She starts, - she moves, she seems to feel The thrill of life along her keel, And, spurning with her foot the ground, And lo! from the assembled crowd Our faith triumphant o'er our fears, Are all with thee, 350 1849. 360 How beautiful she is! How fair The moistened eye, the trembling lip, Sail forth into the sea of life, 370 380 Thou, too, sail on, O Ship of State! 390 are all with thee !1 THE LADDER OF SAINT AUGUSTINE 1849. 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. 2 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. 3 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 Providence.' (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 loast 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 material, see his own notes given below. With the rushing of great rivers, 10 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.) I repeat them as I heard them Should you ask where Nawadaha In the hoof-prints of the bison, In the eyry of the eagle ! 'All the wild-fowl sang them to him, In the moorlands and the fen-lands, In the melancholy marshes; Chetowaik, the plover, sang them, Mahng, the loon, the wild-goose, Wawa, The blue heron, the Shuh-shuh-gah, And the grouse, the Mushkodasa!' If still further you should ask me, Saying, Who was Nawadaha? Tell us of this Nawadaha,' I should answer your inquiries Straightway in such words as follow. 'In the vale of Tawasentha,1 In the green and silent valley, By the pleasant water-courses, Dwelt the singer Nawadaha. Round about the Indian village Spread the meadows and the corn-fields, And beyond them stood the forest, Stood the groves of singing pine-trees, Green in Summer, white in Winter, Ever sighing, ever singing. 'And the pleasant water-courses, Ye who love the haunts of Nature, 20 30 40 50 60 70 This valley, now called Norman's Kill, is in Albany County, New York. (LONGFELLOW.) And the rain-shower and the snow-storm, Through their palisades of pine-trees, Ye who love a nation's legends, To this Song of Hiawatha ! Ye whose hearts are fresh and simple, Who have faith in God and Nature, Who believe that in all ages Every human heart is human, That in even savage bosoms There are longings, yearnings, strivings For the good they comprehend not, That the feeble hands and helpless, Groping blindly in the darkness, Touch God's right hand in that darkness And are lifted up and strengthened; Listen to this simple story, To this Song of Hiawatha! - Ye, who sometimes, in your rambles Through the green lanes of the country, Where the tangled barberry-bushes Hang their tufts of crimson berries Over stone walls gray with mosses, Pause by some neglected graveyard, For a while to muse, and ponder On a half-effaced inscription, Written with little skill of song-craft, Homely phrases, but each letter Full of hope and yet of heart-break, Full of all the tender pathos Of the Here and the Hereafter; Stay and read this rude inscription, Read this Song of Hiawatha ! 80 9. 100 2 Mr. Catlin, in his Letters and Notes on the Manners, Customs, and Condition of the North American Indians, vol. ii, p. 160, gives an interesting account of the |