Newspaper Page Text
2
HENRY WADSWORTH LONGTELLOW.
HE statement was once made by a pro
fessor of literature to his class, that the
“province of true poetry was only to
amuse,” and the rhythmic cadences of
Poe, the thundering measures of Whit
man and even some of the pleasant
rhymes of Longfellow were cited as ex
amples of this axiom. But this sweep
ing assertion was one which so few per-
T
sons endorse tliat we are inclined to be a trifle re
sentful at the imputation that anything Longfellow
ever wrote was designed purely for pleasure—that
is, pleasure of the senses apart from the natural
exaltation that follows some inspiring emotion which
this poet’s words so often create.
During a certain period of adolescence, when the
youthful mind turns naturally toward poetry as a
vehicle for the expression of emotions wliich are
felt rather than understood. Longrellow has been
eminently a safety-valve and a protection from
more fervid and less feeling rhymes. Each one of
us who has safely passed the shoals and quick-sands
of youthful exuberance, will remember the thrill
with which we quoted the soothing couplets from
“The Bridge,” “The Day is Done,” or even
“Excelsior,” and, maybe, “The Psalm of Life.”
It was something of a shock to discover that these
sweet and tender thoughts, clothed in so much of
poetic imagery, were, after ah, not the highest form
of poetic expression. Youth is loth to surrender
an ideal, especially a poetic one, and the average
mind of the ordinary work-a-day person has a cu
rious tendency to cling to youthful impressions.
Thus many of us have never awakened to the fact
that Longfellow, himself, is one of those
“Humbler poets whose songs gush from the heart
Like showers from clouds in summer or tears to the
eyelids start,”
which he has himself so well described.
A poet pre-eminently beloved and widely quoted;
a poet who seldom rose to great heights, and yet
whose every line is so replete with helpful sentiment
and high moral tone that even when we learn to ad
mit that tne laurel of poetic greatness will not be
given him by the generations of the future, we rever
ence him for the influence he has exerted in the past
and the hold he still maintains on the people of
the present.
The Poet’s Hundredth Anniversary.
Just a hundred years ago. on the 27th of the
current month, was the poet Longfellow, born in
the famous old Wadsworth-Longtellow home in
Portland, Maine, the home of Longfellow’s maternal
grandfather, and which was, also, the early married
home of his mother, Zilpah Wadsworth, after she
had married Stephen Longfellow. The latter was
graduated from Harvard College in 1794, and was
one of a class of distinguished Americans, among
whom were William Ellery Channing and Joseph
Story. The Longfellow family was a prominent one
and the young Henry was reared in an atmosphere
of culture and intellectual refinement. Early in
his career he showed a marked tendency toward lit
erature, which evidenced itself by a love of good
books and an instinctive choosing of the best in
literature. He is said to have written his first
poem when he was but thirteen years old, and that
he succeeded in having it published. Naturally,
this effusion, “The Battle of Lovell’s Pond,” was
chiefly an unconscious imitation of the many stir
ring ballads of adventure which the youth had read,
but it was well versified, and what we might term
“remarkable” for a small boy.
His College Career.
We judge Henry Longfellow must have done ex
ceedingly well at school, for in a letter sent to his
father from the master of the Portland Academy,
the latter said of the young student: “He is one
of the best boys we have in the school. He spells
and reads very well. He also can add and multiply
The Golden Age for February 21, 1907.
The "Best Belobed of American Writers.
By S. T. DALSHEIMER.
numbers. His conduct last quarter was very correct
and amiable.” That this record was a forerunner
of his future career as a student, we can gather
from the fact that he entered Bowdoin College at
the early age of fifteen. One of his classmates at
■this institution was Nathaniel Hawthorne, and in
the class just above him were Emerson and Thoreau.
Being contemporary with these famous writers and
thinkers it is somewhat remarkable that he never
found himself beset with the many doubts and fears
and questionings as to things Eternal which as
sailed these other eminent scholars.
Longfellow never joined the “Transcendentalists”
whose chief members were culled from the ranks
of the literary men of the times, and during the
perplexing days of Brook Farm, when Emerson,
Thoreau, Bronson Alcott, and even, for a time, the
fastidious Hawthorne, attempted “The Simple Life”
as an evidence of their belief in the evil moral in
fluence of luxury, Longfellow pursued an unbroken
course of study abroad, where he went to prepare
HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW.
himself for the acceptance of a professorship at
Bowdoin College, where the Chair of Modern Lan
guages had been offered him.
“Hyperion.”
Shortly after assuming his duties in this position
he married Miss Mary Storer Porter, of Portland,
but the young couple lived at Brunswick, Maine,
the town in which Bowdoin was situated. In 1835
the young man and his young wife went abroad, and
it was during that trip that the first great grief of
his life came to Longfellow. Mrs. Longfellow died
in Rotterdam, and the poet sounded the depths of
human suffering. It was as a result of this expe
rience that he wrote “Hyperion,” a volume of
prose sketches which have a certain continuity of
thought, although with no attempt at a plot. ‘Some
of Longfellow’s most effective and lasting work,
however, is incorporated in this volume, and al
though many adverse criticisms have been launched
at “Hyperion,” yet for beauty of style, purity of
thought and nobility of sentiment, it has few equals.
The text of the narrative seems to have been
the keynote of the poet’s own life, and as it is
written in a personal vein, it portrays the poet’s own
life and the attitude of mind on which he builded his
future course. He says: “Look not mournfully in
to the past; it comes not back aeain. Wisely im
prove the present; it is thine; go forth to meet the
shadowy future without fear and with a manly
heart.”
The story of this book, if story it can be called,
is of a young student who travels all over Europe
seeking diversion for a sad and heavy heart; he
meets a young woman to whom he is powerfully
attracted, but who does not return his interest, and
they part, each going separate ways, never to meet
again. Thus “the minor key” is maintained
• throughout, and is only lightened by occasional
flights of fancy, such as the following bit of true
philosophy: “Welcome Disappointment!” says the
poet; ‘ ( Thy hand is cold and hard, but it is the
hand of a friend; thy voice is stern and harsh; but
it is the voice of a friend! Oh! there is something
sublime in calm endurance, something sublime in the
resolute, fixed purpose of suffering without com
plaining, which makes disappointment oftentimes
better than success!”
“The Emperor, Isaac Angelus, made a treaty with
Saladin and tried to purchase the Holy Sepulchre
with gold. Richarcl-Lion-Heart scorned such alli
ance, and sought to recover it by battle. Thus do
weak minds make treaties with the passions they
cannot overcome, and try to purchase happiness at
the expense of principle. . . : . It is a treacher
ous peace that is purchased by indulgence. Rather
take this sorrow to thy heart and make it a part
of thee, and it shall nourish thee till thou art strong
again. ”
There is a certain ruggedness about Longfellow’s
prose expression which we do not find in his verses,
and students of this writer have regretted that so
much of his writings have been polished so smooth
ly as almost to have a sense of artificiality about
•them.
Longfellow is distinctively a poet of the home,
the fireside and the sentiments that dominate the
everyday life; he loves children and sings most
sweetly of their charms and graces. In every home
ly incident he finds a poetic parallel, as, for in
stance, in “The Hanging of the Crane,” he com
pares the founding of a new home to a “New star
just sprung to birth, and swung on its harmonious
way, ’inong the myriad homes of earth.”
During Longfellow’s life, the country passed
through the throes of Civil War and the slavery
question. Like other New Englanders, he felt keen
ly the wrong's of slavery, and he founded his opin
ions on what he believed to be the true Christian
spirit. In writing to his friend, George Lunt, on
the subject of slavery, he said: “I believe slavery
to be an unrighteous institution, based on the false
maxim that Might makes Right. I have great faith
in doing what is righteous and fear no evil conse
quences.”
His attitude toward religion was that of unwav
ering faith which all his writings amply evidence.
He accepted Providential decrees in the same spirit
of humble resignation that marked his attitude to
ward his first sorrow.
His Later Life.
In 1843, Longfellow married Miss Frances Eliza
beth Appleton, and it has been said that she was
really the heroine of “Hyperion,” as he met her in
Switzerland as he did “Mary” in that story, al
though the real incident had a happier ending than
that of the imagined (?) one. Miss Appleton was
admirably suited to make a wife for a poet who
needed, at the same time, an intellectual companion,
and their life together at the stately old Craigie
House at Cambridge, is typical of all that is best
in American society. There the poet and his wife
gathered around them the leading literary lights
of the day, and it was a period when the literature
of America blossomed as it never has before nor
since. Longfellow, himself, was a most distinguish
ed looking person, and in the interesting memoirs
of Cail Schurz, ’ which are just being published,
he i efers to meeting Longfellow at a public dinner
and lemaiking his commanding personal beauty”
which prompted him to inquire the name of the
poet.
(Concluded on Page 12.)