGFELLOW.) |