A Day With Longfellow Part 1

A Day With Longfellow.

by Anonymous and Henry Wadsworth Longfellow.

A DAY WITH LONGFELLOW

The expression of serious and tender thoughtfulness, which always characterized the quiet face of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, had deepened during his later years, into something akin to melancholy. The tragic loss of his beloved wife,--burned to death while she was sealing up in paper little locks of her children's hair,--had left its permanent and irrevocable mark upon his life. Still, he did not seclude himself with his sorrow: the professor of Modern Languages at Harvard could hardly do that. He remained the selfsame kindly, gentle, industrious man, welcoming with ready courtesy the innumerable visitors to the Craigie House.

This is a large old-fas.h.i.+oned house in Cambridge, Ma.s.sachusetts--a place of gra.s.sy terraces, long verandahs, lilac bushes, and shady trees--a perfect dwelling for a man of cultured tastes, as the interior also testifies.

From the Poet's study, a s.p.a.cious, sunny room upon the ground floor, he could look across the meadows behind the house to the distant silver windings of the River Charles. It was a most orderly room.

Every book and paper lay where he could put his hand on it in a moment.

Book-cases full of valuable volumes--precious first editions--busts and portraits,--were to be seen on every side. A certain austere simplicity was noticeable all over Longfellow's house. "His private rooms," it has been said, "were like those of a German professor." But the attractiveness and delightfulness of Craigie House arose not from any intrinsic opulence of its contents, but from the personality of the man who lived there. "By his mere presence he rendered the suns.h.i.+ne brighter, and the place more radiant of kindness and peace."

The Poet began his day, so long as age and health permitted, by a brisk morning walk. He would be out and about by six, observing and enjoying the beauty of earth and air, and subsequently recording his exquisite impressions:

O Gift of G.o.d! O perfect day: Whereon shall no man work, but play; Whereon it is enough for me, Not to be doing, but to be!

Through every fibre of my brain, Through every nerve, through every vein, I feel the electric thrill, the touch Of life, that seems almost too much.

I hear the wind among the trees Playing celestial symphonies; I see the branches downward bent, Like keys of some great instrument.

And over me unrolls on high The splendid scenery of the sky, Where through a sapphire sea the sun Sails like a golden galleon,

Towards yonder cloud-land in the West, Towards yonder Islands of the Blest, Whose steep sierra far uplifts Its craggy summits white with drifts.

Blow, winds! and waft through all the rooms The snowflakes of the cherry-blooms!

Blow, winds! and bend within my reach The fiery blossoms of the peach!

O Life and Love! O happy throng Of thoughts, whose only speech is song!

O heart of man! canst thou not be Blithe as the air is, and as free?

_A Day of Suns.h.i.+ne._

The morning's post brought the first consignment of that enormous number of epistles which were at once an affliction and an amus.e.m.e.nt to him.

The Poet was besieged by letters from ambitious aspirants seeking advice, and from self-styled failures, desirous of help. To these last he was peculiarly drawn, for he was distinguished by "a grace almost peculiar to himself at the time in which he lived--his tenderness towards the undeveloped artist, struggling towards individual expression." In short, his first desire was to help on people, and bring out the best in them.

Of apparent failure or success he recked little, believing, like Stevenson, that the true success is labour,--that pursuit, and not attainment is the worthiest object of existence; and his philosophy is summed up in the well-known words of _The Ladder of Saint Augustine_,

Saint Augustine! well hast thou said, That of our vices we can frame A ladder, if we will but tread Beneath our feet each deed of shame!

All common things, each day's events, That with the hour begin and end, Our pleasures and our discontents, Are rounds by which we may ascend.

The longing for ign.o.ble 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 n.o.bler will;--

All these must first be trampled down Beneath our feet, if we would gain In the bright fields of fair renown The right of eminent domain.

We have not wings, we cannot soar; But we have feet to scale and climb By slow degrees, by more and more, The cloudy summits of our time.

The mighty pyramids of stone That wedge-like cleave the desert airs, When nearer seen and better known, Are but gigantic flights of stairs.

The distant mountains that uprear Their solid bastions to the skies, Are crossed by pathways, that appear As we to higher levels rise.

The heights by great men reached and kept Were not attained by sudden flight, But they, while their companions slept, Were toiling upward in the night.

Standing on what too long we bore With shoulders bent and downcast eyes, We may discern--unseen before-- A path to higher destinies.

Nor deem the irrevocable Past As wholly wasted, wholly vain, If rising on its wrecks, at last To something n.o.bler we attain.

Constant requests for autographs formed the bulk of the day's budget, and these also never went unanswered--even when couched in terms the most _mal a propos_, much as those of the man who said that "he loved poetry in 'most any style,"--"and would you please copy your 'Break, break, break' for the writer?" Possibly the worst offenders, in this matter of autograph-hunting, were those mult.i.tudinous schoolgirls of whom Longfellow humorously complained that he was always "kept busy answering." They ignored the fact of his professional duties, and his own unremitting work; anything to get a reply in the handwriting of the celebrity! But he had a special delight in budding womanhood, and had depicted it with magical insight and rare delicacy of touch, in lines which have never been excelled in their charm and purity.

Maiden! with the meek, brown eyes In whose orbs a shadow lies, Like the dusk in evening skies!

Thou whose locks outs.h.i.+ne the sun, Golden tresses, wreathed in one, As the braided streamlets run!

Standing, with reluctant feet, Where the brook and river meet, Womanhood and childhood fleet!

Seest thou shadows sailing by, As the dove, with startled eye, Sees the falcon's shadow fly?

Hearest thou voices on the sh.o.r.e, That our ears perceive no more, Deafened by the cataract's roar?

O, thou child of many prayers!

Life hath quicksands,--Life hath snares!

Care and age come unawares!

Like the swell of some sweet tune, Morning rises into noon, May glides onward into June.

Childhood is the bough, where slumbered Birds and blossoms many-numbered;-- Age, that bough with snows enc.u.mbered.

Gather, then, each flower that grows, When the young heart overflows, To embalm that tent of snows.

Bear a lily in thy hand; Gates of bra.s.s cannot withstand One touch of that magic wand.

Bear through sorrow, wrong, and ruth, In thy heart the dew of youth, On thy lips the seal of truth.

O, that dew, like balm shall steal Into wounds that cannot heal, Even as sleep our eyes doth seal;

And that smile, like suns.h.i.+ne, dart Into many a sunless heart, For a smile of G.o.d thou art.