Eolian harps in the pine Ring with the song of the Fates; 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. Timely wise accept the terms, Still plan and smile, And, fault of novel germs, 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, 1866. IO 20 20 30 40 1867. No 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. 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 important 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.) TELL me not, in mournful numbers, And things are not what they seem. 1 This poem has been called 'the very heart-beat of the American conscience.' When it was first published, anonymously, in the Knickerbocker magazine for October, 1838, it at once attracted attention. Whittier wrote of it in the Freeman: We know not who the author may be, but he or she is no common man or woman. These nine simple verses are worth more than all the dreams of Shelley, and Keats, and Wordsworth. They are alive and vigorous with the spirit of the day in which we live, the moral steam enginery of an age of action.' (Quoted by Professor Carpenter in his Life of Whittier.) The writing of the Psalm' is recorded in Longfellow's Journal under the date of July 26, 1838. He afterwards said of it, I kept it some time in manuscript, unwilling to show it to any one, it being a voice from my inmost heart at a time when I was rallying from depression.' (Life of Longfellow, vol. i, p. 301.) In other passages of his Journal he speaks of writing another psalm, a psalm of death, etc. The psalmist' to whom the young man speaks, is therefore the poet himself. It was the young man's better heart answering and refuting his own mood of despondency.' (Life, vol. i, pp. 283-284.) See further the Life of Longfellow, vol. i, pp. 281-284; and vol. ii, pp. 186, 283. The poem has been translated into many languages, including Chinese and Sanscrit. (Life, vol. i, p. 376; vol. iii, pp. 43, 64.) THE night is come, but not too soon; All silently, the little moon Drops down behind the sky. 2 This poem was written on a beautiful summer night. The moon, a little strip of silver, was just setting behind the grove at Mount Auburn, and the planet Mars blazing in the southeast. There was a singular light in the sky.' (H. W. L.) It was published in the same number of the Knickerbocker as the last, where it was headed A Second Psalm of Life. (Cambridge Edition of Longfellow's Poetical Works.) FOOTSTEPS OF ANGELS 2 WHEN the hours of Day are numbered, Ere the evening lamps are lighted, 2 A slightly different version of the first, second, third, sixth, seventh and eighth stanzas, with the title 'Evening Shadows,' is to be found in Longfellow's Journal under the date of February 27, 1838. (Life, vol. i, pp. 287-288). The poem was finished March 26, 1839 (Life, vol. i, pp. 327-328). The fourth stanza alludes to his brother-in-law and closest friend, George W. Pierce, of whose death he had heard in Germany on Christmas Eve of 1835, and of whom he wrote nearly twenty years later: 'I have never ceased to feel that in his death something was taken from my own life which could never be restored. I have constantly in my memory his beautiful and manly character, frank, generous, impetuous, gentle.' The sixth and following stanzas allude to Mrs. Longfellow, who died at Rotterdam, November 29, 1835. |