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Idlewild.

was published in 1846 by Redfield with the addition to the writings which we have enumerated up to that date of Ephemera, a gathering of brief newspaper miscellanies. His poems have beenpublished in octavo, in a volume illustrated by Leutze.

A newly arranged edition of his writings, with new collections from his articles in his journal, is in course of publication by Scribner. The titles of these volumes are

Rural Letters, and Other Records of Thoughts at Leisure; People I have Met, or Pictures of Society and People of Mark, drain under a Thin Veil of Fiction; Life Here and There, or Sketches of Society and Adventures at Fur-Apart Times and Places; Hurry-Graphs, or Sketches from Fresh Impressions of Scenery, Celebrities, and Society; Pencillings by the Way; A Summer Cruise in the Mediterranean on board an American Frigate; Fun Jottings, or Laughs I have taken a Pen To; A Health Trip to the Tropics, etc.; Letters from Idlewild; Famous Persons and Places; The Rag Bag.

In 1845, Mr. Willis married Cornelia, only daughter of the Hon. Joseph Grinnell, member of Congress from Massachusetts. The Home Journal, his "Health Trip to the Tropics," and his "Letters from Idlewild" give the outlines of his life for these latter years. By his second marriage he has three children, one son and two daughters.

The contributions of Mr. Willis to the various periodicals upon which he has been engaged, have been written with that invariable care and finish, which enable him now, in their collected form of nine volumes, to look upon them as the even and steady product of a career of literary industry, varying only in place and circumstances. They are severally characterized by their acute perception of affairs of life and the world; a delicate vein of sentiment, an increased ingenuity in the decoration and improvement of matters which in the hands of most writers would be impertinent and wearisome; in fine, their invention which makes new things out of old, whether among the palled commonplaces of the city, or the scant monotony of the country. In a series of some twenty years, Mr. Willis has ministered, with but few intervals of absence from his post, weekly through the journals with which he has been connected, to the entertainment and delight

of the American public. That his pen is as fresh at the end of that time as at the beginning, is the best proof of his generously gifted nature. If, in the course of his "spiritings," he has occasionally provoked the more fastidious of his readers by far-fetched expressions or other conceptions, he has made his ground good, even on this debatable territory, since the eccentricities have been offshoots of his originality, and maintained by a style, fresh, idiomatic, and in its construction really pure. As a gentleman may take many liberties not allowed to a clown, an author who writes English as well as Mr. Willis may be indulged with some familiarities with Priscian.

The poetry of Mr. Willis is musical and original. His Sacred Poems belong to a class of compositions which critics might object to, did not experience show them to be pleasurable and profitable interpreters to many minds. The versification of these poems is of remarkable smoothness. Indeed, they have gained the author reputation where his nicer powers would have failed to be appreciated. In another view, his novel in rhyme, of Lady Jane, is one of the very choicest of the numerous poems cast in the model of Don Juan; while his dramas are delicate creations of sentiment and passion, with a relish of the old poetic Elizabethan stage.

As a traveller, Mr. Willis has no superior in representing the humors and experiences of the world. He is sympathetic, witty, observant, and at the same time inventive. Looking at the world through a pair of eyes of his own, he finds material where others would see nothing: indeed, some of his greatest triumphs in this line have been in his rural sketches from Glenmary and Idlewild, continued with novelty and spirit, long after most clever writers would have cried out that straw and clay too for their bricks had been utterly exhausted. That this invention has been pursued through broken health, with unremitting diligence, is another claim to consideration, which the public should be prompt to acknowledge. Under the most favorable circumstances, a continuous career of newspaper literary toil is a painful drudgery. It weighs heavily on dull men of powerful constitution. The world then should be thankful, when the delicate fibres of the poet and man of genius are freely worked from day to day in its service.

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THE BELFRY PIGEON.

On the cross-beam under the Old South bell
The nest of a pigeon is builded well.
In summer and winter that bird is there,
Out and in with the morning air:
I love to see him track the street,
With his wary eye and active feet;
And I often watch him as he springs,
Circling the steeple with easy wings,
"Till across the dial his shade has passed.
And the belfry edge is gained at last.
'Tis a bird I love, with its brooding note,
And the trembling throb in its mottled throat,
There's a human look in its swelling breast,
And the gentle curve of its lowly crest;
And I often stop with the fear I feel-
He runs so close to the rapid wheel.

Whatever is rung on that noisy bell-
Chime of the hour or funeral knell-

NATHANIEL PARKER WILLIS.

The dove in the belfry must hear it well.
When the tongue swings out to the midnight

moon

When the sexton cheerly rings for noon-
When the clock strikes clear at morning light-
When the child is waked with "nine at night "—
When the chimes play soft in the Sabbath air,
Filling the spirit with tones of prayer-
Whatever tale in the bell is heard,

He broods on his folded feet unstirred,
Or rising half in his rounded nest,
He takes the time to smoothe his breast,
Then drops again with filmed eyes,
An I sleeps as the last vibration dies.
Sweet bird! I would that I could be
A hermit in the crowd like thee!
With wings to fly to wood and glen,
Thy lot, like mine, is cast with men;
And daily, with unwilling feet,

I tread, like thee, the crowded street;
But, unlike me, when day is o'er,
Thou canst dismiss the world and soar,
Or, at a half felt wish for rest,

Canst smoothe the feathers on thy breast,
And drop, forgetful, to thy nest.

I would that in such wings of gold
I could my weary heart upfold;

And while the world throngs on beneath,
Smoothe down my cares and calmnly breathe;
And only sad with others' sadness,
And only glad with others' gladness,
Listen, unstirred, to knell or chime,
time.
And, lapt in quiet, bide my

THE ANNOYER.

Common as light is love,

And its familiar voice wearies not ever.-SHELLEY.

Love knoweth every form of air,

And every shape of earth,
And comes, unbidden, everywhere,
Like thought's mysterious birth.
The moonlit sea and the sunset sky
Are written with Love's words,
And you hear his voice unceasingly,
Like song in the time of birds.

He peeps into the warrior's heart

From the tip of a stooping plumne,

And the serried spears, and the many men,
May not deny him room.

He'll come to his tent in the weary night,
And be busy in his dream;

And he'll float to his eye in morning light
Like a fay on a silver beam.

He hears the sound of the hunter's gun,
And rides on the echo back,

And sighs in his ear, like a stirring leaf,
And flits in his woodland track.

The shade of the wood, and the sheen of the river,
The cloud and the open sky-

He will haunt them all with his subtle quiver,
Like the light of your very eye.

The fisher hangs over the leaning boat,
And ponders the silver sea,

For love is under the surface hid,
And a spell of thought has he;

He heaves the wave like a bosom sweet,
And speaks in the ripple low,

"Till the bait is gone from the crafty line,
And the hook hangs bare below.

He blurs the print of the scholar's book,
And intrudes in the maiden's prayer,

And profanes the cell of the holy man,

In the shape of a lady fair.

In the darkest night, and the bright daylight,
In earth, and sea, and sky,

In every home of human thought,
Will love be lurking nigh.

LOVE IN A COTTAGE,

They may talk of love in a cottage,
And bowers of trellised vine-
Of nature bewitchingly simple,
And milkmaids half divine;

They may talk of the pleasure of sleeping
In the shade of a spreading tree,

And a walk in the fields at morning,
By the side of a footstep free!

But give me a sly flirtation
By the light of a chandelier-
With music to play in the pauses,
And nobody very near:

Or a seat on a silken sofa,

With a glass of pure old wine, And mamma too blind to discover The small white hand in mine.

Your love in a cottage gets hungry,
Your vine is a nest for flies
Your milkmaid shocks the Graces,
And simplicity talks of pies!
You lie down to your shady slumber
And wake with a bug in your ear,
And your damsel that walks in the morning
Is shod like a mountaineer.

True love is at home on a carpet,

And mightily likes his ease

And true love has an eye for a dinner, And starves beneath shady trees.

His wing is the fan of a lady,

His foot's an invisible thing,

And his arrow is tipped with a jewel, And shot from a silver string.

UNSEEN SPIRITS.

The shadows lay along Broadway— "Twas near the twilight-tide

And slowly there a lady fair

Was walking in her pride.

Alone walked she; but, viewlessly,

Walked spirits at her side.

Peace charmed the street beneath her feet,

And Honor charmed the air;

And all astir looked kind on her,

And called her good as fair-
For all God ever gave to her
She kept with chary care.

She kept with care her beauties rare
From lovers warm and true-
For her heart was cold to all but gold,
And the rich came not to woo-

But honored well are charms to sell

If priests the selling do.

Now walking there was one more fair—
A slight girl, lily-pale;

And she had unseen company

To make the spirit quail

"Twixt Want and Scorn she walked forlorn,

And nothing could avail.

No mercy now can clear her brow
For this world's peace to pray;

For, as love's wild prayer dissolved in air,

Her woman's heart gave way!But the sin forgiven by Christ in heaven By man is curst alway!

LITTLE FLORENCE GRAY.

I was in Greece. It was the hour of noon,
And the Egean wind had dropped asleep
Upon Hymettus, and the thymy isles
Of Salamis and Egina lay hung

Like clouds upon the bright and breathless sen.
I had climbed up th' Acropolis at morn,
And hours had fled as time will in a dream
Amid its deathless ruins-for the air
Is full of spirits in these mighty fanes,
And they walk with you! As it sultrier grew,
I laid me down within a shadow deep
Of a tall column of the Parthenon,
And in an absent idleness of thought

I scrawled upon the smooth and marble base.
Tell me, O memory, what wrote I there?
The name of a sweet child I knew at Rome!

I was in Asia. "Twas a peerless night
Upon the plains of Sardis, and the moon,
Touching my eyelids through the wind-stirred tent,
Had witched me from my slumber. I arose,
And silently stole forth, and by the brink
Of golden" Pactolus," where batle his waters
The bases of Cybele's columns fair,

I paced away the hours. In wakeful mood
I mused upon the storied past awhile,
Watching the moon, that with the same mild eye
Had looked upon the mighty Lybian kings
Sleeping around me-Croesus, who had heaped
Within the mouldering portico his gold,
And Gyges, buried with his viewless ring
Beneath yon swelling tumulus-and then
I loitered up the valley to a small
And humbler ruin, where the undefiled*
Of the Apocalypse their garments kept
Spotless; and erossing with a conscious awe
The broken threshold, to my spirit's eye
It seemed as if, amid the moonlight, stood
"The angel of the church of Sardis" still!
And I again passed onward, and as dawn
Paled the bright morning star, I lay me down
Weary and sad beside the river's brink,
And 'twixt the moonlight and the rosy morn,
Wrote with my fingers in the golden sands."
Tell me, O nemory! what wrote I there?
The name of the sweet child I knew at Rome!

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The dust is old upon my "sandal-shoon," And still I am a pilgrim; I have roved From wild America to spicy Ind, And worshipped at innumerable shrines Of beauty; and the painter's art, to me, And sculpture, speak as with a living tongue, And of dead kingdoms, I recall the soul, Sitting amid their ruins. I have stored My memory with thoughts that can allay Fever and sadness; and when life gets dim, And I am overladen in my years, Minister to me. But when wearily The mind gives over toiling, and, with eyes Open but seeing not, and senses all Lying awake within their chambers fine, Thought settles like a fountain, clear and calmFar in its sleeping depths, as 'twere a gem, Tell me, O memory what shines so fair? The face of the sweet child I knew at Rome!

"Thou hast a few names even in Sardis which have not defiled their garments; and they shall walk with me in white; for they are worthy." Revelation iii. 4.

LETTER TO THE UNKNOWN PURCHASER AND NEXT OCCUPANT OF GLENMARY.

SIR: In selling you the dew and sunshine ordained to fall hereafter on this bright spot of earth-the waters on their way to this sparkling brook-the tints mixed for the flowers of that enamelled meadow, and the songs bidden to be sung in coming summers by the feathery builders in Glenmary, I know not whether to wonder more at the omnipotence of money, or at my own impertinent audacity toward Nature. How you can buy the right to exclude at will every other creature made in God's image from sitting by this brook, treading on that carpet of flowers, or lying listening to the birds in the shade of these glorious trees-how I can sell it you-is a mystery not understood by the Indian, and dark, I must say, to me.

"Lord of the soil," is a title which conveys your privileges but poorly. You are master of waters flowing at this moment, perhaps, in a river of Judea, or floating in clouds over some spicy island of the tropics, bound hither after many changes. There are lilies and violets ordered for you in millions, acres of sunshine in daily instalments, and dew nightly in proportion. There are throats to be tuned with song, and wings to be painted with red and gold, blue and yellow; thousands of them, and all tributaries to you. Your corn is ordered to be sheathed in silk, and lifted high to the sun. Your grain is to be duly bearded and stemmed. There is perfume distilling for your clover, and juices for your grasses and fruits. Ice will be here for your wine, shade for your refreshment at noon, breezes and showers and snow-flakes all in their season, and all "deeded to you for forty dollars the acre" Gods! what a copyhold of property for a fallen

world!

Mine has been but a short lease of this lovely and well-endowed domain (the duration of a smile of fortune, five years, scarce longer than a five-act play); but as in a play we sometimes live through a life, it seems to me that I have lived a life at Glenmary. Allow me this, and then you must allow me the privilege of those who, at the close of life, leave something behind them: that of writing out my will. Though I depart this life, I would fain, like others, extend my ghostly hand into the future; and if wings are to be borrowed or stolen where I go, you may rely on my hovering around and haunting you, in visitations not restricted by cock-crowing.

Trying to look at Glenmary through your eyes, sir, I see too plainly that I have not shaped my ways as if expecting a successor in my lifetime. I did not, I am free to own. I thought to have shuffled off my mortal coil tranquilly here; flitting at last in company with some troop of my autumn leaves, or some bevy of spring blossoms, or with snow in the thaw; my tenants at my back, as a landlord may say. have counted on a life-interest in the trees, trimming them accordingly; and in the squirrels and birds, encouraging them to chatter and build and fear nothing; no guns permitted on the premises. I have had my will of this beautiful stream. I have carved the woods into a shape of my liking. I have propagated the despised sumach and the persecuted hemlock and "pizen laurel." And "no end to the weeds dug up and set out again," as one of my neighbors delivers himself. I have built a bridge over Glenmary brook, which the town looks to have kept up by the place," and we have plied free ferry over the river, I and my man Tom, till the neighbors, from the daily saving of the two miles round, have got the trick of it. And betwixt the aforesaid Glenmary brook and a certain muddy and

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plebeian gutter formerly permitted to join company with, and pollute it, I have procured a divorce at much trouble and pains, a guardian duty entailed of course on my successor.

The

First of all, sir, let me plead for the old trees of Glenmary! Ah! those friendly old trees! cottage stands belted in with them, a thousand visible from the door, and of stems and branches worthy of the great valley of the Susquehannah. For how much music played without thanks am I indebted to those leaf-organs of changing tone? for how many whisperings of thought breathed like oracles into my ear? for how many new shapes of beauty moulded in the leaves by the wind? for how much companionship, solace, and welcome? Steadfast and constant is the countenance of such friends, God be praised for their staid welcome and sweet fidelity! If I love them better than some things human, it is no fault of ambitiousness in the trees. They stand where they did. But in recoiling from mankind, one may find them the next kindliest things, and be glad of dumb friendship. Spare those old trees, gentle sir!

In the smooth walk which encircles the meadow betwixt that solitary Olympian sugar-maple and the margin of the river, dwells a portly and venerable toad; who (if I may venture to bequeathe you, my friends) must be commended to your kindly consideration. Though a squatter, he was noticed in our first rambles along the stream, five years since, for his ready civility in yielding the way-not hurriedly, however, nor with an obsequiousness unbecoming a republican, but deliberately and just enough; sitting quietly on the grass till our passing by gave him room again on the warm and trodden ground. Punctually after the April cleansing of the walk, this jewelled habitué, from his indifferent lodgings hard by, emerges to take his pleasure in the sun; and there, at any hour when a gentleman is likely to be abroad, you may find him, patient on his os coccygis, or vaulting to his asylum of high grass. This year, he shows, I am grieved to remark, an ominous obesity, likely to render him obnoxious to the female eye, and, with the trimness of his shape, has departed much of that measured alacrity which first won our regard. He presumes a little on your allowance for old age; and with this pardonable weakness growing upon him, it seems but right that his position and standing should be tenderly made known to any new-comer on the premises. In the cutting of the next grass, slice me not up my fat friend, sir! nor set your cane down heedlessly in his modest domain. He is "mine ancient," and I would fain do him a good turn with you.

For my spoilt family of squirrels, sir, I crave nothing but immunity from powder and shot. They require coaxing to come on the same side of the tree with you, and though saucy to me, I observe that they commence acquaintance invariably with a safe mistrust. One or two of them have suffered, it is true, from too hasty a confidence in my greyhound Maida, but the beauty of that gay fellow was a trap against which nature had furnished them with no warning instinct! (A fact, sir, which would prettily point a moral!) The large hickory on the edge of the lawn, and the black walnut over the shoulder of the flower-garden, have been, through my dynasty, sanctuaries inviolate for squirrels. you, sir, let them not be "reformed out," under your administration.

I pray

Of our feathered connexions and friends, we are most bound to a pair of Phebe-birds and a merry Bob-o'-Lincoln, the first occupying the top of the young maple near the door of the cottage, and the

latter executing his bravuras upon the clump of alder-bushes in the meadow, though, in common with many a gay-plumaged gallant like himself, his whereabout after dark is a mystery. He comes every year from his rice-plantation in Florida to pass the summer at Glenmary. Pray keep him safe from percussion-caps, and let no urchin with a long pole poke down our trusting Phebes; annuals in that same tree for three summers. There are humming-birds, too, whom we have complimented and looked sweet upon, but they cannot be identified from morning to morning. And there is a golden oriole who sings through May on a dog-wood tree by the brook-side, but he has fought shy of our crumbs and coaxing, and let him go! We are mates for his betters, with all his gold livery! With these reservations, sir, I commend the birds to your friendship and kind keeping.

And now, sir, I have nothing else to ask, save only your watchfulness over the small nook reserved from this purchase of seclusion and loveliness. In the shady depths of the small glen above you, among the wild-flowers and music, the music of the brook babbling over rocky steps, is a spot sacrel to love and memory. Keep it inviolate, and as much of the happiness of Glenmary as we can leave behind, stay with you for recompense!

HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW

WAS born in Portland, Maine, February 27th, 1807, "in an old square wooden house, upon the edge of the sea." He entered Bowdoin College, where in due time he was graduated in the class with Hawthorne, in 1825. He wrote verses at this time for the United States Literary Gazette, printed at Boston.

For a short time after leaving college, he studied law in the office of his father, the Hon. Stephen Longfellow; but soon fell into the mode of life he has since pursued as a scholar, by the appointment to a Professorship of Modern Languages in his college, to accomplish himself for which he travelled abroad in 1826, making the usual tour of the continent, including Spain. He was absent three years; on his return, he lectured at Bowdoin College, as Professor of Modern Languages and Literature, and wrote articles for the North American Review, papers on Sir Philip Sidney, and other topics of polite literature. One of these, an Essay on the Moral and Devotional Poetry of Spain, included his noble translation of the Stanzas of the soldier poet Manrique on the death of his father.*

He also at this time penned the sketches of travel in Outre Mer, commencing the publication after the manner of Irving in his Sketch Book; but before the work was completed in this form, it was intrusted to the Harpers, who issued it entire in two volumes.

The elegance of the manner, the nice phrases and fanciful illustrations-a certain decorated poetical style with the many suggestions of fastidious scholarship, marked this in the eye of the public as a book of dainty promise.

In 1835, Mr. Ticknor having resigned his Professorship of Modern Languages and Literature in Harvard, Mr. Longfellow was chosen his successor. He now made a second tour to Europe,

This was published in a volume, by Allen & Ticknor, in 1833, with some translations of Sonnets by Lope de Vega and others.

preliminary to entering upon his new duties, visiting the northern kingdoms of Denmark, Sweden, Holland, and afterwards Switzerland.

Shortly after assuming his engagement at Harvard, he established himself, in 1837, as a lodger in the old Cragie House, the Washington Head Quarters, which has since become his own by purchase, and the past traditions and present hospitality of which have recently been celebrated by

line, a Tale of Acadie, a happy employment of the hexameter, the next year; Kavanagh, a Tale, an idyllic prose companion, in 1849; The Seaside and the Fireside, in 1850; and that quaint anecdotal poem of the middle ages in Europe, The Golden Legend, in 1851. These, with two volumes of minor poems from favorite sources, entitled The Waif and The Extray, prefaced each by a poetical introduction of his own, with a collection, The Poets and Poetry of Europe, in 1845, complete the list thus far of Longfellow's publications;* though some of his finest poems have since appeared in Putnam's Magazine, to which he is a frequent contributor. In 1854 he resigned his Professorship at Harvard.

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Longfellow's Residence.

an appreciative pen.* It is from this genial residence, the outlook from which has furnished many a happy epithet and incident of the poet's verse, that Hyperion, a Romance, was dated in 1839, a dainty volume perfecting the happy promises of Outre Mer. Old European tradition, the quaint and picturesque of the past, are revived in its pages, by a modern sentiment and winning trick of the fancy, which will long secure the attractiveness of this pleasant volume. It has been always a scholar's instinct with Longfellow to ally his poetical style to some rare subject of fact or the imagination worthy of treatment; and those good services which he has rendered to history, old poets, and ancient art, will serve him with posterity, which asks for fruit, while the present is sometimes contented with leaves.

The first volume of original poetry published by Longfellow, was the Voices of the Night at Cambridge in 1839. It contained the "Psalm of Life," the "Midnight Mass for the Dying Year," the Manrique translation, and a number of the early poems of the Gazette. It at once became popular -many of its stanzas, eloquently expressive of moral courage or passive sentiment, veins since frequently worked in his poems, as Excelsior and Resignation, being fairly adopted as "household words." Ballads and other Poems, and a thin volume of Poems on Slavery, followed in 1842. The former has the translation in hexameters of "The Children of the Lord's Supper," from the Swedish of Bishop Tegner. Other delicate cream-colored volumes came on in due sequence. The Spanish Student, a play in three acts, in 1843; The Belfry of Bruges in 1846; Evange

* G. W. Curtis, in the "Homes of American Authors."

Sonny W. Longfellas

The same general characteristics run through all Mr. Longfellow's productions. They are the work of a scholar, of a man of taste, of a fertile fancy, and of a loving heart. He is "a picked man" of books, and sees the world and life by their light. To interest his imagination the facts around him must be invested with this charm of association. It is at once his aid and his merit that he can reproduce the choice pictures of the past and of other minds with new accessories of his own; so that the quaint old poets of Germany, the singers of the past centuries, the poetical vision and earnest teachings of Goethe, and the every-day humors of Jean Paul, as it were, come to live among us in American homes and landscape. This interpretation in its highest forms is one of the rarest benefits which the scholar can bestow upon his country. The genius of Longfellow has given us an American idyl, based on a touching episode of ante-revolutionary history, parallel with the Hermann and Dorothea of Goethe, in the exquisite story of Evangeline; has shown us how Richter might have surveyed the higher and inferior conditions, the

There have been other editions of several of these works; a collection made by the author in a cheap form published by the Harpers in 1846; the costly e py, illustrated by Huntington, published at Philadelphia in 1845; and the elegant editions of Evangeline, the Poems, the Golden Legend, and Hyperion, published by Bogue of London, with the wood-cut illustrations from original designs-for one series of which the artist made a tour on the continent-by Birket Foster.

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