an anxiety that can be better felt than described, until the night prevented him from seeing it. In the night he watched the bomb-shells, and at early dawn his eye was again greeted by the flag of his country.' M'Carty's National Songs, iii, 225. THE OLD OAKEN BUCKET Published in the volume entitled Poems, Odes, and Songs, and Other Metrical Effusions, 1818. THE BUCCANEER 158. 1. The island, Block Island, Rhode Island. Whittier's poem The Palatine has as its theme a Ideed of the early Block Island wreckers. ZOPHIEL, ETC. There is much in Zophiel and in Mrs. Brooks' Cuban songs to remind one of The House of Night and the West India period of Philip Freneau. NIAGARA Jared Sparks in Vol. 22 of the North American Review said of this poem: Among all the tributes of the Muses to that great wonder of nature, we do not remember any so comprehensive and forcible, and at the same time so graphically correct, as this.' AMERICA Early in 1832 Dr. Lowell Mason, the composer, gave to Mr. Smith a number of German music books arranged for use in schools, and requested him to look them over and report to him what might be used for the Boston schools. In the words of Mr. Smith: 'Turning over the leaves of one of the music books I found one song of a patriotic nature set to the tune which England claims as hers because she has so long sung it to the words, "God Save the Queen," but which the Danes claim as theirs and which the Germans claim as original with them, and of the real origin of which I believe no one is certain. The music impressed me by its simplicity and easy movement, and I was at once moved to write a patriotic hymn of my own, which American children could sing to this same tune, which I did on a scrap of waste paper, probably finishing it within half an hour. 'That was in February, 1832. I gave the hymn to Dr. Mason with others -some translations. others my own and thought not more of it. The following Fourth of July I happened into Park Street Church in Boston, where Sundayschool children were enjoying a patriotic festival. It was at this children's Fourth of July celebration that America was first sung. the words of which I had written a few months before. Since then I have heard it sung all over the world.' EACH AND ALL In his journal May 16, 1834, Emerson wrote: 'I remember when I was a boy gazing upon the beach and being charmed with the colors and forms of the shells, I picked up many and put them in my pocket. When I got home I could find nothing that I gathered nothing but some dry ugly mussel and snail shells. Hence I learned that Composition was more important than the beauty of individual forms to Effect. On the shore they lay wet and social, by the sea and under the sky.' THE RHODORA The rhodora, Rhodora Canadensis, is a handsome shrub from one to three feet high, with terminal clusters of pale-purple flowers preceding the deciduous leaves. It is frequent in cool bogs from the mountains of Pennsylvania to Canada and New England.' THE HUMBLE BEE May 9, 1837, Emerson wrote in his journal, 'Yesterday in the woods I followed the fine humble-bee with rhymes and fancies free.' In the earliest version the opening line reads, Fine humble bee! Fine humble bee.' CONCORD HYMN The opening lines of the first stanza are carven on the pedestal of French's statue, The Minute Man, which stands at the entrance to Concord bridge on the side of the river opposite the monument dedicated in 1837. 169. Lines and 2, stood, flood.' Emerson's rimes are often far from perfect. Undoubtedly he was deficient in sense of melody, yet one must not press this idea too far. To him freedom was the poet's birthright. I wish to write,' he wrote in his journal June 27, 1839, 'such rimes as shall not suggest a restraint, but contrariwise the wildest freedom.' THE AMERICAN SCHOLAR 'An oration delivered before the Phi Beta Kappa .Society, at Cambridge, August 31, 1837.' Dr. Holmes's title for it was 'Our Intellectual Declaration of Independence.' Many critics use the date of its delivery as the opening date of a new period in the history of American Literature. The impression it created was profound. Says Dr. Holmes, 'The young men went out from it as if a prophet had been proclaiming to them, "Thus saith the Lord." No listener ever forgot that address, and among all the noble utterances of the speaker it may be questioned if one ever contained more truth in language more like that of immediate inspiration.' 169. b. 11. Commencement. Until comparatively recent times commencement in American colleges came at the commencement of the college year in August or September. 173. b. 55. Savoyards, inhabitants of the duchy of Savoy in France. 174. b. 15. Druids . . Berserkers. Druids were priests of the old Celtic religion in England, a religion that centered about the oak tree. Berserkers: Scandinavian warriors who went into battle foaming at the mouth and howling in mad rage. b. 38. Flamsteed, 1646-1719, famous English astronomer, author of the British Catalogue' of stars. THE PROBLEM This poem contains several of Emerson's most quoted lines.. 179. 65. Chrysostom, a patriarch of the Greek church, born 347, died 407. Noted for his eloquence. Called by the French 'the golden mouthed.' 68. Taylor, 1613-1667, an English bishop, author of Holy Living and Holy Dying. SELF-RELIANCE 'A small portion of the essay came from the lecture "Individualism," the last in the course of "The Philosophy of History," in 1836-37, and the other passages from the lectures, "School," "Genius," and "Duty," in the course on "Human Life," 1838-39.' Emerson's style is often fragmentary, and his es says seem sometimes at first reading to be collections of brilliant sentences with little logical connection. It will help one's thinking to reduce one of the essays to its outline. The outline of SelfReliance would be something like this: 180. a. 47. Be original, not conventional. Trust thyself. Obstacles in the way of self-reliance: 181. b. 31. Conformity. 183. b. 4. Consistency. 184. b. 44. Ignorance of Self. 185. a. 16. False estimates of Men. The reasons for self-trust:" a. 50. The trustee is worthy, for the self is an emanation from the divine spirit. 186. b. 25. The self or soul is an active, original agent, self-sufficing, and therefore self-relying. 187. b. 33. Self-trust is attained by following the Truth, though it requires almost godlike strength to do it. 188. a. 58. The great need of self-reliance at the present time. 189. a. 6. In religion. b. 57. In motives for travel. 190. a. 43. In intellectual honesty. b. 48. In the spirit of society. 180. a. 46. An eminent painter, perhaps Washington Allston. 182. a. 10. Barbadoes, in the West Indies, evidently taken as an illustration because its large negro population made it interesting to Abolitionists. 183. b. 30. With consistency, etc.; note the positiveness which is one of Emerson's characteristics. had a fear always of using a qualifying word. He never weakened his effects by such words as 'perhaps,'. ' undoubtedly,' and the like. He 184. b. 36. Shadow of one man, the essence of Carlyle's Heroes and Hero Worship. According to Carlyle, history is the biographies of a few great mén. 185. a. 4. Popular fable, see the Induction to The Taming of the Shrew. 24. Scanderbeg, Iskander Bey, 1403-1468, the Albanian patriot. 49. The magnetism, etc. This paragraph contains the essence of the Transcendental Philosophy. 189. a. 33. His hidden meaning, etc., the quotation is from Scene I, Act 3. The play, which is attributed to Beaumont and Fletcher, was performed sometime previous to the year 1619. b. 16. Locke, etc. John Locke, 1632-1704, the English philosopher, who wrote the Essay Concerning the Human Understanding, opposition to which finally brought out the transcendental revolt; Antoine Lavoisier, French chemist, Founder of modern chemistry,' guillotined 1794; Charles Hutton, English mathematician, and James Hutton, Scottish geologist; Jeremy Bentham, 1745-1832, English sociological philosopher; François Marie Charles Fourier, 1772-1837, French socialist, whose communistic system was the philosophical basis of the Brook Farm experiment. 28. Swedenborgianism. Emerson was greatly in terested in Swedenborg, the mystic, and his work He devoted to him a lecture that is now a part of his Representative Men. BRAHMA The poem was included in May-Day and Other Pieces, 1867. By its first readers it was considered to be obscure, but its obscurity vanishes when one considers the oriental conception of pantheism which it voices, the doctrine that God is the only substance in the universe; that everything that can be conceived of by man is but a manifestation of God. ABRAHAM LINCOLN Remarks at the Memorial Services in Concord, April 19, 1865. Lincoln was shot on the 14th of April and died the following day. TERMINUS Edward Waldo Emerson in his biography recounts how in December, 1866, he met his father in New York and spent the night with him. He read me some poems that he was soon to publish in his new volume, May-Day, and among them Terminus. I was startled; for, he, looking so healthy, so full of life and young in spirit, was reading his deliberate acknowledgment of failing forces and his trusting serene acquiescence. I think he smiled as he read.' He was then sixtythree. The poet had a premonition of the mental disease that soon was to begin to cloud his faculties. SIGHTS FROM A STEEPLE This is an example of Hawthorne's Sketches,the observations of a solitary man who views humanity, himself unseen. Others are Night Sketches from Under an Umbrella, Footprints on the Seashore, etc. 179. b. 10. Limping devil of Le Sage. Le Sage's novel, Le Diable Boiteur, was published in 1707. 15. Paul Pry, synonym for a meddlesome, inquisitive nuisance. Made use of by John Poole, the English playwright, whose Paul Pry was produced at the Haymarket theater in 1825. 198. a. 39. Vicentio of Pisa, a character in The Taming of the Shrew. He is described as A merchant of great traffic through the world.' 1:i: 12. b. 3. Paris and the Golden Apple, the wellknown story of the award of the prize of beauty to Venus. The Judgment of Paris is the subject of two paintings by Rubens, one at Dresden and the other in the National Gallery, London. 199. a. 53. Podagra, the medical name for gout in the foot. b. 5. Atalanta, in Grecian mythology a maiden swift of foot who ridded herself of troublesome suitors by challenging them to a foot-race. DAVID SWAN The story is a parable of the type so frequently made use of by Hawthorne. All descendants of the Puritans are preachers and one does not have to reach the final sentence to discover that this is a sermon. THE BIRTHMARK This is not an allegory: it is a narrative that lays bare a fundamental weakness in humanity. 208. a. 30. Albertus Magnus, born 1193, a Dominican monk and a philosopher of great learning. Reputed to be a magician. 31. Paracelsus, born 1493, German alchemist. See the poem Paracelsus by Browning. 42., The Royal Society, The Royal Society of London for Improving Natural Knowledge' founded in 1660 or thereabouts. It is the most dignified and authoritative of all British societies. THE GREAT STONE FACE 211. b. 19. The Great Stone Face. Hawthorne had in mind the well-known Profile or Old Man of the Mountain in the Franconia Notch of the White Mountains of New Hampshire. 21. Valley, the valley of the Pemigewasset from Plymouth, N. H., to the Franconia Notch. 212. a. 36. Cottage-door. This is an imaginary touch. The one point where the stone face may be viewed is on the north shore of Profile lake at a focal spot only a few rods wide. ABSALOM Willis wrote this poem while in college, probably in his senior year. It is a good example of his early scriptural poems, which, says his biographer Beers, were widely quoted and admired, copied about in the newspapers, inserted in readers and collections of verse, and have done as much to upbear his memory as any of his later writings.' LETTERS FROM UNDER A BRIDGE These letters, first published in the New York Mirror, appeared in book form in 1839 with the title, A l'Abri; or, The Tent Pitched. It was of this that Lowell wrote in the Fable for Critics, 1848: Few volumes I know to read under a tree The book was reissued in London in 1840, with the title Letters from Under a Bridge, and to it was affixed the following preface: The Letters which form the first part of the present volume were written in the Valley of the Susquehannah, from a beautiful glen, some eighty miles above Wyoming. The author, after many years' travel in Europe and the East, has there "pitched his tent." The letters were addressed to Dr. T. Olcutt Porter, one of the writer's most accomplished and valued friends, resident in New York. But as they embody a newly-drawn picture of the scenery and mode of life on the banks of the beautiful river made classic by the muse of Campbell, it has been thought worth while to pub lish them in England.' This novel was published in New York in 1835, the same year as The Yemassee. Chapters XLIII and XLIV tell of the Battle of Camden, or, as some historians term it, the Battle of Sanders' Creek, August 16, 1780, and the results which followed. 229. a. 11. Gates, Horatio Gates, who had led the northern army at the time of the surrender of Burgoyne. In June, 1780, he had been placed in command of the army of the South. Simms represents him as being weak and conceited. a. 12. Cornwallis, in April, 1778, appointed second in command to Sir Henry Clinton, Com. mander in Chief in America. Cornwallis had been put in charge of the forces that were to subjugate the southern states. 230. a. 6. Seen foreign service together. Previous to 1776 when he first came to America, Cornwallis had been for 20 years in the army and had served with distinction on the Continent. Gates was an English soldier before the Revolution. He had been a captain under Braddock. b. 57. Colonel Tarleton, the officer under Cornwallis who was most hated in the South of all the English. He surrendered with Cornwallis at York town. 231. a. 51. DeKalb. In the words of Simms, 'A German by birth, he was in the service of the King of France, and was already a brigadier when transferred to America in the revolutionary struggle. Congress honored him with the commission of a major-general, and he did honor to the trust.' 237. b. 43. Camden, a town in South Carolina, thirty-two miles northeast of Columbia. THE PSALM OF LIFE 242. Longfellow first made this poem public in 1838 during a lecture on Goethe, doubtless to illustrate the spirit of Wilhelm Meister. It was a challenge to his own dreaming, brooding, night-loving soul, a call to the world of reality and action. One may paraphrase it thus: Life's no time for dreams; the soul that simply slumbers and dreams is not living at all. The world, it is true, seems to me to be a mere shadow or dream, even as it did to Goethe's Werther, but it is not- ('things are not what they seem') life is real. Art is long; life is short-act; look the moment in the face. It is not for me to muse idly on the future, building castles, nor to be the slave of the past. It is for me to be up and doing to-day. FOOTSTEPS OF ANGELS 242. 13. He, the young and strong, his brother-inlaw and dearest friend, George W. Pierce, the news of whose unexpected death came to Longfellow during his winter at Heidelberg. 21. The Being Beauteous, his young wife who had died at Rotterdam. THE WRECK OF THE HESPERUS 243. Under date of December 17, 1839, Longfellow wrote in his journal, News of shipwrecks horrible on the coast. Twenty bodies washed ashore near Gloucester, one lashed to a piece of the wreck. There is a reef called Norman's Woe where many of these took place; among others the schooner Hesperus. Also the Sea-Flower on Black Rock. I must write a ballad upon this.' Again on the 30th: I wrote last evening a notice of Allston's poems. After which I sat till twelve o'clock by my fire, smoking, when suddenly it came into my mind to write the Ballad of the Schooner Hesperus; which I accordingly did. Then I went to bed, but could not sleep. New thoughts were running in my mind, and I got up to add them to the ballad. It was three by the clock. I then went to bed and fell asleep. I feel pleased with the ballad. It hardly cost me an effort. It did not come into my mind by lines but by stanzas.' SERENADE 245. From Act I, Scene 3 of The Spanish Student. THE BELFRY OF BRUGES 246. Carillon, a set of stationary bells tuned to play melodies. The carillon of bells at Bruges contained forty-eight bells. The poem served as introduction to Longfellow's volume of poems published in 1845 with the title The Belfry of Bruges and Other Poems. Longfellow was in Bruges in 1842. He mentions the carillon of bells in his Journal May 30 and 31. RESIGNATION 247. 7. Rachel, Jeremiah xxxiii, 15. 21. The child of our affection. The poem was occasioned by the death of Longfellow's little daughter Fanny, September 11, 1848. AN AMERICAN LITERATURE A part of Chapter XX of Kavanagh, a Tale. 248. b. 24. Banvard. John Banvard, born in New York, 1820, began in 1840 to paint a series of pictures to illustrate the entire length of the Mississippi River. He rowed thousands of miles in an open skiff, supporting himself as he could until he had traveled the length of the river. His resulting panorama of the Mississippi' was nearly half a mile in length. It was widely exhibited both in America and abroad. 6 MY LOST YOUTH 249. In his journal under the date of March 29, 1855, the poet wrote: A day of pain; cowering over the fire. At night as I lie in bed, a poem comes into my mind,- a memory of Portland, my native town, the city by the sea.. Siede la terra dove nato fui [Sitteth the city wherein I was born upon the seashore. Dante.] On the following day he recorded: Wrote the poem; and am rather pleased with it, and with the bringing in of the two lines of the old Lapland song, A boy's will is the wind's will, And the thoughts of youth are long, long thoughts.' 250. 37. The sea-fight, the fight between the American brig Enterprise and the British brig Boxer during the war of 1812. The American ship was successful, though she lost her captain, and brought her prize into Portland. The English captain also fell. 'HIAWATHA 250. In his introduction to the poem Longfellow wrote: 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, Tarenyawagon, 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 between the Pictured Rocks and the Grand Sable.' 251. 41. The Vale of Tawasentha, This valley, now called Norman's Kill, is in Albanay County, New York.'- Author's note. COURTSHIP OF MILES STANDISH 261. December 2, 1857, Longfellow wrote in his Journal: Soft as spring. I begin a new poem, Priscilla; to be a kind of Puritan pastoral; the subject, the courtship of Miles Standish.' Again on the 3d: My poem is in hexameters, an idyl of the Old Colony times. What it will turn out I do not know; but it gives me pleasure to write it.' On the following 22d of March he records that the poem is finished. In a remote way the poem was to Longfellow a record of family history. His mother's family traced their descent through the Wadsworths and the Bartletts to no less than four of the Mayflower pilgrims, including Elder Brewster and Captain John Alden. PAUL REVERE'S RIDE 264. This was the opening poem of the volume Tales of a Wayside Inn, 1863. It is represented as having been told by the landlord of the Inn,- the old Red Horse Tavern in Sudbury, Mass. 2. Paul Revere, born at Boston, 1735, died 1818. He was a silversmith and engraver and was active on the side of the patriots. 9. The old North Church. There was no doubt in Longfellow's mind, whatever may be the doubts in the minds of later antiquaries, as to the church from which the signal was hung. In his journal for April 3, 1860, he records, Go with Sumner to Mr. H, of the North End, who acts as guide to the "Little Britain" of Boston. We go to the Copp's Hill burial ground and see the tomb of Cotton Mather, his father and his son; then to the old North Church, which looks like a parish church in London. We climb the tower to the chime of bells, now the home of innumerable pigeons. From this tower were hung the lanterns as a signal that the British troops had left Boston for Concord.' DIVINA COMMEDIA 265. Mrs. Longfellow died July 10, 1861, accidentally burned to death. The poet, as his biographer records, felt the need of some continuous and tranquil occupation for his thoughts.' and accordingly turned again to the translations. For a time he translated a canto each day.' The translation in its final form was not ready for publication until 1866. One sonnet of the series of six was used as preface to each of the larger divisions of the poem. THE MORAL WELFARE 267. This poem marks the opening of the second period in Whittier's poetic life, the period in which purely poetic themes gave place to fiery antislavery propaganda. To him the abolitionist movement was America's second war for independence. 1. On her natal day, an allusion, of course, to July 4, 1776. PROEM 268. This poem was the Proem, or poetical introduction, to Voices of Freedom, 1848. 34. Marvell, a contemporary of Milton, prized in early New England because of his satires upon the Cavaliers. He was Milton's assistant in the Latin Secretaryship. ICHABOD 270. To quote Whittier's own words: This poem was the outcome of the surprise and grief and forecast of evil consequences which I felt on reading the seventh of March speech of Daniel Webster in support of the "compromise" and the Fugitive Slave Law. No partisan or personal enmity dictated it. On the contrary, my admiration of the splendid personality and intellectual power of the great Senator was never stronger than when I laid down his speech, and, in one of the saddest moments of my life, penned my protest. I saw as I wrote, with painful clearness, its sure results. . . .' It should be remembered that Webster and Whittier were relatives by blood. In later years Whittier wrote The Last Occasion, a poem it is well to read in connection with Ichabod. |