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 THE VISION OF SIR LAUNFAL 
 
 By JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL 
 
 THE COURTSHIP OF 
 MILES STANDISH 
 
 Br HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW 
 
 SNOW-BOUND 
 
 By JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER 
 
 EDITED WITH AN INTRODUCTION AND 
 NOTES BY CHARLES ROBERT GASTON 
 PH.D., INSTRUCTOR IN ENGLISH, RICHMOND 
 HILL HIGH SCHOOL, NEW YORK CITY 
 
 NEW YORK 
 
 CHARLES E. MERRILL CO. 
 

 Copyright, 1909, 1921 
 
 BY 
 
 CHARLES E. MERRILL CO. 
 [9] 
 
 SEP 13 M» 
 
 §>CU624308 
 
3fn memory of 
 GEORGE R. CARPENTER 
 
 THE PRECISE RHETORICIAN, THE CULTURED 
 
 CRITIC OF AMERICAN LITERATURE, 
 
 THE MAN OF BROAD 
 
 SYMPATHIES 
 
MttrxiVe lEttglisfy Qkxta 
 
 This series of books includes in complete editions those mas- 
 terpieces of English Literature that are best adapted for the use 
 of schools and colleges. The editors of the several volumes are 
 chosen for their special qualifications in connection with the 
 texts issued under their individual supervision, but familiarity 
 with the practical needs of the classroom, no less than sound 
 scholarship, characterizes the editing of every book in the series. 
 
 In connection with each text, the editor has provided a crit- 
 ical and historical introduction, including a sketch of the life 
 of the author and his relation to the thought of his time, critical 
 opinions of the work in question chosen from the great body of 
 English criticism, and, where possible, a portrait of the author. 
 Ample explanatory notes of such passages in the text as call for 
 special attention are supplied, but irrelevant annotation and 
 explanations of the obvious are rigidly excluded. 
 
 CHARLES E. MERRILL COMPANY 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 Introduction: 
 
 Life of Lowell 9 
 
 Life of Longfellow 14 
 
 Life of Whittier 22 
 
 Poems: 
 
 The Vision of Sir Launfal 29 
 
 The Courtship of Miles Standish 47 
 
 Snow-Bound 129 
 
 Notes: 
 
 The Vision of Sir Launfal ....... 161 
 
 The Courtship of Miles Standish 166 
 
 Snow-Bound 179 
 
 Examination Questions: 
 
 The Vision of Sir Launfal 193 
 
 The Courtship of Miles Standish 194 
 
 Snow-Bound 195 
 
INTRODUCTION 
 LIFE OF LOWELL, 1819-1891 
 
 The writer of the biography of James Russell Lowell 
 in the American Men of Letters series rightly speaks of 
 1848 as the " Annus Mirabilis" or wonderful year in 
 Lowell's life. If Lowell had died at the end of the year 
 1848, at the age of twenty-nine, he would have left enough 
 work done to have assured him a place among the great 
 men of America. It was in 1848 that he published The 
 Vision of Sir Launfal, one of his most widely known lit- 
 erary productions. 
 
 In the years before 1848 he had been unconsciously 
 and consciously preparing himself to be a writer and 
 particularly a poet. His early home surroundings were 
 delightful and beautiful. Elm wood, the square old frame 
 house in which he was born and died, was built before the 
 Revolution. A year before Lowell's birth, Elm wood was 
 bought by his father, the Reverend Charles Lowell, of 
 the West Congregational Church, Boston. The house 
 is on Elmwood Avenue, in Cambridge, Massachusetts, a 
 mile from the Yard of Harvard College. In Lowell's day 
 the house had a pleasant outlook from the front windows 
 across farm land to the elms and spires of Cambridge. 
 Near by was the winding Charles River. Only a few 
 minutes away was Fresh Pond, and behind the house not 
 many miles distant were the wooded hills and pastures 
 of Arlington and Lexington. The young Lowell had only 
 to look out of his windows and walk about the neighbor- 
 hood to see scenes a poet might love to picture in language. 
 
 9 
 
10 INTRODUCTION 
 
 The life of the family was refined and cultured. The 
 father was a graduate of Harvard College and had studied 
 in England and Scotland. The mother, who was of Scotch 
 descent, was fond of singing old ballads. An older sister 
 was "Jemmy's" special companion. She speaks of her 
 brother as having been very imaginative but remarkably 
 kind and self-controlled. She was herself imaginative 
 but high-strung. The first poetry that Lowell knew well 
 was Spenser's Faerie Queene. So vivid was his imagina- 
 tion that in his walks he used to conjure up from Spen- 
 ser's poem mystic knightly figures that were more real 
 to him than people he knew. He played under the elms 
 and pines and loved the bluebird's call and the chattering 
 orioles and the shrilling robins. 
 
 A city boy or girl who never lived in the country could 
 not easily understand such things as came easily to Lowell 
 from his boyish outdoor life: 
 
 "We sit in the warm shade and feel right well 
 
 How the sap creeps up and the blossoms swell; 
 
 We may shut our eyes, but we cannot help knowing 
 
 That skies are clear and grass is growing; 
 
 The breeze comes whispering in our ear 
 
 That dandelions are blossoming near, 
 
 That maize has sprouted, that streams are flowing, 
 
 That the river is bluer than the sky, 
 
 That the robin is plastering his house hard by." 
 
 The city boy would hardly know what maize is, still 
 less how it sprouts; and he never saw a robin making its 
 nest. Hence such a boy will not get as much from The 
 Vision of Sir Launfal at first reading as a boy bred in the 
 country will get. But the city boy perhaps will under- 
 stand Sir Launfal better than the country boy in one 
 respect. The city boy will doubtless have thought more 
 about equality of men and about plans for making ail 
 men brothers — conceptions and projects with which 
 
INTRODUCTION 11 
 
 Lowell became concerned in his association with city men 
 as he grew older. 
 
 Young Lowell liked to read. In fact, all his family 
 were wide readers. When he was nine, he eagerly read 
 the novels of Walter Scott, then just published and al- 
 ready popular among boys and also grown people. 
 
 During his years at Harvard from the age of fifteen to 
 nineteen, he lived at home part of the time but had a room 
 for study near the college. There were about two hun- 
 dred young men at Harvard when Lowell was a student. 
 The most interesting thing about his college course is 
 not his study of the required Latin, Greek, and mathe- 
 matics, but his reading of the English poets — Keats, 
 Byron, Shelley, Tennyson, Cowper, Southey, Milton — 
 and his writing of a satirical "Class Poem," copies of which 
 were distributed among his friends and classmates. One 
 of his college mates says that Lowell borrowed Tennyson's 
 first small volume of verse from Emerson. 
 
 After college, Lowell continued his reading of English, 
 Greek, and Latin poets and dramatists, while he was 
 studying law. He wanted to be an author but thought 
 he would not be able to earn his living as an author and 
 so he prepared himself to be a lawyer. He took his bache- 
 lor's degree in law. At the same time he was forming for 
 himself a theory of poetry. 
 
 In the autumn of 1840 he became engaged to be married 
 to Miss Maria White. Miss White was a poet, delicately 
 beautiful. During four years their engagement continued, 
 while Lowell was trying to find his life work and earn 
 enough to warrant his being married. He practiced law, 
 acted as a clerk in an office, edited a magazine, and made 
 his start as an author. Meanwhile, he and Miss White 
 wrote and published tolerably good verse. They associ- 
 ated with an intellectually active group of young people 
 called "The Band." The conversation with this group 
 enlarged Lowell's range of interest in reading and gave him 
 
12 INTRODUCTION 
 
 active sympathy with people of all races, an interest in 
 temperance, women's suffrage, and the abolition of slavery. 
 
 In speaking one day at this period of youthful enthu- 
 siasm, he said that he never felt so clearly the spirit of 
 God in and around him; the whole room seemed full of 
 God. Note this as you read the Prelude to Part First 
 of The Vision of Sir Launfal. 
 
 His attempt to start a magazine, The Pioneer, failed, 
 in spite of the fact that some of the contributors, in addi- 
 tion to himself, were Hawthorne, Poe, Whittier, and Mrs-. 
 Browning. One reason for the failure was that Lowell 
 had to be absent from Boston for treatment by a New 
 York oculist. He met in New York some of the foremost 
 literary men of the time, who were then setting the fashion 
 in literature. For instance, look up what a history of 
 American literature says about N. P. Willis. Edgar 
 Allan Poe was also one of Lowell's New York acquaint- 
 ances. 
 
 Two volumes of poems by Lowell, A Year's Life and 
 Poems, (first series,) were published. A prose work, 
 Conversations on Some of the Old Poets, was also published, 
 touching upon Spenser, Keats, Chaucer, Donne, and 
 other poets. 
 
 On the day after Christmas, 1844, Lowell and Miss 
 White were married. Then they went to Philadelphia, 
 where Lowell wrote for the Pennsylvania Freeman and 
 was hand in glove with a number of active workers for 
 the abolition of slavery. He and his wife lived very simply, 
 in a single room, third floor back, but both were well and 
 happy. Lowell's income was small indeed. Yet he says 
 he was ruddy and hearty, the picture of health. The 
 writing for the Pennsylvania Freeman did not turn out 
 to be altogether satisfactory to either Lowell or the pub- 
 lishers, and la.te in the spring of 1845 Mr. and Mrs. Lowell 
 returned to Cambridge and made their home at Elmwood. 
 The life here also was simple and happy. Lowell looked 
 
INTRODUCTION 13 
 
 after the chickens and helped with the work about the 
 house. Longfellow speaks of calling on him in his attic 
 study, the ceiling of which one could touch with one's 
 hands. They had good talks together about the old 
 poets and about the bold chanticleer that was the favorite 
 in the flock of chickens. 
 
 Lowell was so full of delight in his home life and in his 
 wonderful baby that he did very little productive writing 
 for a time. But the death of the daughter Blanche re- 
 sulted in the publication of several sorrowful poems. His 
 income was still small, but with frugal housekeeping, in 
 which Mrs. Lowell was a real helpmate, the Lowells man- 
 aged to get along comfortably enough. 
 
 Then came the notable year of 1848, when Lowell pub- 
 lished his second series of Poems, the Fable for Critics, the 
 Biglow Papers, The Vision of Sir Launfal, and many 
 articles in magazines and newspapers. His friends, 
 Longfellow and Holmes, were especially pleased with 
 the work done by their fellow poet this year. 
 
 The volume of poems includes political verse such as 
 "The Present Crisis," and poems of rare beauty giving 
 expression to the love of nature, as "An Indian Summer 
 Reverie." The Fable for Critics seems out of date now, but 
 was liked by lovers of literature in Lowell's day because of 
 its shrewd humor and keen characterization of fellow 
 authors — Poe, Hawthorne, and others. John Ruskin in 
 England wrote that Lowell in the Fable for Critics did him 
 more good in his moments of dullness than anybody else 
 and made him feel hopeful. 
 
 The Biglow Papers helped to direct public opinion in the 
 North against slavery. No one had previously used 
 Yankee dialect so skillfully in driving home the need for 
 the abolition of slavery. Quotations from tfiis volume 
 were on everybody's lips for a decade or more. The satire 
 was criticised favorably by both American and English 
 authorities in literature. One writer said, "No speech, no 
 
14 INTRODUCTION 
 
 plea, no appeal was comparable in popular effect with this 
 pitiless tempest of fire and hail, in the form of wit, argu- 
 ment, satire, knowledge, insight, learning, common sense, 
 and patriotism. It was humor of the purest strain, but 
 humor in deadly earnest." 
 
 The reputation that Lowell gained through this literary 
 work was far extended. In America he had become 
 recognized as a leading voice among the interpreters of 
 the American spirit, and in England there was a ready and 
 even eager acceptance of work from his pen. 
 
 Since we are here particularly interested in The Vision 
 of Sir Launfal alone, it may be sufficient to follow only 
 as far as the memorable year of 1848 the life and fortunes 
 of the poet Lowell. Through this study there will have 
 come clearly to the reader a sense of the imaginative fan- 
 tasy that distinguished him, the real and vital knowledge 
 that he had of nature and her moods, and the thorough 
 training he had given himself in the art of poetic expression 
 of the impressions the world of nature and thought made 
 upon his sensitive spirit. 
 
 LIFE OF LONGFELLOW, 1S07-1882 
 
 In the same way in which many Englishmen get their 
 history from Shakespeare's plays, many Americans learn 
 theirs from Longfellow's poems. Americans' ideas of 
 New England colonial life are, for example, largely ob- 
 tained from Longfellow's Courtship of Miles Standish, 
 rather than from the authentic old chronicles or the 
 modern histories. As Shakespeare used the facts to suit 
 himself, sp did Longfellow. Longfellow has been as much 
 admired and praised in the United States as Shakespeare 
 in England. 
 
 Longfellow has for two generations been perhaps the 
 most popular American poet. His poetry has been thus 
 
tNTRODUCTION 15 
 
 extraordinarily popular because it appeals most to simple 
 tastes that demand concreteness and sympathy in the 
 literature which they praise; and yet it appeals also to 
 the heart of the most cultured scholars. His life was so 
 simple and his character was so amiable that every one 
 who knew anything about him — and every one knew 
 something about him — loved him as if he were a per- 
 sonal friend. The simple, tranquil life of this represent- 
 ative of the best American ideals of his age, as related in 
 the authoritative biography, that by Samuel Longfellow 
 published in 1891 in three volumes, is interesting in spite 
 of its normal, not to say commonplace, happiness. For 
 almost fifty years (from 1807 to 1854), Longfellow lived 
 a scholar's life, and then for nearly thirty years (from 
 1854 to 1882) , he lived as a poet and man of letters. His 
 Courtship of Miles Standish was written and published 
 during this second period of his life. 
 
 In many schools, the twenty-seventh of February is 
 known as Longfellow day, for that was the birthday of 
 Henry Wadsworth Longfellow in 1807 at Portland, Maine. 
 He was the son of a lawyer who could trace his ancestry 
 back for more than a hundred and fifty years to an Ed- 
 ward Longfellow, of Horsforth, England, through a line 
 of sturdy and mostly prosperous colonists — blacksmiths, 
 schoolmasters, judges. His mother's father was General 
 Peleg Wadsworth, a Revolutionary soldier of distinction; 
 his mother was a descendant of Priscilla Alden. Long- 
 fellow was named after Henry, one of the brothers of his 
 mother, and was given also the family name, Wadsworth. 
 At General Wadsworth 's home, which was the first brick 
 house built in Portland, and which is still standing (ad- 
 mission twenty-five cents), Henry Wadsworth Longfellow 
 spent his boyhood. His delight in the childhood life in 
 Portland is evident in his poem, "My Lost Youth." He 
 had plenty of books to read in his father's library — the 
 poems of Milton, Pope, Dryden, Cowper, Moore; Don 
 
16 INTRODUCTION 
 
 Quixote and the successive numbers of Irving's Sketch" 
 Book, which began to appear in 1819. He did not read, 
 like Poe, the poems of Shelley, Keats, and Byron, the 
 passionate romanticists of the early nineteenth century. 
 At the private schools which he attended he is spoken of 
 as a handsome schoolboy, thoughtful but not melan- 
 choly; not averse to the quieter sports, but more fond oi 
 a book under the trees. His home life was idyllic in its 
 charm. At the age of thirteen the boy was made happy 
 by seeing his first poem printed anonymously in the Port- 
 land Gazette. 
 
 When he was fifteen he entered Bowdoin College, at 
 Brunswick, Maine. Probably the reason why he did not 
 go to his father's college, Harvard, was that his father 
 was a trustee of Bowdoin, which had been opened in 1802. 
 At Bowdoin he knew Hawthorne and Franklin Pierce. 
 His college life simply continued the training he had 
 received at home and in the private schools. He studied 
 faithfully the mathematics, natural sciences, and phi- 
 losophy of the course. From his study of the classics and 
 his reading in the college library he acquired a perspicu- 
 ous but balanced English prose style. While at Bow- 
 doin he wrote verses for the newspapers ; fourteen of these 
 were published the year after his graduation in a volume 
 entitled Miscellaneous Poems selected from the United 
 States Literary Gazette. Of these the best known is " Hymn 
 of the Moravian Nuns." He finished his course at the 
 age of eighteen, and was asked to go abroad to prepare 
 himself for a Bowdoin professorship of modern languages. 
 His father allowed him six hundred cellars a year for a 
 three years' stay in Europe. 
 
 Thirsting for the springs of old culture, reverently alert 
 for impressions of European life, the young American 
 scholar took passage for Havre. His youthful enjoyment 
 of all that he saw and felt is evident on every page of the 
 notes which he published several years after his return. 
 
INTRODUCTION 17 
 
 The extent of his travels is indicated by a sentence from 
 the early part of his book : — 
 
 " In this my pilgrimage, ' I have passed many lands and 
 countries, and searched many full strange places.' I 
 have traversed France from Normandy to Navarre; 
 smoked my pipe in a Flemish inn; floated through Hol- 
 land in a Trekschuit; trimmed my midnight lamp in a 
 German university; wandered and mused amid the classic 
 scenes of Italy ; and listened to the gay guitar and merry 
 Castanet on the borders of the blue Guadalquivir." (From 
 Outre-Mer: A Pilgrimage beyond the Sea.) A character- 
 istic passage showing how he relished his European travel 
 is this: "My recollections of Spain are of the most 
 lively and delightful kind. The character of the soil and 
 of its inhabitants, — the stormy mountains and free 
 spirits of the North, — the prodigal luxuriance and gay 
 voluptuousness of the South, — the history and tradi- 
 tions of the past, resembling more the fables of romance 
 than the solemn chronicle of events, — a soft and yet 
 majestic language that falls like martial music on the 
 ear, and a literature rich in the attractive lore of poetry 
 and fiction, — these, but not these alone, are my remi- 
 niscences of Spain." 
 
 On his return to the United States, he took up at Bow- 
 doin the wearing work of teaching, yet he entered upon it 
 with enthusiasm in the belief that it would allow him time 
 to write as he might be inclined. Instead of doing orig- 
 inal work, however, he made text-books, excellent of 
 their kind and for their purpose. He edited French 
 texts, translated a French grammar, and made French, 
 Spanish, and Italian readers. His recitations and lec- 
 tures he prepared for painstakingly. The students liked 
 him ; he enjoyed them. His influence during bis six years 
 of teaching at Bowdoin was of the best. Other colleges 
 tried to secure his services, but he preferred Bowdoin until 
 a call came to follow Ticknor in the chair of modern Ian- 
 
18 INTRODUCTION 
 
 guages at Harvard. Longfellow accepted and went 
 abroad for further study, particularly of German, which 
 he never cared for so much as the French and Spanish 
 and Italian languages and literatures; in these he had 
 already become extremely proficient. His acceptance of 
 the Harvard professorship took him in the autumn of 
 1836 to Cambridge, Massachusetts, where, living for the 
 remaining years of his life, he became a quiet but power- 
 ful influence for widening culture, and where, having 
 more time to' himself than at Bowdoin,-he became the 
 chief of the "Cambridge Poets." During his Harvard 
 teaching he published several volumes of prose and 
 poetry: Hyperion, a Romance, 1839; Voices of the Night, 
 1839, which contained translations and nine original 
 poems; Ballads, and Other Poems, 1841; Poems on Sla- 
 very, 1842; The Spanish Student, el three-act play, 1843; 
 The Belfry of Bruges, and Other Poems, 1845; Evangeline, 
 1847; Kavanagh, a Tale, 1849; The Seaside and the Fire- 
 side, 1849; and The Golden Legend, 1851. In the year 
 1854, he was succeeded at Harvard by his friend James 
 Russell Lowell. 
 
 Thus far no mention has been made of Longfellow's 
 domestic affairs. In 1831, at the age of twenty-two, he 
 was married to Mary Storer Potter, of Portland. With 
 her, for four years, he lived a contented, peaceful life. 
 Mrs. Longfellow was beautiful in appearance, happy in 
 disposition, and sympathetic and appreciative in her 
 husband's intellectual work. The shock of her death in 
 Holland while he was studying in preparation for his 
 Harvard professorship changed Longfellow from a youth 
 in spirit to a grown man. At Cambridge he took rooms 
 in the Craigie House. This fine old colonial building is 
 now pointed out to every Cambridge visitor as the Long- 
 fellow home, for here Longfellow lived the rest of his life, 
 except for summers on the New England coast and several 
 European journeys. In the hero of Hyperion he had 
 
INTRODUCTION 19 
 
 sketched his own bitterness of thought during the year 
 following the death of his first wife, and in the heroine he 
 had sketched the character of Miss Frances Appleton, 
 who became in July, 1843, his second wife. At their 
 marriage, Miss Appleton's father bought for them the 
 Craigie mansion. Here, for some years, their life was 
 like the home life of the best New England families of 
 the day — children at play, fireside reading, entertain- 
 ments, calls, concerts, plays, enough work to keep the 
 domestic delight from palling by monotony of idleness. 
 In the year 1854 Longfellow and his wife decided that 
 they could afford to live without his salary as professor, 
 and he resigned. 
 
 From 1854 till his death in 1882 Longfellow, relieved 
 entirely from professional duties, did some of his best 
 work as poet and man of letters. He continued to dream 
 along in the peaceful existence already started at Cam- 
 bridge, all the time growing in the affections of the people 
 till the whole nation came to love him. Among the 
 literary men of New England he was the dean. In the 
 gatherings of the Saturday Club, which included Whittier, 
 Emerson, Lowell, and Hawthorne among its members, 
 Longfellow took particular joy. He was long a friend 
 of Senator Charles Sumner. The young scholar Andrew 
 D. White visited Longfellow in 1867 at his beautiful 
 summer cottage at Nahant. In his Autobiography White 
 speaks of Longfellow as "a most lovely being." As they 
 sat on the veranda looking out over the ocean and dis- 
 cussing political events, the poet turned to the young 
 scholar and statesman and said, "Mr. White, don't you 
 think Horace Greeley a very useless sort of man?" The 
 dreamy poet could not understand at all the point of 
 view of the practical man of affairs, the great editor of the 
 New York Tribune. Four years later White dined with 
 the poet at his Cambridge home. The host enjoyed 
 showing the places in this house that were connected 
 
20 INTRODUCTION 
 
 with interesting passages in the life of Washington when 
 he occupied the house. These details given by Dr. White 
 in his recollections afford a characteristic glimpse of the 
 life of the celebrated Cambridge man of letters in this 
 period of poetic ease. 
 
 In that curious back-hand of his, not so legible and 
 print-like as Poe's handwriting, Longfellow produced in 
 this second period enough original poetry, translation, and 
 editorial work to make a small library. In narrative 
 poetry he published The Song of Hiawatha, 1855, consid- 
 ered by many critics his greatest achievement because it 
 is the nearest approach to an American epic. Narrative 
 also is The Courtship of Miles Standish, published in 
 1858. This seems to me his greatest poem because it 
 dwells with consummate poetical art upon a world-appre- 
 ciated theme and because it gives with absolute faithful- 
 ness the spirit of the early New England Puritanism. 
 Tales cf a Wayside Inn, 1863, is a popular collection of 
 local pictures and old-world stories in pleasing verse. 
 His most ambitious production was published in 1872 
 under the heading Christus, a Mystery; it consisted of 
 three parts, " The Divine Tragedy," " The Golden Legend," 
 and "The New England Tragedies," and except for the 
 second part, which had been already printed, is practi- 
 cally unread among its author's works. His other prin- 
 cipal volumes of poems are "Aftermath," "The Hanging 
 of the Crane/' "Masque of Pandora," "Keramos," 
 "Ultima Thule," and "In the Harbor." During this 
 period he composed a group of sonnets which easily 
 rank him as the chief American sonnet writer. The trans- 
 lation of Dante's Divine Comedy, 1870, is the crowning 
 achievement of the scholar, postponed till his time of 
 ease. Though not in every respect a great translation 
 of Dante's epic, it is true to the original and not lacking 
 in Dante's poetic fire. Longfellow's editorial work in- 
 cluded the editing of thirty-one volumes of Poems oj 
 
INTRODUCTION 21 
 
 Places. Such was the extensive work of the man of letters 
 in Cambridge, from 1854 to 1882, in original poetry, in 
 translation, and in compilation. 
 
 The life at Cambridge was not all happiness, for, eigh- 
 teen years after his second marriage, his wife was burned 
 so badly by the upturning of a candle on her dress that 
 she soon died. Thereafter Longfellow lived in the Cam- 
 bridge home with his children, the care and education of 
 whom occupied his thoughts to the banishment of lone- 
 liness. It was only when his distinguished friends died, 
 one by one, that he began to feel the weight of his years. 
 In March, 1882, he died, and was buried in Cambridge. 
 The period of his life in Cambridge was, curiously enough, 
 almost exactly the time of the supremacy of New England 
 as a literary center. 
 
 In the sketch of Longfellow's life, little mention has 
 been made of specific short poems, such as " A Psalm of 
 Life," "The Rainy Day " (written in the Portland home), 
 "Excelsior," "The Wreck of the Hesperus," "The Build- 
 ing of the Ship," "The Village Blacksmith," and "Paul 
 Revere's Ride," which every schoolboy knows. It would 
 have been superfluous to discuss these poems, for they 
 have always appealed to the hearts of the American 
 people and have done as much as the longer narrative 
 poems to give their author his extraordinary popularity. 
 But it was by such longer poems as The Courtship of 
 Miles Standish that Longfellow established his claim to- 
 a place among the poets of world-wide appeal, and it 
 was by such writing that he merited recognition in West- 
 minster Abbey, the temple of fame for the English-speak- 
 ing nations. There, two years after his death, a bust of 
 Longfellow was placed, with ceremonies which testified 
 to the esteem in which he is held by all who speak the 
 English language. 
 
22 INTRODUCTION 
 
 LIFE OF WHITTIER, 1807-1892 
 
 In The Appreciation of Literature, George E. Wood- 
 berry speaks of Whittier 's Snow-Bound, Goldsmith's 
 Deserted Village, and Burns 's The Cotter's Saturday Night 
 as imperishable monuments to that "home-feeling which 
 is so profound an element in the character as well as the 
 affections of English-speaking people the world over." 
 Inevitably popular are the poets who express this home- 
 feeling. Next to Longfellow, Whittier has come closer 
 to the heart of the nation than any other American poet. 
 Known everywhere as the household Quaker poet, he 
 is celebrated also as the poet who did more than any other 
 to crystallize northern sentiment against slavery. These 
 two phases of his work seem contradictory, but when his 
 life is read in such an interesting and discriminating 
 biography as that by George R. Carpenter in the American 
 Men of Letters series, the contradiction is found to be 
 apparent and not real, for Whittier was a poet appealing 
 all the time to the best instincts of his nation. His life 
 may best be considered in three periods: the first including 
 his boyhood and early efforts at literature; the second, 
 his freedom work; and the third, his life as a mature, 
 tranquil poet. It was in this third period that he wrote 
 his greatest poem, Snow-Bound. 
 
 The house where he was born on December 17, 18Q7, 
 is one mile to the northeast of Haverhill, Essex County, 
 Massachusetts, near Great Pond, known also as Lake 
 Kenoza. This farmhouse is the scene of Snow-Bound and 
 is now marked by a bronze tablet. Whittier 's great-great- 
 grandfather built the house about 1688; Whittiers had 
 lived there ever since, all of them substantial pioneers and 
 farmers of good repute, all of them husbands of farmers' 
 daughters. The great-grandfather married a Quakeress, 
 whose religion he adopted. The grandfather married 
 Sarah Greenleaf. The poet was given the name of his 
 
INTRODUCTION 23 
 
 father and the family name of his grandmother. John 
 Greenleaf Whittier started in life with a hundred and 
 fifty years of New England independent struggle for 
 existence back of him. In his youth he continued the 
 struggle, but with a weaker body and more sensitive 
 temperament than his ancestors possessed. He worked 
 on the ancestral farm, with intermissions of shoe-making 
 and academy attendance and school-teaching, until he 
 was twenty-one. When he was nearly nineteen his first 
 printed poem appeared in the Newburyport Free Press. 
 Whittier had been led early to the writing of poetry by 
 his reading of Burns, Gray, Cowper, Scott, and Mrs. 
 Hemans ; then when he was disappointed in love he read 
 Byron. All of his own early poetry was imitative of 
 the poets whom he had read. The Newburyport paper 
 was edited by William Lloyd Garrison who subsequently 
 became the great anti-slavery agitator and who influ- 
 enced Whittier in this direction. In 1828 Whittier wrote 
 to Garrison a letter commending his views on slavery, 
 intemperance, and war. 
 
 Through Garrison's recommendation, Whittier, then 
 just of age, left the farm and became editor, at nine dollars 
 a week, of The American Manufacturer, published in 
 Boston. After seven months he was called home to 
 Haverhill by the sickness of his father, who died the next 
 year. During the interval Whittier worked the farm 
 and edited the local paper. A month after his father's 
 death he became editor of The New England Review, of 
 Hartford, Connecticut. This position made him conver- 
 sant with the political events of the time, brought him a 
 wide friendship among editors, and a national reputation 
 through the copying of his Hartford articles in other 
 papers. In his leisure hours in Boston and Hartford 
 "the gay young Quaker" read much in the best English 
 fiction and poetry. His first book, Legends of New Eng- 
 land, exhibiting a little of the weirdness later character- 
 
24 INTRODUCTION 
 
 istic of Poe, was published in Hartford in 1831. Shortly 
 after his return, in poor health, to Haverhill, he wrote to 
 a friend that he had done with poetry and literature, and 
 would now be a farmer. Yet he hankered for ah election 
 to Congress and might perhaps have secured it, through 
 the confidence his neighbors had in his shrewdness and 
 the esteem in which they held him because of his Boston 
 and Hartford editorships, had he not definitely allied 
 himself in 1833 with the abolitionist movement. Thus 
 far, from his youthful prose and poetry, he had gained a 
 reputation in literature second to none of his contempo- 
 raries, in spite of which nothing which he early wrote is 
 at the present time much read. Now began the second 
 period of his life. 
 
 As a reformer, from 1833 to 1860, striving with Quaker 
 intensity to uphold the principle of the equality of man, 
 Whittier won the respect of the nation and the hootings 
 of particular crowds. This was the time of his greatest 
 effort in life ; in these years he accomplished what he con- 
 sidered to be his most valuable service to his country. 
 Not literature, but abolition, was his chief interest. Yet, 
 .since slavery is no more, we are now concerned rather with 
 Whittier 's literary life than with his life as a reformer 
 and so must pass quickly over this second phase of his 
 career. In June, 1833, influenced by the appeals of his 
 friend Garrison to throw his influence into the cause of 
 abolition, he published, at his own expense, a pamphlet 
 entitled, "Justice and Expediency: or, Slavery Con- 
 sidered with a View to Its Rightful and Effectual Remedy, 
 Abolition. " This pamphlet illustrates Whittier's part in 
 the abolition movement; he continued for more than 
 twenty-five years to write essays and poems aiming to 
 appeal to the reason and to bring about the abolition of 
 slavery by public opinion as expressed by votes. He 
 was one of the secretaries of the first national anti-slavery 
 convention in Philadelphia and signed its declaration. In 
 
INTRODUCTION 25 
 
 1835 he was a member of the Massachusetts legislature. 
 In Concord, New Hampshire, he was mobbed in company 
 with George Thompson, the English anti-slavery agitator. 
 He kept Thompson, whose life was in danger, hidden 
 for two weeks in the farmhouse. Soon after, during the 
 rioting by a mob in Washington Street, Boston, Whittier 
 was threatened with personal violence. A little later 
 he was in New York for several months in the office of 
 the American anti-slavery society, and almost became 
 engaged to a young lady of Brooklyn. In 1838, when he 
 was in Philadelphia editing the Pennsylvania Freeman, 
 his office was sacked and burned by a mob, but he saved 
 some of his belongings by disguising himself in a long 
 white coat and a wig so that he could mingle with the mob 
 without being known. He kept on editing the paper 
 till his health failed. 
 
 Then he took up his residence with his mother, aunt, 
 and younger sister, Elizabeth, in Amesbury, eight miles 
 from his birthplace, in a house which is now maintained 
 as a memorial of the poet. Here his mother died in 1858. 
 He edited at Lowell, Massachusetts, The Middlesex Stand- 
 ard in 1844, and in 1847 became corresponding editor of 
 The National Era, published at Washington. In 1849 he 
 received five hundred dollars for the copyright of all his 
 verse thus far published. Next year, he met James T. 
 Fields, the friend of all the New England poets, and here- 
 after his poems were published by Ticknor and Fields. 
 In 1857 this firm brought out his collected poems. In 
 spite of his numerous reform articles and poems, includ- 
 ing the famous poem "Ichabod" and the volumes en- 
 titled Voices of Freedom and Songs of Labor, in spite of 
 his five prose volumes containing wonderfully keen essays 
 analyzing and depicting early New England life and 
 character, and in spite of a number of poems of national 
 reputation, such as "The Barefoot Boy," "Skipper 
 Ireson's Ride," and "Maud Muller," written from 1833 
 
26 INTRODUCTION 
 
 to 1860, he would hardly be assured a permanent place 
 among the best American poets, if he had not in the 
 maturity of his years returned to the themes of his boy- 
 hood and written one imperishable poem on the New 
 England life as he knew it when he was a boy. 
 
 Since Whittier was a reformer, with his soul on fire for 
 the abolition of slavery, it might be thought that a fitting 
 end to the second period of his life would be the end of the 
 war rather than the beginning. But no! As a Quaker, 
 Whittier had a' horror of war; he sympathized with the 
 North, but he believed it would be better to let the 
 South go rather than to fight. Thus he turned from his 
 one absorbing great passion, his contention for freedom, to 
 a tranquil life as a poet, a period of thirty-two years (from 
 1860 to 1892), in no part of which because of ill health 
 was he able to do a full day's work and in most of which 
 he found it impossible to read or write for more than a 
 half -hour at a time. In these years he grew steadily in 
 the affections of the people. During the war his verses 
 were cries of those who were bereaved and prayers for 
 God to let the right be done. Some of his songs were 
 sung by the northern soldiers, President Lincoln saying 
 that he wanted the soldiers to hear such songs as Whit- 
 tier's. His ballad of ''Barbara Frietchie" and his "Laus 
 Deo " are his best known poems produced in war times. 
 
 After the war he wrote a number of religious poems 
 which appear in collections of hymns sung by various 
 denominations. "I have been a member of the Society 
 of Friends by birthright and by a settled conviction of 
 the truth of its principles and the importance of its testi- 
 monies, while, at the same time, I have a kind feeling 
 towards all who are seeking, in different ways from mine, 
 to serve God and benefit their fellow-men." Thus Whittier 
 wrote regarding his religious faith. It was this breadth 
 of sympathy that made his religious songs acceptable to 
 all true worshipers. 
 
INTRODUCTION 27 
 
 Snow-Bound, which he says he wrote to beguile the 
 weariness of a sick-room, at once became one of the " best 
 sellers" of the day. From the time of its publication in 
 1866, the surprising profits from its sale made Whittier 
 a well-to-do man. Among the other poems of this period 
 are "The Maids of Attitash," "Among the Hills/' "Amy 
 Wentworth," "My Playmate/' "The Henchman/' and 
 "Sea Dream." But Snow-Bound is the poem on which 
 Whittier 's fame as a poet most securely rests. 
 
 After the death of his sister, in 1864, his brother's 
 daughter, Elizabeth Whittier, kept house for him at 
 Amesbury until her marriage in 1876 to S. T. Pickard, 
 who became his biographer. Whittier continued to vote 
 at Amesbury, but spent much of his time with his 
 cousins, the Misses Johnson, at Oak Knoll, Dan vers, 
 Massachusetts. At Amesbury, this kindly old bachelor, 
 famous as he was, used to like to sit in the shop of the vil- 
 lage tailor and talk with his neighbors. Occasionally he 
 traveled to Boston to see his publishers and enjoy an 
 evening with the Saturday Club, to which Longfellow 
 also belonged. He spent his summers on Lake Winne- 
 pesaukee or at the Isles of Shoals or at Amesbury. The 
 life all the year was easier and quieter than in earlier 
 days. He wrote when he felt inclined; he had an income 
 more than sufficient for his simple needs. He had not 
 many close friends, though numerous acquaintances, 
 among the contemporary men of letters: Bayard Taylor, 
 Holmes, Hawthorne, Emerson, Lowell, and Longfellow; 
 the southern poet, Paul Hamilton Hayne, who was much 
 attracted by his broad spirit ; the English writers, Dickens 
 and Kingsley. Much of his time he spent in writing 
 letters to gifted ladies — Lucy Larcom, Alice and Phoebe 
 Cary, Celia Thaxter, Elizabeth Stuart Phelps, Sarah 
 Orne Jewett, and Mrs. Fields. 
 
 In 1877, when he was seventy years old, he was the 
 guest of honor at a dinner given by the publishers of 
 
28 INTRODUCTION 
 
 The Atlantic Monthly to distinguished contributors. Ten 
 years later, on his eightieth birthday, he was congratu- 
 lated at Oak Knoll by the governor of the state and a 
 committee, for he was nearly the last of the great New 
 England abolitionists and poets. In 1892 he died and was 
 buried in the village cemetery at Amesbury, where the 
 other members of his family had been buried before him. 
 He was, as one of his biographers says, the last sur- 
 vivor of the circle that gathered about the hearth in the 
 snow-bound homestead. Such was his art in the unique 
 and imperishable poem, Snow-Bound, that there is no 
 family in the world whose members are so widely known 
 among the people who speak the English tongue. 
 
JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL 
 THE VISION OF SIR LAUNFAL 
 
 Prelude to Part First 
 
 Over his keys the musing. organist, 1 
 
 Beginning doubtfully and far away, 
 First lets his fingers wander as they list, 
 
 And builds a bridge from Dreamland for his lay; 
 Then, as the touch of his loved instrument 
 
 Gives hope and fervor, nearer draws his theme, 
 First guessed by faint auroral flushes sent 
 
 Along the wavering vista of his dream. 
 
 Not only around our infancy 2 
 Doth heaven with all its splendors lie; 
 Daily, with souls that cringe and plot, 
 We Sinais 3 climb and know it not. 
 Over our manhood bend the skies; 
 
 Against our fallen and traitor lives 
 The great winds utter prophecies; 
 
 With our faint hearts the mountain strives; 
 Its arms outstretched, the druid wood 4 
 Waits with its benedicite; 
 29 
 
30 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL 
 
 And to our age's drowsy blood 
 Still shouts the inspiring sea. 
 
 Earth gets its price for what Earth gives us; 
 
 The beggar is taxed for a corner to die in, 
 The priest hath his fee who comes and shrives us, 
 
 We bargain for the graves we lie in; 
 At the Devil's booth are all things sold, 
 Each ounce of dross costs its ounce of gold; 
 
 For a cap and bells 1 our lives we pay, 
 Bubbles we buy with a whole soul's tasking; 
 
 'T is heaven alone that is given away, 
 'T is only God may be had for the asking; 
 No price is set on the lavish summer; 
 June may be had by the poorest comer. 
 
 And what is so rare as a day in June? 
 
 Then, if ever, come perfect days; 
 Then Heaven tries the earth if it be in tune, 
 
 And over it softly her warm ear lays; 
 Whether we look, or whether we listen, 
 We hear life murmur, or see it glisten; 
 Every clod feels a stir of might, 
 
 An instinct within it that reaches and towers, 
 And, groping blindly above it for light, 
 
 Climbs to a soul in grass and flowers; 
 
THE VISION OF SIR LAUNFAL 31 
 
 The flush of life may well be seen 
 
 Thrilling back over hills and valleys; 
 The cowslip startles in meadows green, 1 
 
 The buttercup catches the sun in its chalice, 
 And there's never a leaf nor a blade too mean 
 
 To be some happy creature's palace; 
 The little bird sits at his door in the sun, 
 
 Atilt like a blossom among the leaves, 
 And lets his illumined being o'errun 
 
 With the deluge of summer it receives; 
 His mate feels the eggs beneath her wings, 
 And the heart in her dumb breast flutters and sings; 
 He sings to the wide world, and she to her nest, — 
 In the nice 2 ear of Nature which song is the 
 
 best? 
 
 Now is the high-tide of the year, 
 
 And whatever of life hath ebbed away 
 Comes flooding back, with a ripply cheer, 
 
 Into every bare inlet arid creek and bay; 
 Now the heart is so full that a drop overfills it, 
 We are happy now because God wills it; 
 No matter how barren the past may have been, 
 'T is enough for us now that the leaves are green; 
 We sit in the warm shade and feel right well 
 How the sap creeps up and the blossoms swell; 
 
o2 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL 
 
 We may shut our eyes, but we cannot help knowing 
 That skies are clear and grass is growing; 
 The breeze comes whispering in our ear 
 That dandelions are blossoming near, 
 
 That maize has sprouted, that streams are flowing, 
 That the river is bluer than the sky, 
 That the robin is -plastering his house hard by; 
 And if the breeze kept the good news back, 
 For other couriers * we should not lack; 
 
 We could guess it all by yon heifer's lowing, — 
 And hark! how clear bold chanticleer, 
 Warmed with the new wine of the year, 
 
 Tells all in his lusty crowing! 
 
 Joy comes, grief goes, we know not how; 
 Everything is happy now, 
 
 Everything is upward striving; 
 'T is as easy now for the heart to be true 
 As for grass to be green or skies to be blue, — 
 
 'T is the natural way of living. 
 Who knows whither the clouds have fled? 
 
 In the unscarred heaven they leave no wake; 
 And the eyes forget the tears they have shed, 
 
 The heart forgets its sorrow and ache; 
 The soul partakes of the season's youth, 
 
 And the sulphurous rifts of passion and woe 
 
THE VISION OF SIR LAUNFAL 33 
 
 Lie deep 'neath a silence pure and smooth, 
 
 Like burnt-out craters * healed with snow. 
 What wonder if Sir Launfal now 
 Remembered the keeping of his vow? 
 
 Part First 
 I 
 "My golden spurs now bring to me, 
 
 And bring to me my richest mail, 2 
 For to-morrow I go over land and sea 
 
 In search of the Holy Grail; 
 Shall never a bed for me be spread, 
 Nor shall a pillow be under my head, 
 Till I begin my vow to keep ; 
 Here on the rushes 3 will I sleep, 
 And perchance there may come a vision true 
 Ere day create the world anew." 
 
 Slowly Sir Launfal' s eyes grew dim, 
 
 Slumber fell like a cloud on him, 
 And into his soul the vision flew. 
 
 II 
 
 The crows flapped over by twos and threes, 
 In the pool drowsed the cattle up to their knees, 
 The little birds sang as if it were 
 The one day of summer in all the year, 
 
34 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL 
 
 And the very leaves seemed to sing on the trees: 
 
 The castle alone in the landscape lay 
 
 Like an outpost of winter, dull and gray; 
 
 'T was the proudest hall in the North Countree, * 
 
 And never its gates might opened be, 
 
 Save to lord or lady of high degree; 
 
 Summer besieged it on eveiy side, 
 
 But the churlish stone her assaults defied; 
 
 She could not scale the chilly wall, 
 
 Though around it for leagues her pavilions 2 tall 
 
 Stretched left and right, 
 
 Over the hills and out of sight; 
 
 Green and broad was every tent, 
 
 And out of each a murmur went 
 Till the breeze fell off at night. 
 
 Ill 
 
 The drawbridge dropped with a surly clang, 
 And through the dark arch a charger 3 sprang, 
 Bearing Sir Launfal, the maiden knight, 4 
 In his gilded mail, that flamed so bright 
 It seemed the dark castle had gathered all 
 Those shafts the fierce sun had shot over its wall 
 
 In his siege of three hundred summers 5 long, 
 And, binding them all in one blazing sheaf, 
 
 Had cast them forth: so, young and strong, 
 
THE VISION OF SIR LAUNFAL 35 
 
 And lightsome as a locust leaf, 1 
 
 Sir Launfal flashed forth in his unscarred mail, 
 
 To seek in all climes for the Holy Grail. 
 
 IV 
 
 It was morning on hill and stream and tree, 
 And morning in the young knight's heart; 
 
 Only the castle moodily 
 
 Rebuffed the gifts of the sunshine free, 
 And gloomed by itself apart; 
 
 The season brimmed all other things up 
 
 Full as the rain fills the pitcher-plant's cup. 
 
 V 
 
 As Sir Launfal made morn 2 through the darksome 
 gate, 
 
 He was 'ware 3 of a leper, crouched by the same, 
 Who begged with his hand and moaned as he sate; 
 
 And a loathing over Sir Launfal came; 
 The sunshine went out of his soul with a thrill, 
 
 The flesh 'neath his armor 'gan shrink and 
 crawl, 
 And midway its leap his heart stood still 
 
 Like a frozen waterfall; 
 For this man, so foul and bent of stature, 
 Rasped harshly against his dainty nature. 
 
36 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL 
 
 And seemed the one blot on the summer morn, — 
 So he tossed him a piece of gold in scorn. 
 
 t 
 VI 
 
 The leper raised not the gold from the dust: 
 ''Better to me the poor man's crust, 
 Better the blessing of the ppor, 
 Though I turn me empty from his door; 
 That is no true alms which the hand can hold; 
 He gives nothing but worthless gold 
 
 Who gives from a sense of duty; 
 But he who gives but a slender mite, 
 And gives to that which is out of sight, 
 
 That thread of the all-sustaining Beauty 
 Which runs through all and doth all unite, — 
 The hand cannot clasp the whole of his alms, 
 The heart outstretches its eager palms, 
 For a god goes with it and makes it store 
 To the soul that was starving in darkness before." 
 
Prelude to Part Second 
 
 Down swept the chill wind from the mountain peak, 
 From the snow five thousand summers old ; * 
 
 On open wold and hill-top bleak 
 It had gathered all the cold, 2 
 
 And whirled it like sleet on the wanderer's cheek; 
 
 It carried a shiver everywhere 
 
 From the unleafed boughs and pastures bare; 
 
 The little brook heard it and built a roof 
 
 'Neath which he could house him, winter-proof; 
 
 All night by the white stars' frosty gleams 
 
 He groined his arches and matched his beams; 
 
 Slender and clear were his crystal spars 
 
 As the lashes of light that trim the stars; 
 
 He sculptured every summer delight 
 
 In his halls and chambers out of sight; 
 
 Sometimes his tinkling waters slipt 
 
 Down through a frost-leaved forest-crypt, 
 
 Long, sparking aisles of steel-stemmed trees 
 
 Bending to counterfeit a breeze; 
 
 Sometimes the roof no fretwork knew 
 
 But silvery mosses that downward grew; 
 
 37 
 
38 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL 
 
 Sometimes it was carved in sharp relief 
 
 With quaint arabesques of ice-fern leaf; 1 
 
 Sometimes it was simply smooth and clear 
 
 For the gladness of heaven to shine through, and 
 
 here 
 He had caught the nodding bulrush-tops 
 And hung them thickly with diamond-drops, 
 That crystalled the beams of moon and sun, 
 And made a star of every one. 
 No mortal builder's 2 most rare device 
 Could match this winter-palace of ice; 
 'T was as if every image that mirrored lay 
 In his depths serene through the summer day, 
 Each fleeting shadow of earth and sky, 
 
 Lest the happy model should be lost, 
 Had been mimicked in fairy masonry 
 
 By the elfin builders of the frost. 
 
 Within the hall are song and laughter, 
 
 The cheeks of Christmas 3 grow red and jolly, 
 
 And sprouting is every corbel 4 and rafter 
 With lightsome green of ivy and holly; 
 
 Through the deep gulf of the chimney wide 
 
 Wallows the Yule-log's roaring tide; 
 
 The broad flame-pennons droop 5 and flap 
 And belly and tug as a flag in the wind; 
 
THE VISION OF SIR LAUNFAL 39 
 
 Like a locust shrills the imprisoned sap, 
 Hunted to death in its galleries blind; 
 
 And swift little troops of silent sparks, 
 
 Now pausing, now scattering away as in fear, 
 
 Go threading the soot-forest's tangled darks 
 Like herds of startled deer. 
 
 But the wind without was eager and sharp, 
 Of Sir Launfal's gray hair it makes a harp, 
 
 And rattles and wrings 
 
 The icy strings, 
 Singing, in dreary monotone, 
 A Christmas carol of its own, 
 Whose burden still, as he might guess, 
 Was — " Shelterless, shelterless, shelterless!" 
 
 The voice of the seneschal flared like a torch 
 As he shouted the wanderer away from the porch, 
 And he sat in the gateway and saw all night 
 The great hall-fire, so cheery and bold, 
 Through the window-slits of the castle old, 
 Build out its piers of ruddy light 
 Against the drift of the cold. 
 
40 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL 
 
 Part Second 
 
 I 
 There was never a leaf on bush or tree, 
 The bare boughs rattled shudderingly; 
 The river was dumb and could not speak, 
 
 For the weaver Winter its shroud had spun; 
 A single crow on the tree-top bleak 
 
 From his shining feathers shed off the cold 
 sun; 
 Again it was morning, but shrunk and cold, 
 As if her veins were sapless and old, 
 And she rose up decrepitly 
 For a last dim look at earth and sea. 
 
 II 
 
 Sir Launfal turned from his own hard gate, 
 
 For another heir in his earldom sate; 
 
 An old, bent man, worn out and frail, 
 
 He came back from seeking the Holy Grail; 
 
 Little he recked of his earldom's loss, 
 
 No more on his surcoat was blazoned the 
 
 cross, 1 
 But deep in his soul the sign he wore, 
 The badge of the suffering and the poor. 
 
THE VISION OF SIR LAUNFAL 41 
 
 III 
 
 Sir Launfal's raiment thin and spare 
 
 Was idle mail 'gainst the barbed air, 
 
 For it was just at the Christmas time; 
 
 So he mused, as he sat, of a sunnier clime, 
 
 And sought for a shelter from cold and snow 
 
 In the light and warmth of long ago; 
 
 He sees the snake-like caravan crawl 
 
 O'er the edge of the desert, black and small, 
 
 Then nearer and nearer, till, one by one, 
 
 He can count the camels in the sun, 
 
 As over the red-hot sands they pass 
 
 To where, in its slender necklace of grass, 
 
 The little spring laughed and leapt in the shade. 
 
 And with its own self like an infant played, 
 
 And waved its signal of palms. 
 
 IV 
 
 "For Christ's sweet sake, I beg an alms;" 
 The happy camels may reach the spring, 
 But Sir Launfal sees only the grewsome thing, 
 The leper, lank as the rain-blanched bone, 1 
 That cowers beside hirn, a thing as lone 
 And white as the ice-isles of Northern seas 
 In the desolate horror of his disease. 
 
42 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL 
 
 V 
 
 And Sir Launfal said, — " I behold in thee 
 
 An image of Him who died on the tree; 
 
 Thou also hast had thy crown of thorns, 
 
 Thou also hast had the world's buffets and scorns, — 
 
 And to thy life were not denied 
 
 The wounds in- the hands and feet and side : 
 
 Mild Mary's Son, acknowledge me; 
 
 Behold, through him, I give to thee!" 
 
 VI 
 
 ""V 
 
 Then the soul of the leper stood up in his eyes 
 
 And looked at Sir Launfal, and straightway he 
 Remembered in what a haughtier guise 
 
 He had flung an alms to leprosie, 
 When he girt his young life up in gilded mail 
 And set forth in search of the Holy Grail. 
 The heart within him was ashes and dust; 
 He parted in twain his single crust, 
 He broke the ice on the streamlet's brink, 
 And gave the leper to eat and drink; 
 'T was a moldy crust of coarse brown bread, 
 
 'T was water out of a wooden bowl, — 
 Yet with fine wheaten bread was the leper fed, 
 
 And 't was red wine he drank with his thirsty 
 soul. 
 
THE VISION OF SIR LAUNFAL 43 
 
 VII 
 
 As Sir Launfal mused with a downcast face, 
 
 A light shone round about the place; 
 
 The leper no longer crouched at his side, 
 
 But stood before him glorified, 
 
 Shining and tall and fair and straight 
 
 As the pillar that stood by the Beautiful Gate l — 
 
 Himself the Gate whereby men can 
 
 Enter the temple of God in Man. 
 
 VIII 
 
 His words were shed softer than leaves from the 
 
 pine, 
 And they fell on Sir Launfal as snows on the brine, 
 That mingle their softness and quiet in one 
 With the shaggy unrest they float down upon; 
 And the voice that was softer than silence said, 
 "Lo, it is I, be not afraid! 
 In many climes, without avail, 
 Thou hast spent thy life for the Holy Grail; 
 Behold, it is here, — this cup which thou 
 Didst fill at the streamlet for me but now; 
 This crust is my body broken for thee, 
 This water his' blood that died on the tree; 
 The Holy Supper is kept, indeed, 
 In whatso we share with another's need, — 
 
44 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL 
 
 Not what we give, but what we share, — 
 For the gift without the giver is bare; 
 Who gives himself with his alms feeds three, — 
 Himself, his hungering neighbor, and me." 
 
 IX 
 
 Sir Launfal awoke as from a swound : — 
 "The Grail in my castle here is found! 
 Hang my idle armor up on the wall, 
 Let it be the spider's banquet-hall; 
 He must be fenced with stronger mail 
 Who would seek and find the Holy Grail." 
 
 X 
 
 The castle gate stands open now, 
 
 And the wanderer is welcome to the hall 
 
 As the hangbird is to the elm-tree bough; 
 No longer scowl the turrets tall, 
 
 The Summer's long siege at last is o'er; 
 
 When the first poor outcast went in at the 
 door, 
 
 She entered with him in disguise, 
 
 And mastered the fortress by surprise; 
 
 There is no spot she loves so well on ground, 
 
 She lingers and smiles there the whole year round; 
 
THE VISION OF SIR LAUNFAL 45 
 
 \ 
 
 The meanest serf on Sir LaunfaFs land 
 
 Has hall and bower at his command; 
 
 And there's no poor man in the North Countree 
 
 But is lord of the earldom as much as he. 
 
HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW 
 
HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW 
 
 THE COURTSHIP OF MILES STANDISH 
 I 
 
 MILES STANDISH 
 
 In the Old Colony days, 1 in Plymouth the land 
 of the Pilgrims, 
 To and fro in a rrom of his simple and primitive 
 
 dwelling, 
 Clad in doublet and hose, and boots of Cordovan 2 
 
 leather, 
 Strode, with martial air, Miles Standish 3 the Puritan 
 Captain. 
 
 47 
 
48 HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW 
 
 Buried in thought he seemed, with his hands behind 
 
 him, and pausing 
 Ever and anon to behold his glittering weapons of 
 
 warfare, 
 Hanging in shining array along the walls of his 
 
 chamber, — ■ 
 Cutlass and corselet of steel, and his trusty sword of 
 
 Damascus, 1 
 Curved 2 at the point and inscribed with its mystical 
 
 Arabic sentence, 
 While underneath, in a corner, were fowling-piece, 
 
 musket, and matchlock. 
 Short of stature he was, but strongly built and ath- 
 letic, 
 Broad in the shoulders, deep-chested, with muscles 
 
 and sinews of iron; 
 Brown as a nut was his face, but his russet beard 
 
 was already 
 Flaked with patches of snow, as hedges sometimes 
 
 in November. 
 Near him was seated John Alden, 3 his friend and 
 
 household companion, 
 Writing with diligent speed at a table of pine by 
 
 the window; 
 Fair-haired, azure-eyed, with delicate Saxon com- 
 plexion, 
 
THE COURTSHIP OF MILES ST AN DISH 49 
 
 Having the dew of his youth, and the beauty thereof, 
 
 as the captives 
 Whom Saint Gregory saw, and exclaimed, "Not 
 
 Angles 1 but Angels." 
 Youngest of all was he of the men who came in the 
 
 Mayflower. 
 
 Suddenly breaking the silence, the diligent scribe 2 
 
 interrupting, 
 Spake, in the pride of his heart, Miles Standish the 
 
 Captain of Plymouth. 
 " Look at these arms," he said, "the warlike weapons 
 
 that hang here 
 Burnished and bright and clean, as if for parade or 
 
 inspection ! 
 This is the sword of Damascus I fought with in 
 
 Flanders; 3 this breastplate, — 
 Well I remember the day! once saved my life in a 
 
 skirmish; 
 Here in front you can see the very dint of the bullet 
 Fired point-blank at my heart by a Spanish arca- 
 
 bucero. 4 
 Had it not been of sheer steel, the forgotten bones 
 
 of Miles Standish 
 Would at this moment be mold, in their grave in 
 
 the Flemish morasses." 
 
50 HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW 
 
 Thereupon answered John Alden, but looked not 
 
 up from his writing: 
 "Truly the breath 1 of the Lord hath slackened the 
 
 speed of the bullet; 
 He in his mercy preserved you, to be our shield and 
 
 our weapon!" 
 Still the Captain continued, unheeding the words 
 
 of the stripling : 
 "See, how bright they are burnished, as if in an 
 
 arsenal hanging; 
 That is because I have done it myself, and not left 
 
 it to others. 
 Serve yourself, 2 would you be well served, is an 
 
 excellent adage; 
 So I take care of my arms, as you of your pens and 
 
 your inkhorn. 
 Then, too, there are my soldiers, my great, invin- 
 cible army, 
 Twelve men, all equipped, having each his rest 3 
 
 and his matchlock, 
 Eighteen shillings a month, together with diet and 
 
 pillage, 
 And, like Caesar, I know the name of each of my 
 
 soldiers!" 
 This he said with a smile, that danced in his eyes, 
 
 as the sunbeams 
 
THE COURTSHIP OF MILES STANDISH 51 
 
 Dance on the waves of the sea, and vanish again in 
 
 a moment. 
 Alden laughed l as he wrote, and still the Captain 
 
 continued : 
 "Look! you can see from this window my brazen 
 
 howitzer planted 
 High on the roof of the church, a preacher 2 who 
 
 speaks to the purpose, 
 Steady, straightforward, and strong, with irresist- 
 ible logic, 
 Orthodox, flashing conviction right into the hearts 
 
 of the heathen. 
 Now we are ready, I think, for any assault of the 
 
 Indians : 
 Let them come if they like, and the sooner they try 
 
 it the better, — 
 Let them come if they like, be it sagamore, 3 sachem, 
 
 or pow-wow, 
 Aspinet, Samoset, Corbitant, Squanto, or Tokama- 
 
 hamon!" 
 
 Long at the window he stood, and wistfully gazed 
 
 on the landscape, 
 Washed with a cold gray mist, the vapory breath 
 
 of the east wind, 
 Forest 4 and meadow and hill, and the steel-blue 
 
 rim of the ocean, 
 
52 HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW 
 
 Lying silent and sad, in the afternoon shadows and 
 sunshme. 
 
 Over his countenance flitted a shadow like those on 
 the landscape, 
 
 Gloom intermingled with light; and his voice was 
 subdued with emotion, 
 
 Tenderness, pity, regret, as after a pause he pro- 
 ceeded : 
 
 "Yonder there, on the hill by the sea, lies buried 
 Rose Stanclish; 
 
 Beautiful rose of love, that bloomed for me by the 
 wayside ! 
 
 She was the first to die of all who came in the May- 
 flower ! 
 
 Green above her is growing the field of wheat we 
 have sown there, 
 
 Better to hide from the Indian scouts the graves of 
 our people, 
 
 Lest they should count them and see how many 
 already have perished ! " 
 
 Sadly his face he averted, and strode up and down, 
 and was thoughtful. 
 
 Fixed to the opposite wall was a shelf of books, 
 and among them 
 Prominent three, 1 distinguished alike for bulk and 
 for binding; 
 
THE COURTSHIP OF MILES STANDISH 53 
 
 BarrifiVs Artillery Guide, 1 and the Commentaries 2 
 of Caesar, 
 
 Out of the Latin translated by Arthur Goldinge of 
 London, 
 
 And, as if guarded by these, between them was 
 standing the Bible. 
 
 Musing a moment before them, Miles Standish 
 paused, as if doubtful 
 
 Which of the three he should choose for his conso- 
 lation and comfort, 
 
 Whether the wars of the Hebrews, the famous cam- 
 paigns of the Romans, 
 
 Or the Artillery practice, designed for belligerent 
 Christians. 
 
 Finally down from its shelf he dragged the ponder- 
 ous Roman, 
 
 Seated himself at the window, and opened the book, 
 and in silence 
 
 Turned o'er the well-worn leaves, where thumb- 
 marks thick 3 on the margin, 
 
 Like the trample of feet, proclaimed the battle was 
 hottest. 
 
 Nothing was heard in the room but the hurrying 
 pen of the stripling, 
 
 Busily writing epistles important, to go by the 
 Mayflower, 
 
54 HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW 
 
 Ready to sail on the morrow, or next day at latest, 
 
 God willing! 
 Homeward bound 1 with the tidings of all that 
 
 terrible winter, 
 Letters written by Alden, and full of the name of 
 
 Priscilla, . 
 Full of the name and the fame of the Puritan 
 
 maiden Priscilla! 
 
 II 
 
 LOVE AND FRIENDSHIP 
 
 Nothing was heard in the room but the hurrying 
 
 pen of the stripling, 
 Or an occasional sigh from the laboring heart of 
 
 the Captain, 
 Reading the marvelous words and achievements 
 
 of Julius Caesar. 
 After a while he exclaimed, as he smote with his 
 
 hand, palm downwards, 
 Heavily on the page: "A wonderful man was this 
 
 Caesar! 
 You are a writer, and I am a fighter, but here is a 
 
 fellow 
 Who could both write and fight, and in both was 
 
 equally skillful !" 
 
THE COURTSHIP OF MILES STANDISH 55 
 
 Straightway answered and spake John Alden, the 
 
 comely, the youthful: 
 "Yes, he was equally skilled, as you say, with his 
 
 pen and his weapons. 
 Somewhere have I read, but where I forget, he could 
 
 dictate 
 Seven letters at once, at the same time writing his 
 
 memoirs." 
 "Truly," continued the Captain, not heeding or 
 
 hearing the other, 
 "Truly a wonderful man was this Caius Julius 
 
 Caesar ! 
 'Better be first/ 1 he said, 'in a little Iberian vil- 
 lage, 
 Than be second in Rome/ and I think he was right 
 
 when he said it. 
 Twice was he married before he was twenty, and 
 
 many times after; 
 Battles five hundred he fought, and a thousand 
 
 cities he conquered; 
 He, too, fought in Flanders, as he himself has 
 
 recorded; 
 Finally he was stabbed by his friend, the orator 
 
 Brutus! 
 Now, do you know what he did on a certain occa- 
 sion in Flanders, 
 
56 HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW 
 
 When the rear guard of his army retreated, the 
 
 front giving way too, 
 And the immortal Twelfth Legion was crowded so 
 
 closely together 
 There was no room for their swords? Why, he 
 
 seized a shield from a soldier, 
 Put himself straight at the head of his troops, and 
 
 commanded the captains, 
 Calling on each by his name, to order forward the 
 
 ensigns; 
 Then to widen the ranks, and give more room for 
 
 their weapons; 
 So he won the day, the battle of something-or-other. 
 That's what I always say; if you wish a thing to be 
 
 well done, 
 You must do it yourself, you must not leave it to 
 
 others!" 
 
 All was silent again; the Captain continued his 
 
 reading. 
 Nothing was heard l in the room but the hurrying 
 
 pen of the stripling 
 Writing epistles important to go next day by the 
 
 Mayflower, 
 Filled with the name and the fame of the Puritan 
 
 maiden Priscilla; 
 
THE COURTSHIP OF MILES STANDISH 57 
 
 Every sentence began or closed with the name of 
 Priscilla, 1 
 
 Till the treacherous pen, to which he confided the 
 secret, 
 
 Strove to betray it by singing and shouting the 
 name of Priscilla! 
 
 Finally closing his book, with a bang of the ponder- 
 ous cover, 
 
 Sudden and loud as the sound of a soldier ground- 
 ing his musket, 
 
 Thus to the young man spake Miles Standish the 
 Captain of Plymouth: 
 
 " When you have finished your work, I have some- 
 thing important to tell you. 
 
 Be not, however, in haste; I can wait; I shall not be 
 impatient ! " 
 
 Straightway Alden replied, as he folded the last of 
 his letters, 
 
 Pushing his papers aside, and giving respectful 
 attention : 
 
 "Speak; for whenever you speak, I am always ready 
 to listen, 
 
 Always ready to hear whatever pertains to Miles 
 Standish." 
 
 Thereupon answered the Captain, embarrassed, and 
 culling his phrases: 
 
58 HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW 
 
 u 'Tis not good for a man to be alone, say the Scrip- 
 tures. 1 
 This I have said before, and again and again I 
 
 repeat it; 
 Every hour in the day, I think, and feel it, and 
 
 say it. 
 Since Rose Standish died, my life has been weary 
 
 and dreary; 
 Sick at heart have I been, beyond the healing of 
 
 friendship. 
 Oft in my lonely hours have I thought of the maiden 
 
 Priscilla. 
 She is alone in the world; 2 her father and mother 
 
 and brother 
 Died in the winter together; I saw her going and 
 
 coming, 
 Now to the grave of the dead, and now to the bed 
 
 of the dying, 
 Patient, courageous, and strong, and said to my- 
 
 . self, that if ever 
 There were angels on earth, as there are angels in 
 
 heaven, 
 Two have I seen and known; and the angel whose 
 
 name is Priscilla 
 Holds in my desolate life the place which the other 
 
 abandoned. 
 
THE COURTSHIP OF MILES STANDISH 59 
 
 Long have I cherished the thought, but never have 
 
 dared to reveal it, 
 Being a coward in this, though valiant enough for 
 
 the most part. 
 Go to the damsel Priscilla, the loveliest maiden of 
 
 Plymouth, 
 Say that a blunt old Captain, a man not of words 
 
 but of actions, 
 Offers his hand and his heart, the hand and heart of 
 
 a soldier. 
 Not in these words, you know, but this in short is 
 
 my meaning; 
 I am a maker of war, and not a maker of phrases. 
 You, who are bred as a scholar, can say it in ele- 
 gant language, 
 Such as you read in your books of the pleadings 
 
 and wooings of lovers, 
 Such as you think best adapted to win the heart of 
 
 a maiden." 
 
 When he had spoken, John Alden, the fair-haired, 
 
 taciturn l stripling, 
 All aghast at his words, surprised, embarrassed, 
 
 bewildered^ 
 Trying to mask his dismay by treating the subject 
 
 with lightness, 
 
60 HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW 
 
 Trying to smile, and yet feeling his heart stand 
 
 still in his bosom, 
 Just as a timepiece ' stops in a house that is stricken 
 
 by lightning, 
 Thus made answer and spake, or rather stammered 
 
 than answered: 
 " Such a message as that, I am sure I should mangle 
 
 and mar it; 
 If you would have it well done, — I am only repeat- 
 ing your maxim, 2 — 
 You must do it yourself, you must not leave it to 
 
 others!" 
 But with the air of a man whom nothing can turn 
 
 from his purpose, 
 Gravely shaking his head, made answer the Captain 
 
 of Plymouth: 
 "Truly the maxim is good, and I do not mean to 
 
 gainsay it; 
 But we must use it discreetly, and not waste powder 
 
 for nothing. 
 Now, as I said before, I was never a maker of 
 
 phrases. 
 I can march up to a fortress and summon the place 
 
 to surrender, 
 But march up to a woman with such a proposal, I 
 
 dare not. 
 
THE COURTSHIP OF MILES ST AN DISH 61 
 
 I'm not afraid of bullets, nor shot from the mouth 
 
 of a cannon, 
 But of a thundering 'No!' point-blank from the 
 
 mouth of a woman, 
 That, I confess, I'm afraid of, nor am I ashamed to 
 
 confess it ! 
 So you must grant my request, for you are an ele- 
 gant scholar, 
 Having the graces of speech, and skill in the turning 
 
 of phrases." 
 Taking the hand of his friend, who still was reluc- 
 tant and doubtful, 
 Holding it long in his own, and pressing it kindly, 
 
 he added: 
 "Though I have spoken thus lightly, yet deep is 
 
 the feeling that prompts me; 
 Surely you cannot refuse what I ask in the name of 
 
 our friendship ! " 
 Then made answer John Alden: "The name of 
 
 friendship is sacred; 
 What you demand in that name, I have not the 
 
 power to deny you ! " 
 So the strong will prevailed, subduing and molding 
 
 the gentler, 
 Friendship prevailed over love, and Alden went on 
 
 his errand. 
 
62 HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW 
 
 III 
 
 THE LOVER'S ERRAND 
 
 So the strong will prevailed/ and Alden went on 
 his errand, 
 
 Out of the street of the village, and into the paths 
 of the forest, 
 
 Into the tranquil woods, where bluebirds and robins 
 were building 
 
 Towns in the populous trees, with hanging gardens 2 
 of verdure, 
 
 Peaceful, aerial cities of joy and affection and free- 
 dom. 
 
 All around him was calm, but within him commo- 
 tion and conflict, 
 
 Love contending with friendship, and self with 
 each generous impulse. 
 
 To and fro in his breast his thoughts were heaving 
 and dashing, 
 
 As in a foundering ship, with every roll of the vessel, 
 
 Washes the bitter sea, the merciless surge of the 
 ocean! 
 
 "Must I relinquish it all," he cried with a wild 
 lamentation, — 
 
 "Must I relinquish it all, the joy, the hope, the 
 illusion? 
 
THE COURTSHIP OF MILES STANDISH 63 
 
 Was it for this I have loved, and waited, and wor- 
 shiped in silence? 
 Was it for this I have followed the flying feet x and 
 
 the shadow 
 Over the wintry sea, to the desolate shores of New 
 
 England? 
 Truly the heart is deceitful, and out of its depths 
 
 of corruption 
 Rise, like an exhalation, the misty phantoms of 
 
 passion; 
 Angels of light they seem, but are only delusions 
 
 of Satan. 
 All is clear to me now; I feel it, I see it distinctly! 
 This is the hand of the Lord; it is laid upon me in 
 
 anger, 
 Fdr I have followed too much the heart's desires 
 
 and devices, 
 Worshiping Astaroth blindly, and impious idols of 
 
 Baal. 2 
 This is the cross I must bear; the sin and the swift 
 
 retribution." 
 
 So through the Plymouth woods John Alden 
 went on his errand; 
 Crossing the brook at the ford, where it brawled 
 over pebble and shallow, 
 
64 HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW 
 
 Gathering still, as he went, the mayflowers bloom- 
 ing around him, 
 
 Fragrant, filling the air with a strange and wonder- 
 ful sweetness, 
 
 Children 1 lost in the woods, and covered with 
 leaves in their slumber. 
 
 "Puritan flowers," he said, "and the type of Puri- 
 tan maidens, 
 
 Modest and simple and sweet, the very type of 
 Priscilla ! 
 
 So I will take them to her; to Priscilla the may- 
 flower of Plymouth, 
 
 Modest and simple and sweet, as a parting gift will 
 I take them; 
 
 Breathing their silent farewells, as they fade and 
 wither and perish, 
 
 Soon to be thrown away as is the heart of the 
 giver." 
 
 So through the Plymouth woods John Alden went 
 on his errand; 
 
 Came to an open space, and saw the disk of the 
 ocean, 
 
 Sailless, somber and cold with the comfortless 
 breath of the east wind; 
 
 Saw the new-built house, and people at work in a 
 meadow; 
 
THE COURTSHIP OF MILES ST AN DISH 65 
 
 Heard, as he drew near the door, the musical voice 
 of Priscilla 
 
 Singing the hundredth Psalm, the grand old Puri- 
 tan anthem, 
 
 Music that Luther sang to the sacred words of the 
 Psalmist, 
 
 Full of the breath of the Lord, consoling and com- 
 forting many. 
 
 Then, as he opened the door, he beheld the form 
 of the maiden 
 
 Seated beside her wheel, and the carded wool ! like 
 a snowdrift 
 
 Piled at her knee, her white hands feeding the 
 ravenous spindle, 
 
 While with her foot on the treadle she guided th^ 
 wheel in its motion. 
 
 Open wide on her lap lay the well-worn psalm- 
 book of Ainsworth, 
 
 Printed in Amsterdam, the words and the music 
 together, 
 
 Rough-hewn, angular notes, like stones in the wall 
 of a churchyard, 
 
 Darkened and overhung by the running vine of the 
 verses. 
 
 Such was the book from whose pages she sang the 
 old Puritan anthem, 2 
 
 8he, the Puritan girl, in the solitude of the forest. 
 
66 HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW 
 
 Making the humble house and the modest apparel 
 
 of homespun 
 Beautiful with her beauty, and rich with the wealth 
 
 of her being! 
 Over him rushed, like a wind that is keen and cold 
 
 and relentless, 
 Thoughts of what might have been, and the weight 
 
 and woe of his errand; 
 All the dreams that had faded, and all the hopes 
 
 that had vanished, 
 All his life * henceforth a dreary and tenantless 
 
 mansion, 
 Haunted by vain regrets, and pallid, sorrowful 
 
 faces. 
 Still he said to himself, and almost fiercely he said it, 
 " Let not him that putteth his hand to the plow 2 
 
 look backwards; 
 Though the plowshare cut through the flowers of 
 
 life to its fountains, 
 Though it pass o'er the graves of the dead and the 
 
 hearths of the living, 
 It is the will of the Lord; and his mercy endureth 
 
 forever!" 8 
 
 So he entered the house; and the hufla of the 
 
 wheel and the singing 
 
THE COURTSHIP OF MILES STANDISH 67 
 
 Suddenly ceased; for Priscilla, aroused by his step 
 
 on the threshold, 
 Rose as he entered, and gave him her hand, in 
 
 signal of welcome, 
 Saying, "I knew it was you, when I heard your 
 
 step in the passage; 
 For I was thinking of you, as I sat there singing 
 
 and spinning." 
 Awkward and dumb with delight, that a thought 
 
 of him had been mingled 
 Thus in the sacred psalm, that came from the heart 
 
 of the maiden, 
 Silent before her he stood, and gave her the flowers 
 
 for an answer, 
 Finding no words for his thought. He remem- 
 bered that day in the winter, 
 After the first great snow, when he broke a patk 
 
 from the village, 
 Reeling and plunging along through the drifts that 
 
 encumbered the doorway, 
 Stamping the snow from his feet as he entered the 
 
 house, and Priscilla 
 Laughed at his snowy locks, and gave him a seat 
 
 by the fireside, 
 Grateful and pleased to know he had thought of 
 
 her in the snow-storm. 
 
68 HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW 
 
 Had he but spoken then perhaps not in vain had 
 
 he spoken! 
 Now it was all too late; the golden moment had 
 
 vanished ! ' 
 
 So he stood there abashed, and gave her the flowers 
 
 for an answer. 
 
 Then they sat down and talked of the birds and 
 
 the beautiful springtime; 
 Talked of their friends at home, and the Mayflower 
 
 that sailed on the morrow. 
 "I have been thinking all day," said gently the 
 
 Puritan maiden, 
 "Dreaming all night, and thinking all day, of the 
 
 hedgerows of England, — 
 They are in blossom now, and the country is all 
 
 like a garden; 
 Thinking of lanes and fields, and the song of the 
 
 lark and the linnet, 
 Seeing the village street, and familiar faces of 
 
 neighbors 
 Going about as of old, and stopping to gossip to- 
 gether, 
 And, at the end of the street, the village church, 
 
 with the ivy 
 Climbing the old gray tower, and the quiet graves 
 
 in the churchyard. 
 
THE COURTSHIP OF MILES ST AN DISH 69 
 
 Kind are the people I live with, and dear to me my 
 
 religion ; 
 Still my heart is so sad, that I wish myself back in 
 
 Old England. 
 You will say it is wrong, but I cannot help it: I 
 
 almost 
 Wish myself back in Old England, I feel so lonely 
 
 and wretched." 
 
 Thereupon answered the youth: "Indeed I do 
 
 not condemn you; 
 Stouter hearts than a woman's have quailed in 
 
 this terrible winter. 
 Yours is tender and trusting, and needs a stronger 
 
 to lean on; 
 So I have come to you now, with an offer and 
 
 proffer of marriage 
 Made by a good man and true, Miles Standish the 
 
 Captain of Plymouth!" 
 
 Thus he delivered his message, the dexterous 
 writer of letters, — 
 
 Did not embellish the theme, nor array it in beauti- 
 ful phrases, 
 
 But came straight to the point, and blurted it out 
 like a schoolboy; 
 
70 HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW 
 
 Even the Captain himself could hardly have said 
 
 it more bluntly. 
 Mute with amazement and sorrow, Priscilla the 
 
 Puritan maiden 
 Looked into Alden's face, her eyes dilated with 
 
 wonder, 
 Feeling his words like a blow, that stunned her and 
 
 rendered her speechless; 
 Till at length she exclaimed, interrupting the 
 
 ominous silence: 
 " If the great Captain of Plymouth is so very eager 
 
 to wed me, 
 Why does he not come himself, and take the trouble 
 
 to woo me? 
 If I am not worth the wooing, I surely am not 
 
 worth the winning ! " 
 Then John Alden began explaining and smoothing 
 
 the matter, 
 Making it worse as he went, by saying the Captain 
 
 was busy, — 
 Had no time for such things; — such things! the 
 
 words grating harshly 
 Fell on the ear of Priscilla; and swift as a flash she 
 
 made answer: 
 "Has he no time for such things, as you call it, 
 
 before he is married, 
 
THE COURTSHIP OF MILES ST AN DISH 71 
 
 Would he be likely to find it, or make it, after the 
 
 wedding? 
 That is the way with you men; you don't understand 
 
 us, you cannot. 
 When you have made up your minds, after think- 
 ing of this one and that one, 
 Choosing, selecting, rejecting, comparing one with 
 
 another, 
 Then you make known your desire, with abrupt 
 
 and sudden avowal, 
 And are offended and hurt, and indignant perhaps, 
 
 that a woman 
 Does not respond at once to a love that she never 
 
 suspected, 
 Does not attain at a bound to the height to which 
 
 you have been climbing. 
 This is not right nor just; for surely a woman's 
 
 affection 
 Is not a thing to be asked for, and had for only the 
 
 asking. 
 When one is truly in love, one not only says it, 
 
 but shows it. 
 Had he but waited a while, had he only showed 
 
 that he loved me, 
 Even this Captain of yours — who knows? — at 
 
 last might have won me, 
 
72 HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW 
 
 Old and rough as he is; but now it never can happen." 
 
 Still John Alden went on, unheeding the words 
 of Priscilla, 
 
 Urging the suit of his friend, explaining, persuad- 
 ing, expanding; 
 
 Spoke of his courage and skill, and of all his battles 
 in Flanders, 
 
 How with the people of God he had chosen to suffer 
 affliction, 
 
 How, in return for his zeal, they had made him 
 Captain of Plymouth; 
 
 He was a gentleman born, could trace his pedigree 
 plainly 
 
 Back to Hugh Standish l of Duxbury Hall, in Lan- 
 cashire, England, 
 
 Who was the son of Ralph, and the grandson of 
 Thurston de Standish; 
 
 Heir unto vast estates, of which he was basely 
 defrauded, 
 
 Still bore the family arms, 2 and had for his crest a 
 cock argent 
 
 Combed and wattled gules, and all the rest of the 
 blazon. 
 
 He was a man of honor, of noble and generous 
 nature; 
 
THE COURTSHIP OF MILES ST AN DISH 73 
 
 Though he was rough, he was kindly; she knew 
 
 how during the winter 
 He had attended the sick, with a hand as gentle 
 
 as woman's; 
 Somewhat hasty and hot, he could not deny it, 
 
 and headstrong, 
 Stern as a soldier might be, but hearty, and placable 
 
 always, 
 Not to be laughed at and scorned, because he was 
 
 little of stature; 
 For he was great of heart, magnanimous, courtly, 
 
 courageous; 
 Any woman in Plymouth, nay, any woman in 
 
 England, 
 Might be happy and proud to be called the wife of 
 
 Miles Standish! 
 
 But as he warmed and glowed, in his simple 
 and eloquent language, 
 
 Quite forgetful of self, and full of the praise of his 
 rival, 
 
 Archly the maiden smiled, and, with eyes over- 
 running with laughter, 
 
 Said, in a tremulous voice, " Why don't you speak 
 for yourself, John?" * 
 
74 HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW 
 
 IV 
 
 JOHN ALDEN 
 
 Into the open air John Alden, 1 perplexed and be- 
 wildered, 
 
 Rushed like a man insane, and wandered alone by 
 the seaside; 
 
 Paced up and down the sands, and bared his head 
 to the east wind, 
 
 Cooling his heated brow, and the fire and fever 
 within him. 
 
 Slowly, as out of the heavens, with apocalyptical 
 splendors, 2 
 
 Sank the City of God, in the vision of John the 
 Apostle; 
 
 So, with its cloudy walls of chrysolite, jasper, and 
 sapphire, 
 
 Sank the broad red sun, and over its turrets up- 
 lifted 
 
 Glimmered the golden reed of the angel who meas- 
 ured the city. 
 
 "Welcome, O wind of the East!" he exclaimed 
 in his wild exultation, 
 "Welcome, O wind of the East, from the caves of 
 the misty Atlantic! 
 
THE COURTSHIP OF MILES ST AN DISH 75 
 
 Blowing o'er fields of dulse, 1 and measureless 
 
 meadows of seagrass, 
 Blowing o'er rocky wastes, and the grottoes and 
 
 gardens of ocean ! 
 Lay thy cold, moist hand on my burning forehead, 
 
 and wrap me 
 Close in thy garments of mist, to allay the fever 
 
 within me!" 
 
 Like an awakened conscience, the sea was moan- 
 ing and tossing, 
 
 Beating remorseful and loud the mutable sands of 
 the seashore. 
 
 Fierce in his soul was the struggle and tumult of 
 passions contending; 
 
 Love triumphant and crowned, and friendship 
 wounded and bleeding, 
 
 Passionate cries of desire, and importunate plead- 
 ings of duty! 
 
 "Is it my fault," he said, "that the maiden has 
 chosen between us? 
 
 Is it my fault that he failed, — my fault that I am 
 the victor? " 
 
 Then within him there thundered a voice, like the 
 voice of the Prophet: 
 
 "It hath displeased the Lord!" — and he thought 
 of David's transgression, 2 
 
76 HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW 
 
 Bathsheba's beautiful face, and his friend in the 
 front of the battle ! 
 
 Shame and confusion of guilt, and abasement and 
 self-condemnation, 
 
 Overwhelmed him at once; and he cried in the 
 deepest contrition: 
 
 "It hath displeased the Lord! It is the tempta- 
 tion of Satan ! " 
 
 Then, uplifting his head, he looked at the sea, 
 
 and beheld there 
 Dimly the shadowy form of the Mayflower riding 
 
 at anchor, 
 Rocked on the rising tide, and ready to sail on the 
 
 morrow; 
 Heard the voices of men through the mist, the rattle 
 
 of cordage 
 Thrown on the deck, the shouts of the mate, and 
 
 the sailors' " Aye, aye, sir ! " 
 Clear and distinct, but not loud, in the dripping 
 
 air of the twilight. 
 Still for a moment he stood, and listened, and 
 
 stared at the vessel, 
 Then went hurriedly on, as one who, seeing a phan- 
 tom, 
 Stops, then quickens his pace, and follows the 
 
 beckoning shadow. 
 
THE COURTSHIP OF MILES ST AN DISH 7? 
 
 "Yes, it is plain to me now," he murmured; "the 
 
 hand of the Lord is 
 Leading me out of the land of darkness, the bond- 
 age of error, 
 Through the sea, that shall lift the walls of its 
 
 waters 1 around me, 
 Hiding me, cutting me off, from the cruel thought? 
 
 that pursue me. 
 Back will I go o'er the ocean, this dreary land will 
 
 abandon, 
 Her 2 whom I may not love, and him whom my heart 
 
 has offended. 
 Better to be in my grave in the green old church- 
 yard in England, 
 Close by my mother's side, and among the dust 
 
 of my kindred; 
 Better be dead and forgotten, than living in shame 
 
 and dishonor! 
 Sacred and safe and unseen, in the dark of the 
 
 narrow chamber 
 With me my secret shall lie, like a buried jewel 
 
 that glimmers 
 Bright on the hand that is dust, in the chambers 
 
 of silence and darkness, — 
 Yes, as the marriage ring of the great espousal 
 
 hereafter ! " 
 
78 HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW 
 
 Thus as he spake, he turned, in the strength of 
 his strong resolution, 
 
 Leaving behind him the shore, and hurried along 
 in the twilight, 
 
 Through the congenial gloom of the forest silent 
 and somber, 
 
 Till he beheld the lights on the seven houses f of 
 Plymouth, 
 
 Shining like seven stars in the dusk and mist of 
 the evening. 
 
 Soon he entered his door, and found the redoubt- 
 able Captain 
 
 Sitting alone, and absorbed in the martial pages 
 of Caesar, 
 
 Fighting some great campaign in Hainault or Bra- 
 bant 2 or Flanders. 
 
 " Long have you been on your errand," he said with 
 a cheery demeanor, 
 
 Even as one who is waiting an answer, and fears 
 not the issue. 
 
 "Not far off is the house, although the woods are 
 between us; 
 
 But you have lingered so long, that while you 
 were going and coming 
 
 I have fought ten battles and sacked and demol- 
 ished a city. 
 
THE COURTSHIP OF MILES ST AN DISH 79 
 
 Come, sit down, and in order relate to me all that 
 has happened." 
 
 Then John Alden spake, and related the won- 
 drous adventure 
 
 From beginning to end, minutely, just as it happened; 
 
 How he had seen Priscilla, and how he, had sped l 
 in his courtship, 
 
 Only smoothing a little, and softening down her 
 refusal, 
 
 But when he came at length to the words Priscilla 
 had spoken, 
 
 Words so tender and cruel: "Why don't you speak 
 for yourself, John?" 
 
 Up leaped the Captain of Plymouth, and stamped 
 on the floor, till his armor 
 
 Clanged on the wall, where it hung, with a sound 
 of sinister omen. 
 
 All his pent-up wrath burst forth in a sudden ex- 
 plosion, 
 
 E'en as a hand-grenade, that scatters destruction 
 around it. 
 
 Wildly he shouted, and loud: "John Alden! you 
 have betrayed me! 
 
 Me, Miles Standish, your friend! have supplanted, 
 defrauded, betrayed me! 
 
80 HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW 
 
 One of my ancestors ran his sword through the 
 
 heart of Wat Tyler; x 
 Who shall prevent me from running my own through 
 
 the heart of a traitor? 
 Yours is the greater treason, for yours is a treason 
 
 to friendship! 
 You, who lived under my roof, whom I cherished 
 
 and loved as a brother; 
 You, who have fed at my board, and drunk at my 
 
 cup, to whose keeping 
 I have intrusted my honor, my thoughts the most 
 
 sacred and secret, — - 
 You too, Brutus! 2 ah, woe to the name of friendship 
 
 hereafter ! 
 Brutus was Caesar's friend, and you were mine, but 
 
 henceforward 
 Let there be nothing between us save war, and im- 
 placable hatred ! " 
 
 So spake the Captain of Plymouth, and strode 
 
 about in the chamber, 
 Chafing and choking with rage; like cords were the 
 
 veins on his temples. 
 But in the midst of his anger a man appeared at 
 
 the doorway, 
 Bringing in uttermost haste a message of urgent 
 
 importance. 
 
THE COURTSHIP OF MILES STANDISH 81 
 
 Rumors of danger and war and hostile incursions 
 
 of Indians! 
 Straightway the Captain paused, and, without 
 
 further question or parley, 
 Took from the nail on the wall his sword with its 
 
 scabbard of iron, 
 Buckled the belt round his waist, and, frowning 
 
 fiercely, departed. 
 Alden was left alone. 1 He heard the clank of the 
 
 scabbard 
 Growing fainter and fainter, and dying away in 
 
 the distance. 
 Then he arose from his seat, and looked forth into 
 
 the darkness, 
 Felt the cool air blow on his cheek, that was hot 
 
 with the insult, 
 Lifted his eyes to the heavens, and, folding his 
 
 hands as in childhood, 
 Prayed in the silence of night to the Father who 
 
 seeth in secret. 2 
 
 Meanwhile the choleric Captain strode wrathful 
 away to the council, 
 
 Found it already assembled, impatiently waiting 
 his coming; 
 
 Men in the middle of life, austere and grave in de- 
 portment, 
 
82 HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW 
 
 Only one of them old, the hill * that was nearest 
 
 to heaven, 
 Covered with snow, but erect, the excellent Elder 
 
 of Plymouth. 
 God had sifted three kingdoms to find the wheat 
 
 for this planting, 
 Then had sifted the wheat, as the living seed of a 
 
 nation; 
 So say the chronicles old, 2 and such is the faith of 
 
 the people! 
 Near them was standing an Indian, in attitude 
 
 stern and defiant, 
 Naked down to the waist, and grim and ferocious 
 
 in aspect; 
 While on the table before them was lying unopened 
 
 a Bible, 
 Ponderous, bound in leather, brass-studded, printed 
 
 in Holland, 
 And beside it outstretched the skin 3 of a rattle- 
 snake glittered, 
 Filled, like a quiver, with arrows: a, signal and 
 
 challenge of warfare, 
 Brought by the Indian, and speaking with arrowy 
 
 tongues of defiance. 
 This Miles Standish beheld, as he entered, and 
 
 heard them debating 
 
THE COURTSHIP OF MILES ST AN DISH S3 
 
 What were an answer befitting the hostile message 
 
 and menace, 
 Talking of this and of that, contriving, suggesting, 
 
 objecting; 
 One voice only for peace, and that the voice of the 
 
 Elder, 1 
 Judging it wise and well that some at least were 
 
 converted, 
 Rather than any were slain, for this was but Chris- 
 tian behavior! 
 Then out spake Miles Standish, the stalwart Cap- 
 tain of Plymouth, 
 Muttering deep in his throat, for his voice was husky 
 
 with anger, 
 " What ! do you mean to make war with milk and 
 
 the water of roses? 
 Is it to shoot red squirrels you have your howitzer 
 
 planted 
 There on the roof of the church, or is it to shoot 
 
 red devils? 
 Truly the only tongue that is understood by a 
 
 savage 
 Must be the tongue of fire that speaks from the 
 
 mouth of the cannon ! " 
 Thereupon answered and said the excellent Elder 
 
 of Plymouth, 
 
84 HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW 
 
 Somewhat amazed and alarmed at this irreverent 
 
 language : 
 " Not so thought Saint Paul, nor yet the other 
 
 Apostles; 
 Not from the cannon's mouth were the tongues of 
 
 fire they spake with ! " 
 But unheeded fell this mild rebuke on the Captain, 
 Who had advanced to the table, and thus con- 
 tinued discoursing: 
 "Leave this matter to me, for to me by right it 
 
 pertaineth. 
 War is a terrible trade; but in the cause that is 
 
 righteous, 
 Sweet is the smell of powder; and thus I answer the 
 
 challenge ! " 
 
 Then from the rattlesnake's skin, with a sudden, 
 
 contemptuous gesture. 
 Jerking the Indian arrows, he filled it with powder 
 
 and bullets 
 Full to the very jaws, and handed it back to the 
 
 savage, 
 Saying, in thundering tones: "Here, take it! this 
 
 is your answer ! " 
 Silently out of the room then glided the glistening 
 
 savage, 
 
THE COURTSHIP OF MILES ST AN DISH 85 
 
 Bearing the serpent's skin, and seeming himself 
 
 like a serpent, 
 Winding his sinuous way in the dark to the depths 
 
 of the forest. 
 
 THE SAILING OF THE MAYFLOWER 
 
 Just in the gray of the dawn, as the mists uprose 
 from the meadows, 
 
 There was a stir and a sound * in the slumbering 
 village of Plymouth; 
 
 Clanging and clicking of arms, and the order imper- 
 ative, "Forward!" 
 
 Given in tone suppressed, a tramp of feet, and then 
 silence. 
 
 Figures ten, in the mist, marched slowly out of the 
 village. 
 
 Standish the stalwart it was, with eight of his valor- 
 ous army, 
 
 Led by their Indian guide, by Hobomok, friend of 
 the white men, 
 
 Northward marching to quell the sudden revolt of 
 the savage. 
 
 Giants they seemed in the mist, or the mighty men 
 of King David; 2 
 
86 HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW 
 
 Giants in heart they were, who believed in God 
 
 and the Bible, — 
 Aye, who believed in the smiting of Midianites and 
 
 Philistines. 
 Over them gleamed far off the crimson banners of 
 
 morning; 
 Under them loud on the sands, the serried 1 billows, 
 
 advancing, 
 Fired along the line, and in regular order retreated. 
 
 Many a mile had they marched, when at length 
 
 the village of Plymouth 
 Woke from its sleep, and arose, intent on its mani- 
 
 . fold labors. 
 Sweet was the air and soft; and slowly the smoke 
 
 from the chimneys 
 Rose over roofs of thatch, and pointed steadily 
 
 eastward ; 
 Men came forth from the doors, and paused and 
 
 talked of the weather, 
 Said that the wind had changed, and was blowing 
 
 fair for the Mayflower; 
 Talked of their Captain's departure, and all the 
 
 dangers that menaced, 
 He being gone, the town, and what should be done 
 
 in his absence. 
 
THE COURTSHIP OF MILE& STANDISH 87 
 
 Merrily sang the birds, and the tender voices of 
 
 women 
 Consecrated with hymns the common cares of the 
 
 household. 
 Out of the sea rose the sun, and the billows re- 
 joiced at his coming; 
 Beautiful were his feet ! on the purple tops of the 
 
 mountains; 
 Beautiful on the sails of the Mayflower riding at 
 
 anchor, 
 Battered and blackened and worn by all the storms 
 
 of the winter. 
 Loosely against her masts was hanging and flap- 
 ping her canvas, 
 Rent by so many gales, and patched by the hands 
 
 of the sailors. 
 Suddenly from her side, as the sun rose over the 
 
 ocean, 
 Darted a puff of smoke, and floated seaward; anon 
 
 rang 
 Loud over field and forest the cannon's roar, and 
 
 the echoes 
 Heard and repeated the sound, the signal-gun of 
 
 departure ! 
 Ah! but with louder echoes replied the hearts of 
 
 the people! 
 
88 HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW 
 
 Meekly, in voices subdued, the chapter was read 
 
 from the Bible, 
 Meekly the prayer was begun, but ended in fervent 
 
 entreaty ! 
 Then from their houses in haste came forth the 
 
 Pilgrims of Plymouth, 
 Men and women' and children, all hurrying down 
 
 to the seashore, 
 Eager, with tearful eyes, to say farewell to the 
 
 Mayflower, 
 Homeward bound o'er the sea, and leaving them 
 
 here in the desert. 1 
 
 Foremost among them was Alden. All night he 
 
 had lain without slumber, 
 Turning and tossing about in the heat and unrest 
 
 of his fever. 
 He had beheld Miles Standish, who came back late 
 
 from the council, 
 Stalking into the room, and heard him mutter and 
 
 murmur, 
 Sometimes it seemed a prayer, and sometimes it 
 
 sounded like swearing. 
 Once he had come to the bed, and stood there a 
 
 moment in silence; 
 Then he had turned away, and said: "I will not 
 
 awake him: 
 
THE COURTSHIP OF MILES ST AN DISH 89 
 
 Let him sleep on, it is best; for what is the use of 
 
 more talking!" 
 Then he extinguished the light, and threw himself 
 
 down on his pallet, 
 Dressed as he was, and ready to start at the break 
 
 of the morning, — 
 Covered himself with the cloak he had worn in his 
 
 campaigns in Flanders, — 
 Slept as a soldier sleeps in his bivouac, ready for 
 
 action. 
 But with the dawn he arose; in the twilight Alden 
 
 beheld him 
 Put on his corselet of steel, and all the rest of his 
 
 armor, 
 Buckle about his waist his trusty blade of Da- 
 mascus, 
 Take from the corner his musket, and so stride out 
 
 of the chamber. 
 Often the heart of the youth had burned and yearned 
 
 to embrace him, 
 Often his lips had essayed to speak, imploring for 
 
 pardon ; 
 All the old friendship came back with its tender and 
 
 grateful emotions; 
 But his pride overmastered the nobler nature within 
 
 him, — 
 
90 HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW 
 
 Pride, and the sense of his wrong, and the burning 
 
 fire of the insult. 
 So he beheld his friend departing in anger, but 
 
 spake not, 
 Saw him go forth to danger, perhaps to death, and 
 
 he spake 1 not ! 
 Then he arose from his bed, and heard what the 
 
 people were saying, 
 Joined in the talk at the door, with Stephen and 
 
 Richard and Gilbert, 2 
 Joined in the morning prayer, and in the reading 
 
 of Scripture, 
 And, with the others, in haste went hurrying down 
 
 to the seashore, 
 Down to the Plymouth Rock, 3 that had been to 
 
 their feet as a doorstep 
 Into a world unknown, — the corner stone of a nation ! 
 
 There with his boat was the Master, 4 already a 
 
 little impatient 
 Lest he should lose the tide, or the wind might 
 
 shift to the eastward, 
 Square-built, hearty, and strong, with an odor of 
 
 ocean about him, 
 Speaking with this one and that, and cramming 
 
 letters and parcels 
 
THE COURTSHIP OF MILES ST AN DISH 91 
 
 Into his pockets capacious, and messages mingled 
 
 together 
 Into his narrow brain, till at last he was wholly 
 
 bewildered. 
 Nearer the boat stood Alden, with one foot placed 
 
 on the gunwale, 1 
 One still firm on the rock, and talking at times with 
 
 the sailors, 
 Seated erect on the thwarts, all ready and eager for 
 
 starting. 
 He too was eager to go, and thus put an end to his 
 
 anguish, 
 Thinking to fly from despair, that swifter than keel 
 
 is or canvas, 
 Thinking to drown in the sea the ghost that would 
 
 rise and pursue him. 
 But as he gazed on the crowd, he beheld the form 
 
 of Priscilla 
 Standing dejected among them, unconscious of all 
 
 that was passing. 
 Fixed were her eyes upon his, as if she divined his 
 
 intention, 
 Fixed with a look so sad, so reproachful, imploring, 
 
 and patient, 
 That with a sudden revulsion his heart recoiled 
 
 from its purpose, 
 
92 HENRY WAD&.SORTH LONGFELLOW 
 
 As from the verge of a crag, where one step more is 
 
 destruction. 
 Strange is the heart of man, with its quick, mys- 
 terious instincts! 
 Strange is the life of man, and fatal or fated are 
 
 moments, 
 Whereupon turn, as on hinges, the gates of the wall 
 
 adamantine ! 
 " Here I remain ! " x he exclaimed, as he looked at the 
 
 heavens above him, 
 Thanking the Lord whose breath had scattered the 
 
 mist and the madness, 
 Wherein, blind and lost, to death he was stagger- 
 ing headlong. 
 " Yonder snow-white cloud, that floats in the ether 
 
 above me, 
 Seems like a hand that is pointing and beckoning 
 
 over the ocean. 
 There is another hand, that is not so spectral and 
 
 ghost-like, 
 Holding me, drawing me back, and clasping mine 
 
 for protection. 
 Float, O hand of cloud, and vanish away in the 
 
 ether ! 
 Roll thyself up like a fist, to threaten and daunt 
 
 me; I heed not 
 
THE COURTSHIP OF MILES STANDISH 93 
 
 Either your warning or menace, or any omen of 
 
 evil! 
 There is no land so sacred, no air so pure and so 
 
 wholesome, 
 As is the air she breathes, and the soil that is pressed 
 
 by her footsteps. 
 Here for her sake will I stay, and like an invisible 
 
 presence 
 Hover around her forever, protecting, supporting 
 
 her weakness; 
 Yes! as my foot was the first that stepped on this 
 
 rock at the landing, 
 So, with the blessing of God, shall it be the last at 
 
 the leaving!" 
 
 Meanwhile the Master alert, but with dignified 
 air and important, 
 
 Scanning with watchful eye the tide and the wind 
 and the weather, 
 
 Walked about on the sands, and the people crowded 
 around him 
 
 Saying a few last words, and enforcing his careful 
 remembrance". 
 
 Then, taking each by the hand, as if he were grasp- 
 ing a tiller, 
 
 Into the boat he sprang, and in haste shoved off 
 to his vessel. 
 
94 HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW 
 
 Glad in his heart to get rid of all this worry and 
 
 flurry, 
 Glad to be gone from a land of sand and sickness 
 
 and sorrow, 
 Short allowance of victual, and plenty of nothing 
 
 but Gospel !■ 
 Lost in the sound of oars was the last farewell of 
 
 the Pilgrims. 
 O strong hearts and true! not one went back in the 
 
 Mayflower ! 
 No, not one looked back, who had set his hand * to 
 
 this plowing! 
 
 Soon were heard on board the shouts and songs 
 
 of the sailors 
 Heaving the windlass round, and hoisting the pon- 
 derous anchor. 
 Then the yards were braced, and all sails set to the 
 
 west wind, 
 Blowing steady and strong; and the Mayflower 
 
 sailed from the harbor, 
 Rounded the point of the Gurnet, 2 and leaving far 
 
 to the southward 
 Island and cape of sand, and the Field of the First 
 
 Encounter, 3 
 Took the wind on her quarter, and stood for the 
 
 open Atlantic, 
 
THE COURTSHIP OF MILES ST AN DISH 95 
 
 Borne on the send of the sea, and the swelling 
 hearts of the Pilgrims. 
 
 Long in silence they watched the receding sail 
 
 of the vessel, 
 Much endeared to them all, as something living 
 
 and human; 
 Then, ,as if filled with the spirit, and wrapt in a 
 
 vision prophetic, 
 Baring his hoary head, the excellent Elder of 
 
 Plymouth 
 Said, " Let us pray ! " and they prayed, and thanked 
 
 the Lord and took courage. 1 
 Mournfully sobbed the waves at the base of the 
 
 rock, and above them 
 Bowed and whispered the wheat on the hill of 
 
 death, and their kindred 
 Seemed to awake in their graves, and to join in the 
 
 prayer that they uttered. 
 Sun-illumined and white, on the eastern verge of 
 
 the ocean 
 Gleamed the departing sail, like a marble slab in a 
 
 graveyard; 
 Buried beneath it lay forever all hope of escaping. 
 Lo ! as they turned to depart, they saw the form of 
 
 an Indian, 
 
96 HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW 
 
 Watching them from the hill; but while they spake 
 with each other, 
 
 Pointing with outstretched hands, and saying, 
 " Look ! " he had vanished. 
 
 So they returned to their homes; but Alden lin- 
 gered a little, 
 
 Musing alone on the shore, and watching the wash 
 of the billows 
 
 Round the base of the rock, and the sparkle and 
 flash of the sunshine, 
 
 Like the spirit of God, 1 moving visibly over the 
 waters. 
 
 VI 
 
 PRISCILLA 
 
 Thus for a while he stood, and mused by the 
 
 shore of the ocean, 
 Thinking of many things, and most of all of Pris- 
 
 cilla; 
 And as if thought had the power to draw to itself, 
 
 like the loadstone, 
 Whatsoever it touches, by subtle laws of its 
 
 nature, 
 Lo! as he turned to depart, Priscilla was standing 
 
 beside him. 
 
98 HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW 
 
 "Ave you so much offended, you will not speak 
 
 to me?" said she. 
 " Am I so much to blame, that yesterday, when you 
 
 were pleading 
 Warmly the cause of another, my heart, impulsive 
 
 and wayward, 
 Pleaded your own, and spake out, forgetful perhaps 
 
 of decorum? 
 Certainly you can forgive me for speaking so frankly, 
 
 for saying 
 What I ought not to have said, yet now I can never 
 
 unsay it; 
 For there are moments in life, when the heart is so 
 
 full of emotion, 
 That if by chance it be shaken, or into its depths 
 
 like a pebble 
 Drops some careless word, it overflows, and its 
 
 secret, 
 Spilt on the ground like water, can never be gath- 
 ered together. 
 Yesterday I was shocked, when I heard you speak 
 
 of Miles Standish, 
 Praising his virtues, transforming his very defects 
 
 into virtues, 
 Praising his courage and strength, and even hie 
 
 fighting in Flanders. 
 
THE COURTSHIP OF MILES ST AN DISH 99 
 
 As if by fighting alone you could win the heart of a 
 
 woman, 
 Quite overlooking yourself and the rest, in exalting 
 
 your hero. 
 Therefore I spake as I did, by an irresistible impulse. 
 You will forgive me, I hope, for the sake of the 
 
 friendship between us, 
 Which is too true and too sacred to be so easily 
 
 broken!" 
 Thereupon answered John Alden, the scholar, the 
 
 friend of Miles Standish: 
 " I was not angry with you, with myself alone I was 
 
 angry, 
 Seeing how badly I managed the matter I had in 
 
 my keeping." 
 " No! ,n interrupted the maiden, with answer prompt 
 
 and decisive; 
 "No; you were angry with me, for speaking so 
 
 frankly and freely. 
 It was wrong, I acknowledge; for it is the fate of a 
 
 woman 
 Long to be patient and silent, to wait like a ghost 
 
 that is speechless, 
 Till some questioning voice dissolves the spell of its 
 
 silence. 
 Hence is the inner life of so many suffering women 
 
100 HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW 
 
 Sunless and silent and deep, like subterranean 
 
 rivers 
 Running through caverns of darkness, unheard, 
 
 unseen, and unfruitful, 
 Chafing their channels of stone, with endless and 
 
 profitless murmurs." 
 Thereupon answered John Alden, the young man, 
 
 the lover of women : 
 "Heaven forbid it, Priscilla; and truly they seem 
 
 to me always 
 More like the beautiful rivers * that watered the 
 
 garden of Eden, 
 More like the river Euphrates, through deserts of 
 
 Havilah flowing, 
 Filling the land with delight, and memories sweet 
 
 of the garden!" 
 " Ah, by these words, I can see," again interrupted 
 
 the maiden, 
 "How very little you prize me, or care for what I 
 
 am saying. 
 When from the depths of my heart, in pain and 
 
 with secret misgiving, 
 Frankly I speak to you, asking for sympathy only 
 
 and kindness, 
 Straightway you take up my words, that are plain 
 
 and direct and in earnest, 
 
THE COURT SHI? OF MILES STAN DISH 101 
 
 Turn them away from their meaning, and answer 
 with flattering phrases. 
 
 This is not right, is not just, is not true to the best 
 that is in you; 
 
 For I know and esteem you, and feel that your 
 nature is noble, 
 
 Lifting mine up to a higher, a more ethereal level. 
 
 Therefore I value your friendship, and feel it per- 
 haps the more keenly 
 
 If you say aught that implies I am only as one 
 among many, 
 
 If you make use of those common and compli- 
 mentary phrases 
 
 Most men think so fine, in dealing and speaking, 
 with women, 
 
 But which women reject as insipid, if not as in- 
 sulting." 
 
 Mute and amazed was Alden; and listened and 
 
 looked at Priscilla, 
 Thinking he never had seen her more fair, more 
 
 divine in her beauty. 
 He who but yesterday pleaded so glibly the cause 
 
 of another, 
 Stood there embarrassed and silent, and seeking in 
 
 vain for an answer. 
 
102 HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW 
 
 So the maiden went on, and little divined or imag- 
 ined 
 What was at work in his heart, that made him so 
 
 awkward and speechless. 
 " Let us, then, be what we are, and speak what we 
 
 think, and in all things 
 Keep ourselves loyal to truth, and the sacred pro- 
 fessions of friendship. 
 It is no secret I tell you, nor am I ashamed to 
 
 declare it: 
 I have liked to be with you, to see you, to speak 
 
 with you always. 
 So I was hurt at your words, and a little affronted 
 
 to hear you 
 Urge me to marry your friend, though he were the 
 
 Captain Miles Standish. 
 For I must tell you the truth: much more to me is 
 
 your friendship 
 Than all the love he could give, were he twice the 
 
 hero you think him." 
 Then she extended her hand, and Alden, who 
 
 eagerly grasped it, 
 Felt all the wounds in his heart, that were aching 
 
 and bleeding so sorely, 
 Healed by the touch of that hand, and he said, 
 
 with a voice full of feeling: 
 
THE COURTSHIP OF MILES STAN DISH 103 
 
 11 Yes, we must ever be friends; and of all who offer 
 
 you friendship 
 Let me be e'er the first, the truest, the nearest and 
 
 dearest ! " 
 
 Casting a farewell look at the glimmering sail of 
 the Mayflower 
 
 Distant, but still in sight, and sinking below the 
 horizon, 
 
 Homeward together they walked, with a strange, 
 indefinite feeling, 
 
 That all the rest had departed and left them alone 
 in the desert. 
 
 But, as they went through the fields in the blessing 
 and smile of the sunshine, 
 
 Lighter grew their hearts, and Priscilla said very 
 archly: 
 
 " Now that our terrible Captain has gone in pursuit 
 of the Indians, 
 
 Where he is happier far than he would be command- 
 ing a household, 
 
 You may speak boldly, and tell me of all that 
 happened between you, 
 
 When you returned last night, and said how un- 
 grateful you found me." 
 
 Thereupon answered John Alden, and told her the 
 whole of the story, — 
 
104 HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW 
 
 Told her his own despair, and the direful wrath 1 of 
 
 Miles Standish. 
 Whereat the maiden smiled, and said between 
 
 laughing and earnest, 
 " He is a little chimney, and heated hot in a mo- 
 ment!" 
 But as he gently rebuked her, and told her how 
 
 much he had suffered, — 
 How he had even determined to sail that day in the 
 
 Mayflower, 
 And remained for her sake, on hearing the dangers 
 
 that threatened, — 
 All her manner was changed, 2 and she said with a 
 
 faltering accent, 
 ^ Truly I thank you for this: how good you have 
 
 been to me always ! " 
 
 Thus, as a pilgrim devout, who toward Jerusalem 
 
 journeys, 
 Taking three steps in advance, and one reluctantly 
 
 backward, 
 Urged by importunate zeal, and withheld by pangs 
 
 of contrition; 
 Slowly but steadily onward, receding yet ever 
 
 advancing, 
 Journeyed this Puritan youth to the Holy Land s 
 
 of his longings, 
 
THE COURTSHIP OF MILES ST AN DISH 105 
 
 Urged by the fervor of love, and withheld by re- 
 morseful misgivings. 
 
 VII 
 
 THE MARCH OF MILES STANDISH 
 
 Meanwhile the stalwart Miles Standish was 
 
 marching steadily northward, 
 Winding through forest and swamp, and along the 
 
 trend of the seashore, 
 All day long, with hardly a halt, the fire of his 
 
 anger 
 Burning and crackling within, and the sulphurous 
 
 odor of powder 
 Seeming more sweet to his nostrils than all the 
 
 scents of the forest. 
 Silent and moody he went, and much he revolved 
 
 his discomfort; 
 He who was used to success, and to easy victories 
 
 always, 
 Thus to be flouted, rejected, and laughed to scorn 
 
 by a. maiden, 
 Thus to be mocked and betrayed by the friend 
 
 whom most he had trusted! 
 Ah! 'twas too much to be borne, and he fretted and 
 
 chafed in his armor! 
 
106 HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW 
 
 "I alone am to blame," he muttered, "for mine 
 
 was the folly. 
 What has a rough old soldier, grown grim and gray- 
 in the harness, 
 Used to the camp and its ways, to do with the 
 
 wooing of maidens? 
 'Twas but a dream, — let it pass, — let it vanish 
 
 like so many others! 
 What I thought was a flower, is only a weed, and is 
 
 worthless; 
 Out of my heart will I pluck it, and throw it away, 
 
 and henceforward 
 Be but a fighter of battles, a lover and wooer of 
 
 dangers ! " 
 Thus he revolved in his mind his sorry defeat and 
 
 discomfort, 
 While he was marching by day or lying at night in 
 
 the forest, 
 Looking up at the trees and the constellations 
 
 beyond them. 
 
 After a three days' march he came to an Indian 
 
 encampment 
 Pitched on the edge of a meadow, between the sea 
 
 and the forest; 
 Women at work by the tents, and the warriors, 
 
 horrid with warpaint, 
 
THE COURTSHIP OF MILES ST AN DISH 107 
 
 Seated about a fire, and smoking and talking 
 
 together; 
 Who, when they saw from afar the sudden approach 
 
 of the white men, 
 Saw the flash of the sun on breastplate and saber 
 
 and musket, 
 Straightway leaped to their feet, and two, from 
 
 among them advancing, 
 Came to parley with Standish, and offer him furs 
 
 as a present; 
 Friendship was * in their looks, but in their hearts 
 
 there was hatred. 
 Braves of the tribe were these, and brothers, gigan- 
 tic in stature, 
 Huge as Goliath of Gath, or the terrible Og, 2 king 
 
 of Bashan; 
 One was Pecksuot named, and the other was called 
 
 Wattawamat. 
 Round their necks were suspended their knives in 
 
 scabbards of wampum, 3 
 Two-edged, trenchant knives, with points as sharp 
 
 as a needle. 
 Other arms had they none, for they were cunning 
 
 and crafty. 
 "Welcome, English \" they said, — these words 
 
 they had learned from the traders 
 
108 HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW 
 
 Touching at times on the coast, to barter and 
 
 chaffer for peltries. 
 Then in their native tongue they began to parley 
 
 with Standish, 
 Through his guide and interpreter, Hobomok, friend 
 
 of the white man, 
 Begging for blankets and knives, but mostly for 
 
 muskets and powder, 
 Kept by the white man, they said, dbncealed, with 
 
 the plague, in his cellars, 
 Ready to be let loose, and destroy his brother the 
 
 red man! 
 But when Standish refused, and said he would give 
 
 them the Bible, 
 Suddenly changing their tone, they began to boast 
 
 and to blusteiv 
 Then Wattawamat ' advanced with a stride in 
 
 front of the other, 
 And, with a lofty demeanor, thus vauntingly spake 
 
 to the Captain: 
 " Now Wattawamat can see, by the fiery eyes of 
 
 the Captain, 
 Angry is he in his heart; but the heart of the brave 
 
 Wattawamat 
 Is not afraid at the sight. He was not born of a 
 
 woman, 
 
THE COURTSHIP OF MILES STANDISH 109 
 
 But on a mountain, at night, from an oak-tree riven 
 
 by lightning, 
 Forth he sprang at a bound, with all his weapons 
 
 about him, 
 Shouting, ' Who is there here to fight with the 
 
 brave Wattawamat?'" 
 Then he unsheathed his knife, and, whetting the 
 
 blade on his left hand, 
 Held it aloft and displayed a woman's face on the 
 
 handle, 
 Saying, with bitter expression and look of sinister 
 
 meaning : 
 "I have another at home, with the face of a man 
 
 on the handle; 
 By and by they shall marry; and there will be 
 
 plenty of children!" 
 
 Then stood Pecksuot forth, self-vaunting, in- 
 sulting Miles Standish; 
 
 While with his fingers he patted the knife that hung 
 at his bospm, 
 
 Drawing it half from its sheath, and plunging it 
 back, as he muttered, 
 
 "By and by it shall see; it shall eat; ah, ha! but 
 shall speak not! 
 
 This is the mighty Captain the white men have sent 
 to destroy us! 
 
110 HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW 
 
 He is a little man; let him go and work with the 
 women!" 
 
 Meanwhile Standish had noted the faces and 
 
 figures of Indians 
 Peeping and creeping about from bush to tree in 
 
 the forest, • 
 Feigning to look for game, with arrows set on their 
 
 bow-strings, 
 Drawing about him still closer and closer the net of 
 
 their ambush. 
 But undaunted he stood, and dissembled and treated 
 
 them smoothly; 
 So the old chronicles say, that were writ in the days 
 
 of the fathers. 
 But when he heard their defiance, the boast, the 
 
 taunt, and the insult, 
 All the hot blood of his race, of Sir Hugh and of 
 
 Thurston de Standish, 
 Boiled and beat in his heart, and swelled in the 
 
 veins of his temples. 
 Headlong he leaped on the boaster, 1 and, snatching 
 
 his knife from its scabbard, 
 Plunged it into his heart, and, reeling backward, 
 
 the savage 
 Fell with his face to the sky, and a fiendlike fierce- 
 ness npon it. 
 
THE COURTSHIP OF MILES STANDISH 111 
 
 Straight there arose from the forest the awful sound 
 
 of the war-whoop, 
 And, like a flurry of snow on the whistling wind of 
 
 December, 
 Swift and sudden and keen came a flight of feathery 
 
 arrows. 
 Then came a cloud of smoke, and out of the cloud 
 
 came the lightning, 
 Out of the lightning thunder; l and death unseen 
 
 ran before it. 
 Frightened, the savages fled for shelter in swamp 
 
 and in thicket, 
 Hotly pursued and beset; but their sachem, the 
 
 brave Wattawamat, 
 Fled not; he was dead. Unswerving and swift had 
 
 a bullet 
 Passed through his brain, and he fell with both 
 
 hands clutching the greensward, 
 Seeming in death to hold back from his foe the land 
 
 of his fathers. 
 
 There on the flowers of the meadow the warrior*. 
 
 lay, and above them 
 Silent, with folded arms, stood Hobomok, 2 friend of 
 
 the white man. 
 Smiling at length he exclaimed to the stalwart 
 
 Captain of Plymouth: 
 
112 HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW 
 
 "Pecksuot bragged very loud, of his courage, his 
 
 strength, and his stature, — 
 Mocked the great Captain, and called him a little 
 
 man; but I see now 
 Big enough have you been to lay him speechless 
 
 before you!" 
 
 Thus the first battle was fought and won by the 
 
 stalwart Miles Standish. 
 When the tidings thereof were brought to the 
 
 village of Plymouth, 
 And as a trophy of war the head of the brave Wat- 
 
 tawamat 
 Scowled from the roof of the fort, which at once was 
 
 a church and a fortress, 
 All who beheld it rejoiced, and praised the Lord, 
 
 and took courage. 
 Only Priscilla averted her face from this specter of 
 
 terror, 
 Thanking God in her heart that she had not married 
 
 Miles Standish; 
 Shrinking, fearing almost, lest, coming home from 
 
 his battles, 
 He should lay claim to her hand, as the prize and 
 
 reward of his valor. 
 
THE COURTSHIP OF MILES ST AN DISH 113 
 
 VIII 
 
 THE SPINNING WHEEL 
 
 Month after month passed away, and in autumn 
 
 the ships of the merchants 
 Came * with kindreds and friends, with cattle and 
 
 corn for the Pilgrims. 
 All in the village was peace; the men were intent on 
 
 their labors, 
 Busy with hewing and building, with garden plot 
 
 and with merestead, 
 Busy with breaking the glebe, and mowing the 
 
 grass in the meadows, 
 Searching the sea for its fish, and hunting the deer 
 
 in the forest. 
 All in the village was peace; but at times the rumor 
 
 of warfare 
 Filled the air with alarm, and the apprehension of 
 
 danger. 
 Bravely the stalwart Miles Standish was scouring 
 
 the land with his forces, 
 Waxing valiant in fight 2 and defeating the alien 
 
 armies, 
 Till his name had become a sound of fear to the 
 
 nations. 
 
114 HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW 
 
 Anger was still in his heart, bub at times the re- 
 morse and contrit'cii 
 
 Which in all noble natures succeed the passionate 
 outbreak, 
 
 Came like a rising tide, that encounters the rush of 
 a river, 
 
 Staying its current a while, but making it bitter 
 and brackish. 
 
 Meanwhile Alden at home had built him a new 
 .habitation, 
 Solid, substantial, of timber rough-hewn from the 
 
 firs of the forest. 
 Wooden-barred was the door, and the roof was 
 
 covered with rushes; 
 Latticed the windows were, and the window-panes 
 
 were of paper, 
 Oiled to admit the light, while wind and rain were 
 
 excluded. 
 There too he dug a well, and around it planted an 
 
 orchard : 
 Still may be seen to this day * some trace of the 
 
 well and the orchard. 
 Close to the house was the stall, where, safe and 
 
 secure from annoyance, 
 Raghorn, the snow-white bull, that had fallen to 
 
 Alden 's allotment 
 
THE COURTSHIP OF MILES ST AN DISH 115 
 
 In the division of cattle, might ruminate in the 
 night-time 
 
 Over the pastures he cropped, made fragrant by- 
 sweet pennyroyal. 
 
 Oft when his labor was finished, with eager feev 
 
 would the dreamer 
 Follow the pathway that ran through the woods to 
 
 the house of Priscilla ; 
 Led by illusions romantic and subtile deceptions of 
 
 fancy, 
 Pleasure disguised as duty, and love in the sem- 
 blance of friendship. 
 Ever of her he thought, when he fashioned the walls 
 
 of his dwelling; 
 Ever of her he thought, when he delved in the soil 
 
 of his garden; 
 Ever of her he thought, when he read in his Bible 
 
 on Sunday 
 Praise of the virtuous woman, as she is described in 
 
 the Proverbs, 1 — 
 How the heart of her husband doth safely trust in 
 
 her always, 
 How all the days of her life she will do him good, 
 
 and not evil, 
 How she seeketh the wool and the flax and worketh 
 
 with gladness, 
 
116 HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW 
 
 How she layeth her hand to the spindle and holdeth 
 
 the distaff, 
 How she is not afraid of the snow for herself or her 
 
 household, 
 Knowing her household are clothed with the scarlet 
 
 cloth of her weaving! 
 
 So as she sat at her wheel one afternoon in the 
 
 autumn, 
 Alden, who opposite sat, and was watching her 
 
 dexterous fingers, 
 As if the thread she was spinning were that of his 
 
 life and his fortune, 
 After a pause in their talk, thus spake to the sound 
 
 of the spindle: 
 "Truly, Priscilla," he said, "when I see you spin- 
 ning and spinning, 
 Never idle a moment, but thrifty and thoughtful of 
 
 others, 
 Suddenly you are transformed, are visibly changed 
 
 in a moment; 
 You are no longer Priscilla, but Bertha the Beauti- 
 
 fu\ Spinner." 
 Here the light foot on the treadle grew swifter and 
 
 swifter; the spindle 
 Uttered an angry snarl, and the thread snapped 
 
 short in her fingers; 
 
 
 
THE COURTSHIP OF MILES STANDISH 117 
 
 While the impetuous speaker, not heeding the mis- 
 chief, continued: 
 
 "You are the beautiful Bertha, the spinner, the 
 queen of Helvetia; 1 
 
 She whose story I read at a stall in the streets of 
 Southampton, 
 
 Who, as she rode on her palfrey, o'er valley and 
 meadow and mountain, 
 
 Ever was spinning her thread from a distaff fixed 
 to her saddle. 
 
 She was so thrifty and good, that her name passed 
 into a proverb. 
 
 So shall it be with your own, when the spinning 
 wheel shall no longer 
 
 Hum in the house of the farmer, and fill its cham- 
 bers with music. 
 
 Then shall the mothers, reproving, relate how it 
 was in their childhood, 
 
 Praising the good old times, and the days of Pris- 
 cilla the spinner!" 
 
 Straight uprose from her wheel the beautiful Puri- 
 tan maiden, 
 
 Pleased with the praise of her thrift from him whose 
 praise was the sweetest, 
 
 Drew from the reel on the table a snowy skein of 
 tier spinning, 
 
118 HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW 
 
 Thus making answer, meanwhile, to the flattering 
 
 phrases of Alden: 
 "Come, you must not be idle; if I am a pattern for 
 
 housewives, 
 Show yourself equally worthy of being the model of 
 
 husbandsc 
 Hold this skein on your hands, while I wind it, 
 
 ready for knitting; 
 Then who knows but hereafter, when fashions have 
 
 changed and the manners, 
 Fathers may talk to their sons of the good old 
 
 times of John Alden!" 
 Thus, with a jest and a laugh, the skein on his 
 
 hands she adjusted, 
 He sitting awkwardly there, with his arms extended 
 
 before him, 
 She standing graceful, erect, and winding the thread 
 
 from his fingers, 
 Sometimes chiding a little his clumsy manner of 
 
 holding, 
 Sometimes touching his hands, as she disentangled 
 
 expertly 
 Twist or knot in the yarn, unawares — for how 
 
 could she help it? — * 
 
 Sending electrical thrills through every nerve in 
 
 his body. 
 
THE COURTSHIP OF MILES ST AN DISH 119 
 
 Lo! in the midst of this scene, a breathless mes- 
 senger entered, 
 Bringing in hurry and heat the terrible news from 
 
 the village. 
 Yes; Miles Standish was dead! — an Indian had 
 
 brought them the tidings, — ■ 
 Slain by a poisoned arrow, shot down in the front 
 
 of the battle, 
 Into an ambush beguiled, cut off with the whole of 
 
 his forces; 
 All the town would be burned, and all the people be 
 
 murdered ! 
 Such were the tidings of evil that burst on the 
 
 hearts of the hearers. 
 Silent and statue-like stood Priscilla, her face look- 
 ing backward 
 Still at the face of the speaker, her arms uplifted 
 
 in horror; 
 But John Alden, upstarting, as if the barb of the 
 
 arrow 
 Piercing the heart of his friend had struck his own, 
 
 and had sundered 
 Once and forever the bonds that held him bound 
 
 as a captive, 
 Wild with excess of sensation, the awful delight of 
 
 his freedom, 
 
120 HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW 
 
 Mingled with pain and regret, unconscious of what 
 
 he was doing, 
 Clasped, almost with a groan, the motionless form 
 
 of Priscilla, 
 Pressing her close to his heart, as forever his own, 
 
 and exclaiming: 
 "Those whom the Lord hath united, let no man 
 
 put them asunder!" 1 
 
 Even as rivulets twain, from distant and sep- 
 arate sources, 
 Seeing each other afar, as they leap from the rocks, 
 
 and pursuing 
 Each one its devious path, but drawing nearer and 
 
 nearer, 
 Rush together at last, at their trysting-place in the 
 
 forest; 
 So these lives that had run thus far in separate 
 
 channels, 
 Coming in sight of each other, then swerving anc? 
 
 flowing asunder, 
 Parted by barriers strong, but drawing nearer and 
 
 nearer, 
 Rushed together at last, and one was lost in the 
 
 other. 
 
THE COURTSHIP OF MILES STANDISH 12J 
 IX 
 THE WEDDING-DAY 
 
 Forth from the curtain of clouds, from the tent 
 of purple and scarlet, 
 
 Issued the sun, 1 the great High-Priest, in his gar- 
 ments resplendent, 
 
 Holiness unto the Lord, in letters of light, on his 
 forehead, 
 
 Round the hem of his robe the golden bells and 
 pomegranates. 
 
 Blessing the world he came, and the bars of vapor 
 beneath him 
 
 Gleamed like a grate of brass, and the sea at his 
 feet was a laver! 
 
 This was the wedding morn of Priscilla the Puri- 
 tan maiden. 
 
 Friends were assembled together; the Elder and 
 Magistrate also 
 
 Graced the scene with their presence, and stood 
 like the Law and the Gospel, 
 
 One with the sanction of earth and one with the 
 blessing of heaven. 
 
 Simple and brief was the wedding, as that of Ruth 
 and of Boaz. 2 
 
122 HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW 
 
 Softly the youth and the maiden repeated the 
 
 words of betrothal, 
 Taking each other for husband and wife in the 
 
 Magistrate's presence, 
 After the Puritan way, and the laudable custom of 
 
 Holland. 1 
 Fervently then and devoutly, the excellent Elder 
 
 of Plymouth 
 Prayed for the hearth and the home, that were 
 
 founded that day in affection, 
 Speaking of life and of death, and imploring Divine 
 
 benedictions. 
 
 Lo ! when the service was ended, a form appeared 
 on the threshold, 
 
 Clad in armor of steel, a somber and sorrowful 
 figure ! 
 
 Why does the bridegroom start and stare at the 
 strange apparition? 
 
 Why does the bride turn pale, and hide her face on 
 his shoulder? 
 
 Is it a phantom of air, — a bodiless, spectral illusion? 
 
 Is it a ghost from the grave, that has come to for- 
 bid the betrothal? 
 
 Long had it stood there unseen, a guest uninvited, 
 unwelcomed; 
 
THE COURTSHIP OF MILES ST AN DISH 123 
 
 Over its clouded eyes there had passed at times an 
 
 expression 
 Softening the gloom and revealing the warm heart 
 
 hidden beneath them, 
 As when across the sky the driving rack l of the 
 
 rain cloud 
 Grows for a moment thin, and betrays the sun by 
 
 its brightness. 
 Once it had lifted its hand, and moved its lips, but 
 
 was silent, 
 As if an iron will had mastered the fleeting inten- 
 tion. , 
 But when were ended the troth and the prayer and 
 
 the last benediction, 
 Into the room it strode, and the people beheld with 
 
 amazement 
 Bodily there in his armor Miles Standish, the Cap- 
 tain of Plymouth! 
 Grasping the bridegroom's hand, he said with 
 
 emotion, "Forgive me! 
 I have been angry and hurt, — too long have I 
 
 cherished the feeling; 
 I have been cruel and hard, but now, thank God! 
 
 it is ended. 
 Mine is the same hot blood that leaped in the veins 
 
 of Hugh Standish, 
 
124 HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW 
 
 Sensitive, swift to resent, but as swift in atoning for 
 error. 
 
 Never so much as now was Miles Standish the 
 friend of John Alden." 
 
 Thereupon answered the bridegroom: "Let all be 
 forgotten between us, — 
 
 All save the dear old friendship, and that shall 
 grow older and dearer!" 
 
 Then the Captain advanced, and, bowing, saluted 
 Priscilla, 
 
 Gravely, and after the manner of old-fashioned 
 gentry in England, * 
 
 Something of camp and court, of town and of 
 country, commingled, 
 
 Wishing her joy of her wedding, and loudly lauding 
 her husband. 
 
 Then he said with a smile : " I should have remem- 
 bered the adage, — 
 
 If you would be well served, you must serve your- 
 self, and, moreover, 
 
 No man can gather cherries in Kent x at the season 
 of Christmas!" 
 
 Great was the people's amazement, and greater 
 yet their rejoicing, 
 Thus to behold once more the sunburnt face of 
 their Captain, 
 
THE COURTSHIP OF MILES STAN DISH 125 
 
 Whom they had mourned as dead; and they gath- 
 ered and crowded about him, 
 
 Eager to see him and hear him, forgetful of bride 
 and of bridegroom, 
 
 Questioning, answering, laughing, and each inter- 
 rupting the other, 
 
 Till the good Captain declared, being quite over- 
 powered and bewildered, 
 
 He had rather by far break into an Indian encamp- 
 ment, 
 
 Than come again to a wedding to which he had not 
 been invited. 
 
 Meanwhile the bridegroom went forth and stood 
 
 with the bride at the doorway, 
 Breathing the perfumed air of that warm and 
 
 beautiful morning. 
 Touched with autumnal tints, but lonely and sad 
 
 in the sunshine, 
 Lay extended before them the land of toil and 
 
 privation; 
 There were the graves of the dead, and the barren 
 
 waste of the seashore, 
 There the familiar fields, the groves of pine, and 
 
 the meadows; 
 But to their eyes transfigured, it seemed as the 
 
 Garden of Eden, 
 
126 HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW 
 
 Filled with the presence of God, whose voice was 
 the sound of the ocean. 
 
 Soon was their vision disturbed by the noise and 
 
 stir of departure, 
 Friends coming forth from the house, and impatient 
 
 of longer delaying, 
 Each with his plan for the day, and the work that 
 
 was left uncompleted. 
 Then from a stall near at hand, amid exclamations 
 
 of wonder, 
 Alden, the thoughtful, the careful, so happy, so 
 
 proud of Priscilla, 
 Brought out his snow-white bull, obeying the hand 
 
 of its master, 
 Led by a cord that was tied to an iron ring in its 
 
 nostrils, 
 Covered with crimson cloth, and a cushion placed 
 
 for a saddle. 
 She should not walk, he said, through the dust and 
 
 heat of the noonday; 
 Nay, she should ride like a queen, not plod along 
 
 like a peasant. 
 Somewhat alarmed at first, but reassured by the 
 
 others, 
 Placing her hand on the cushion, her foot in the 
 
 hand of her husband, 
 
THE COURTSHIP OF MILES STANDISH 127 
 
 Gayly, with joyous laugh, Priscilla mounted her 
 
 palfrey. 
 " Nothing is wanting now," he said with a smile, 
 
 "but the distaff; 
 Then you would be in truth my queen, my beautiful 
 
 Bertha!" 
 
 Onward the bridal procession now moved to their 
 
 new habitation, 
 Happy husband and wife, and friends conversing 
 
 together. 
 Pleasantly murmured the brook, as they crossed 
 
 the ford in the forest, 
 Pleased with the image ! that passed, like a dream 
 
 of love through its bosom, 
 Tremulous, floating in air, o'er the depths of the 
 
 azure abysses. 
 Down through the golden leaves the sun was poui 
 
 ing his splendors, 
 Gleaming on purple grapes, that, from branches 
 
 above them suspended, 
 Mingled their odorous breath with the balm of the 
 
 pine and the fir-tree, 
 Wild and sweet as the clusters that grew in the 
 
 valley of Eshcol. 2 
 Like a picture it seemed of the primitive, pastoral 
 
 ages, 
 
128 HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW 
 
 Fresh with the youth of the world, and recalling 
 
 Rebecca and Isaac/ 
 Old and yet ever new, 2 and simple and beautiful 
 
 always, 
 Love immortal and young in the endless succession 
 
 of lovers. 
 So through the Plymouth woods passed onward the 
 
 bridal procession. 
 
JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER 
 
JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER 
 
 SNOW-BOUND 
 
 A WINTER IDYH 
 
 To the Memory of the Household it Describes 
 
 THIS POEM IS DEDICATED BY THE AUTHOR 
 
 " As the Spirits of Darkness be stronger in the dark, so 
 good Spirits which be Angels of Light are augmented not 
 only by the Divine light of the Sun, but also by our common 
 Wood Fire : and as the Celestial Fire drives away dark spirits, 
 so also this our Fire of Wood doth the same. " — Cor. Agrippa, 
 Occult Philosophy, 2 Book I. ch. v. 
 
 " Announced by all the trumpets of the sky, 
 Arrives the snow; and, driving o'er the fields, 
 Seems nowhere to alight; the whited air 
 Hides hills and woods, the river and the heaven, 
 And veils the farm-house at the garden's end. 
 The sled and traveller stopped, the courier's feet 
 Delayed, all friends shut out, the housemates sit 
 Around the radiant fireplace, inclosed 
 In a tumultuous privacy of storm." 
 
 Emerson, The Snow-Storm. 
 
 The sun that brief December day 8 
 Rose cheerless over hills of gray, 
 And, darkly circled, gave at noon 
 A sadder light than waning moon. 
 Slow tracing down the thickening sky 
 129 
 
130 JOHN GREENLEAF WH1TTIER 
 
 Its mute and ominous prophecy, 
 
 A portent seeming less than threat, 
 
 It sank from sight before it set. 
 
 A chill no coat, however stout, 
 
 Of homespun stuff x could quite shut out, 
 
 A hard, dull bitterness of cold, 
 
 That checked, mid-vein, the circling race 
 
 Of life-blood in the sharpened face, 
 
 The coming 2 of the snow-storm told. 
 
 The wind blew east; we heard the roar 3 
 
 Of Ocean on his wintry shore, 
 
 And felt the strong pulse throbbing there 
 
 Beat with low rhythm our inland air. 
 
 Meanwhile we did our nightly chores, — 
 Brought in the wood from out of doors, 
 Littered the stalls, and from the mows 
 Raked down the herd's-grass for the cows: 
 Heard the horse whinnying for his corn; 
 And, sharply clashing horn on horn, 
 Impatient down the stanchion 4 rows 
 The cattle shake their walnut bows; 
 While, peering from his early perch 
 Upon the scaffold's pole of birch, 
 The cock his crested 5 helmet bent 
 And down his querulous fl challenge sent. 
 
SNOW-BOUND 131 
 
 Unwarmed by any sunset light 
 
 The gray day darkened into night, 
 
 A night made hoary with the swarm 
 
 And whirl-dance of the blinding storm, 
 
 As zigzag wavering to and fro 
 
 Crossed and recrossed the winged snow: 
 
 And ere the early bedtime came 
 
 The white drift piled the window-frame, 
 
 And through the glass the clothes-line posts 
 
 Looked in like tall and sheeted ghosts. 1 
 
 So all night long the storm roared on: 
 
 The morning broke without a sun; 
 
 In tiny spherule 2 traced with lines 
 
 0/ Nature's geometric signs, 
 
 In starry flake and pellicle 
 
 All day the hoary meteor fell; 
 
 And, when the second morning shone, 
 
 We looked upon a world unknown, 
 
 On nothing we could call our own. 
 
 Around the glistening wonder bent 
 
 The blue walls of the firmament, 
 
 No cloud above, no earth below, — = 
 
 A universe of sky and snow! 
 
 The old familiar sights of ours 
 
 Took marvelous shapes; strange domes and towers 
 
 Rose up where sty or corn-crib stood, 
 
132 JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER 
 
 Or garden-wall or belt of wood; 
 
 A smooth white mound 1 the brush-pile showed, 
 
 A fenceless drift what once was road; 
 
 The bridle-post an old man sat 
 
 With loose-flung coat and high cocked hat; 
 
 The well-curb had a Chinese roof; 
 
 And even the long sweep, high aloof, 
 
 In its slant splendor, seemed to tell 
 
 Of Pisa's leaning miracle. 2 
 
 A prompt, decisive man, no breath 
 Our father 3 wasted : " Boys, a path ! " 
 Well pleased (for when did farmer boy 
 Count such a summons less than joy?) 
 Our buskins 4 on our feet we drew; 
 
 With mittened hands, and caps drawn low, 
 To guard our necks and ears from snow, 
 We cut the solid whiteness through; 
 And, where the drift was deepest, made 
 A tunnel walled and overlaid 
 With dazzling crystal: we had read 
 Of rare Aladdin's wondrous cave, 5 
 And to our own his name we gave, 
 With many a wish the luck were ours 
 To test his lamp's supernal powers. 
 We reached the barn with merry din, 
 
SNOW-BOUND 133 
 
 And roused the prisoned brutes within. 
 The old horse thrust his long head out, 
 And grave with wonder gazed about; 
 The cock his lusty greeting said, 
 And forth his speckled harem led; 
 The oxen lashed their tails, and hooked, 
 And mild reproach of hunger looked; 
 The horned patriarch of the sheep, 
 Like Egypt's Amun 1 roused from sleep, 
 Shook his sage head with gesture mute, 
 And emphasized with stamp of foot. 
 
 All day the gusty north-wind bore 
 
 The loosened drift its breath before; 
 
 Low circling round its southern zone, 
 
 The sun through dazzling snow-mist shone. 
 
 No church-bell 2 lent its Christian tone 
 
 To the savage air, no social smoke 
 
 Curled over woods of snow-hung oak. 
 
 A solitude 3 made more intense 
 
 By dreary-voiced elements, 
 
 The shrieking of the mindless wind, 
 
 The moaning tree-boughs swaying blind, 
 
 And on the glass the unmeaning beat 
 
 Of ghostly finger-tips of sleet. 
 
 Beyond the circle of our hearth 
 
134 JOHN GREEN LEAF WHIT TIER 
 
 No welcome sound of toil or mirth 
 Unbound the spell, and testified 
 Of human life and thought outside. 
 We minded * that the sharpest ear 
 The buried brooklet 2 could not hear, 
 The music of. whose liquid lip 
 Had been to us companionship, 
 And, in our lonely life, had grown 
 To have an almost human tone. 
 
 As night drew on, and, from the crest 
 Of wooded knolls 3 that ridged the west, 
 The sun, a snow-blown traveler, sank 
 From sight beneath the smothering bank, 
 We piled with care our nightly stack 
 Of wood against the chimney-back, — 
 The oaken log, green, huge, and thick, 
 And on its top the stout back-stick; 
 The knotty forestick laid apart, 
 And filled between with curious art 
 The ragged brush; then, hovering near, 
 We watched the first red blaze appear, 
 Heard the sharp crackle, caught the gleam 
 On whitewashed wall and sagging beam, 
 Until the old, rude-furnished room 
 Burst, flower-like, into rosy bloom; 
 
SNOW-BOUND 135 
 
 While radiant with a mimic flame 
 Outside the sparkling drift became, 
 And through the bare-boughed lilac-tree 
 Our own warm hearth seemed blazing free. 
 The crane and pendent trammels 1 showed, 
 The Turk's heads on the andirons 2 glowed; 
 While childish fancy, prompt to tell 
 The meaning of the miracle, 
 Whispered the old rhyme: " Under the tree, 
 When fire outdoors burns merrily, 
 There the witches are making tea." 
 
 The moon above the eastern wood 
 Shone at its full; the hill-range stood 
 Transfigured in the silver flood, 
 Its blown snows flashing cold and keen, 
 Dead white, save where some sharp ravine 
 Took shadow, or the somber green 
 Of hemlocks turned to pitchy black 
 Against the whiteness of their back. 
 For such a world and such a night 
 Most fitting that unwarming light, 
 Which only seemed where'er it fell 
 To make the coldness visible. 
 
 Shut in from all the world without, 
 
136 JOHN GREEN LEAF WHITTIER 
 
 We sat the clean-winged hearth l about, 
 Content to let the north-wind roar 
 In baffled rage at pane and door, 
 While the red logs before us beat 
 The frost-line 2 back with tropic heat; 
 And ever, when a louder blast 
 Shook beam and rafter as it passed, 
 The merrier up its roaring draught 
 The great throat of the. chimney laughed; 
 The house-dog on his paws outspread 
 Laid to the fire his drowsy head, 
 The cat's dark silhouette 8 on the wall 
 A couchant tiger's seemed to fall; 
 And, for the winter fireside meet, 4 
 Between the andirons' straddling feet, 
 The mug of cider simmered slow, 
 The apples sputtered in a row, 
 And, close at hand, the basket stood 
 With nuts from brown October's 5 wood. 
 
 What matter how the night behaved? 
 What matter how the north-wind raved? 
 Blow high, blow low, not all its snow 
 Could quench our hearth-fire's ruddy glow. 
 O Time and Change ! — with hair as gray 
 As was my sire's that winter day, 
 
SNOW-BOUND 137 
 
 How strange it seems, with so much gone 
 
 Of life and love, to still live on ! 
 
 Ah, brother ! only I and thou 1 
 
 Are left of all that circle now, — 
 
 The dear home faces whereupon 
 
 That fitful firelight paled and shone. 
 
 Henceforward, listen as we will, 
 
 The voices of that hearth are still; 2 
 
 Look where we may, the wide earth o ? er, 
 
 Those lighted faces smile no more. 
 
 We tread the paths their feet have worn, 
 
 We sit beneath their orchard trees, 
 
 We hear, like them, the hum of bees 
 And rustle of the bladed corn; 
 We turn the pages that they read, 
 
 Their written words we linger o'er, 
 But in the sun they cast no shade, 
 No voice is heard, no sign is made, 
 
 No step is on the conscious floor! 
 Yet Love will dream and Faith will trust 
 (Since He who knows our need is just) 
 That somehow, somewhere, meet we must. 
 Alas for him who never sees 
 The stars shine through his cypress-trees ! 3 
 Who, hopeless, lays his dead away, 
 Nor looks to see the breaking day 
 
138 JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER 
 
 Across the mournful marbles 1 play ! 
 Who hath not learned, in hours of faith, 
 
 The truth to flesh and sense unknown, 
 That Life is ever lord of Death, 
 
 And Love can never lose its own! 
 
 We sped the time 2 with stories old, 
 Wrought puzzles out, and riddles told, 
 Or stammered from our school-book lore 
 " The chief of Gambia's 3 golden shore." 
 How often since, when all the land 
 Was clay in Slavery's shaping hand, 4 
 As if a trumpet called, I 've heard 
 Dame Mercy Warren's rousing word: 
 " Does not the voice of reason cry, 
 
 Claim the first right which Nature gave, 
 From the red scourge of bondage fly 
 
 Nor deign to live a burdened slave! " 
 Our father rode again his ride 
 On Memphremagog's 5 wooded side; 
 Sat down again to moose and samp * 
 In trapper's hut and Indian camp; 
 Lived o'er the old idyllic ease 
 Beneath St. Francois' 7 hemlock trees; 
 Again for him the moonlight shone 
 On Norman cap and bodiced zone; 8 
 
SNOW-BOUND 139 
 
 Again he heard the violin play 
 Which led the village dance away, 
 And mingled in its merry whirl 
 The grandam and the laughing girl, 
 Or, nearer home, our steps he led 
 Where Salisbury's level marshes * spread 
 
 Mile-wide as flies the laden bee; 
 Where merry mowers, hale and strong, 
 Swept, scythe on scythe, their swaths along 2 
 
 The low green prairies of the sea. 
 We shared the fishing off Boar's Head, 3 
 
 And round the rocky Isles of Shoals 
 
 The hake- broil on the driftwood coals; 
 The chowder on the sand-beach made, 
 Dipped by the hungry, steaming hot, 
 With spoons of clam-shell from the pot. 
 We heard the tales of witchcraft old, 
 And dream and sign and marvel told 
 To sleepy listeners as they lay 
 Stretched icily on the salted hay, 
 Adrift along the winding shores, 
 
 When favoring breezes deigned to blow 
 
 The square sail of the gundalow, 
 And idle lay the useless oars. 
 Our mother, while she turned her wheel 
 Or run the new-knit stocking heel, 
 
140 JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER 
 
 Told how the Indian hordes came down 
 At midnight on Cocheco town/ 
 And how her own great-uncle bore 
 His cruel scalp-mark to fourscore. 
 Recalling, in her fitting phrase, 
 So rich and picturesque and free 
 (The common unrhymed poetry 
 Of simple life and country ways), 
 The story of her early days, — 
 She made us welcome 2 to her home; 
 Old hearths grew wide to give us room; 
 We stole with her a frightened look 
 At the gray wizard's conjuring-book, 
 The fame whereof went far and wide 
 Through all the simple country-side; 
 We heard the hawks at twilight play, 
 The boat-horn on Piscataqua, 3 
 The loon's weird laughter far away; 
 We fished her little trout-brook, knew 
 What flowers in wood and meadow grew, 
 What sunny hillsides autumn-brown 
 She climbed to shake the ripe nuts down, 
 Saw where in sheltered cove and bay 
 The ducks' black squadron anchored lay, 
 And heard the wild geese calling loud 
 Beneath the gray November cloud. 
 
SNOW-BOUND 141 
 
 Then, haply, with a look more grave 
 
 And soberer tone, some tale she gave * 
 
 From painful Sewel's 2 ancient tome, 
 
 Beloved in every Quaker home, 
 
 Of faith fire-winged 3 by martyrdom, 
 
 Or Chalkley's Journal, old and quaint, 4 — • 
 
 Gentlest of skippers, rare sea-saint! — 
 
 Who, when the dreary calms prevailed, 
 
 And water-butt and bread-cask failed, 
 
 And cruel, hungry eyes pursued 
 
 His portly presence, mad for food, 
 
 With dark hints muttered under breath 
 
 Of casting lots for life or death, 
 
 Offered, 5 if Heaven withheld supplies, 
 
 To be himself the sacrifice. 
 
 Then, suddenly, as if to save 
 
 The good man from his living grave, 
 
 A ripple on the water grew, 
 
 A school of porpoise flashed in view. 
 
 "Take, eat," he said, "and be content; 
 
 These fishes in my stead are sent 
 
 By Him who gave the tangled ram 
 
 To spare the child of Abraham." 6 
 
 Our uncle, 7 innocent of books, 
 
 Was rich in lore of fields and brooks, 
 
142 JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER 
 
 The ancient teachers never dumb 
 Of Nature's unhoused lyceum. 1 
 In moons and tides and weather wise, 
 He read the clouds as prophecies, 
 And foul or fair could well divine, 
 By many an occult hint and sign, 
 Holding the cunning-warded keys 
 To all the woodcraft mysteries; 
 Himself to Nature's heart so near 
 That all her voices in his ear 
 Of beast or bird had meanings clear, 
 Like Apollonius 2 of old, 
 Who knew the tales the sparrows told, 
 Or Hermes, 3 who interpreted 
 What the sage cranes of Nilus said; 
 A simple, guileless, childlike man, 
 Content to live where life began; 
 Strong only on his native grounds, 
 The little world of sights and sounds 
 Whose girdle was the parish bounds, 
 Whereof his fondly partial pride 
 The common features magnified, 
 As Surrey hills to mountains grew 
 In White of Selborne's 4 loving view, 
 He told how teal and loon he shot, 
 And how the eagle's eggs he got, 
 
SNOW-BOUND 143 
 
 The feats on pond and river done, 
 
 The prodigies of rod and gun; 
 
 Till, warming with the tales he told, 
 
 Forgotten was the outside cold, 
 
 The bitter wind unheeded blew, 
 
 From ripening corn the pigeons flew, 
 
 The partridge drummed i' the wood, the mink 
 
 Went fishing down the river-brink. 
 
 In fields with bean or clover gay, 
 
 The woodchuck, like a hermit gray, 
 
 Peered from the doorway of his cell; 
 The muskrat plied the mason's trade, 
 And tier by tier his mud-walls laid; 
 And from the shagbark overhead 
 
 The grizzled squirrel dropped his shell. 
 
 Next, the dear aunt, 1 whose smile of cheer 
 And voice in dreams I see and hear, — 
 The sweetest woman ever Fate 
 Perverse denied a household mate, 
 Who, lonely, homeless, not the less 
 Found peace in love's unselfishness, 
 And welcome whereso'er she went, 
 A calm and gracious element, 
 Whose presence seemed the sweet income 
 And womanly atmosphere of home, — • 
 
144 JOHN GREEN LEAF WHITTIER 
 
 Called up her girlhood memories, 
 The huskings and the apple-bees, 
 The sleigh-rides and the summer sails, 
 Weaving through all the poor details 
 And homespun warp of circumstance 1 
 A golden woof-thread of romance. 
 For well she kept her genial mood 
 And simple faith of maidenhood; 
 Before her still a cloud-land lay, 
 The mirage loomed across her way; 
 The morning dew, that dried so soon 
 With others, glistened at her noon; 
 Through years of toil and soil and care, 
 From glossy tress to thin gray hair, 
 All unprofaned she held apart 
 The virgin fancies of the heart. 
 Be shame to him of woman born 
 Who had for such but 2 thought of scorn. 
 
 There, too, our elder sister plied 
 Her evening task the stand beside; 3 
 A full, rich nature, free to trust, 
 Truthful and almost sternly just, 
 Impulsive, earnest, prompt to act, 
 And make her generous thought a fact, 
 Keeping with many a light disguise 
 
SNOW-BOUND 145 
 
 The secret of self-sacrifice. 
 
 heart sore-tried! thou hast the best 
 That Heaven itself could give thee, — rest, 
 Rest from all bitter thoughts and things! 
 
 How many a poor one's blessing went 
 With thee beneath the low green tent 
 Whose curtain never * outward swings I 
 
 As one who held herself a part 
 Of all she saw, and let her heart 
 
 Against the household bosom lean, 
 Upon the motley-braided 2 mat 
 Our youngest and our dearest sat, 
 Lifting her large, sweet, asking eyes, 
 Now bathed within the fadeless green 
 And holy peace of Paradise. 
 Oh, looking from some heavenly hill, 
 
 Or from the shade of saintly palms, 
 
 Or silver reach of river calms, 
 Do those large eyes behold me still? 
 With me one little year ago : 3 — 
 The chill weight of the winter snow 
 
 For months upon her grave has lain; 
 And now, when summer south-winds blow 
 
 And brier and harebell bloom again, 
 
 1 tread the pleasant paths we trod, 
 
146 JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER 
 
 I see the violet-sprinkled sod, 
 Whereon she leaned, too frail and weak 
 The hillside flowers she loved to seek, 
 Yet following me where'er I went 
 With dark eyes full of love's content. 
 The birds are glad; the brier-rose fills 
 
 The air with sweetness; all the hills 
 Stretch green to June's unclouded sky; 
 But still I wait with ear and eye 
 For something gone which should be nigh, 
 A loss in all familiar things, 1 
 In flower that blooms, and bird that singsr 
 And yet, dear heart ! remembering thee, 
 
 Am I not richer than of old? 
 Safe in thy immortality, 
 
 What change can reach the wealth I hold? 
 
 What chance can mar the pearl and gold 
 Thy love hath left' in trust with me? 
 And while in life's late afternoon, 
 
 Where cool and long the shadows grow, 
 I walk to meet the night that soon 
 
 Shall shape and shadow overflow, 
 I cannot feel that thou art far, 
 Since near at need the angels are; 
 And when the sunset gates unbar, 
 
 Shall I not see thee waiting stand, 
 
SNOW-BOUND 147 
 
 And, "white against the evening star, 
 The welcome of thy beckoning hand? 
 
 Brisk wielder of the birch and rule, 
 
 The master of the district school 1 
 
 Held at the fire his favored place; 
 
 Its warm glow lit a laughing face 
 
 Fresh-hued and fair, where scarce appeared 
 
 The uncertain prophecy of beard. 
 
 He teased the mitten-blinded cat, 
 
 Played cross-pins on my uncle's hat, 
 
 Sang songs, and told us what befalls 
 
 In classic Dartmouth's college halls. 
 
 Born the wild Northern hills among, 
 
 From whence his yeoman father wrung 
 
 By patient toil subsistence scant, 
 
 Not competence and yet not want, 
 
 He early gained the power to pay 
 
 His cheerful, self-reliant way; 
 
 Could doff at ease his scholar's gown 
 
 To peddle wares from town to town; 
 
 Or through the long vacation's reach 
 
 In lonely lowland districts teach, 
 
 Where all the droll experience 2 found 
 
 At stranger hearths in boarding round, 
 
 The moonlit skater's keen delight, 
 
148 JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER 
 
 The sleigh-drive through the frosty night, 
 The rustic party, 1 with its rough 
 Accompaniment of blind-man's-buff, 
 And whirling plate, and forfeits paid, 
 His winter task a pastime made. 
 Happy the snow-locked homes wherein 
 He tuned his merry violin, 
 Or played the athlete in the barn, 
 Or held the good dame's winding yarn, 
 Or mirth-provoking versions told 
 Of classic legends rare and old, 
 Wherein the scenes of Greece and Rome 
 Had all the commonplace of home, 
 And little seemed at best the odds 
 'Twixt Yankee peddlers and old gods; 
 Where Pindus-born Arachthus 2 took 
 The guise of any grist-mill brook, 
 And dread Olympus 3 at his will 
 Became a huckleberry hill. 
 A careless boy that night he seemed; 
 
 But at his desk he had the look 
 And air of one who wisely schemed, 
 And hostage from the future took 
 In trained thought and lore of book. 
 Large-brained, clear-eyed, — of such as he 
 Shall Freedom's young apostles be 
 
SNOW-BOUND 149 
 
 Who, following in War's bloody trail, 
 
 Shall every lingering wrong assail; 
 
 All chains from limb and spirit strike, 
 
 Uplift the black and white alike; 
 
 Scatter before their swift advance 
 
 The darkness and the ignorance, 
 
 The pride, the lust, the squalid sloth, 
 
 Which nurtured Treason's monstrous growth, 
 
 Made murder pastime, and the hell 
 
 Of prison-torture possible; 
 
 The cruel lie of caste refute, 
 
 Old forms remold; and substitute 
 
 For Slavery's lash the freeman's will, 
 
 For blind routine, wise-handed skill; 
 
 A school-house plant 1 on every hill, 
 
 Stretching in radiate nerve-lines thence 
 
 The quick wires of intelligence; 
 
 Till North and South together brought 
 
 Shall own the same electric thought, 
 
 In peace a common flag salute, 
 
 And, side by side in labor's free 
 
 And unresentful rivalry, 
 
 Harvest the fields wherein they fought. 
 
 Another guest 2 that winter night 
 Flashed back from lustrous eyes the light. 
 
150 JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER 
 
 Unmarked by time, and yet not young, 
 
 The honeyed music of her tongue 
 
 And words of meekness scarcely told 
 
 A nature passionate and bold, 
 
 Strong, self-concentered, spurning guide, 
 
 Its milder features dwarfed beside 
 
 Her unbent will's majestic pride. 
 
 •She sat among us, at the best, 
 
 A not unf eared, half- welcome guest, 
 
 Rebuking with her cultured phrase 
 
 Our homeliness of words and ways. 
 
 A certain pard-like, treacherous grace 
 
 Swayed the lithe limbs and dropped the lash, 
 Lent the white teeth their dazzling flash; 
 And under low brows, black with night, 
 Rayed out at times a dangerous light; 
 
 The sharp heat-lightnings * of her face 
 
 Presaging ill to him whom Fate 
 
 Condemned to share her love or hate. 
 
 A woman tropical, intense 
 
 In thought and act, in soul and sense, 
 
 She blended in a like degree 
 
 The vixen and the devotee, 
 
 Revealing with each freak of feint 
 
 The temper of Petruchio's Kate, 2 
 
 The raptures of Siena's saint. 3 
 
SNOW-BOUND 15 1 
 
 Her tapering hand and rounded wrist 
 
 Had facile power to form a fist; 
 
 The warm, dark languish of her eyes 
 
 Were never safe from wrath's surprise. 
 
 Brows saintly calm and lips devout 
 
 Knew every change of scowl and pout; 
 
 And the sweet voice had notes more high 
 
 And shrill for social battle-cry. 
 
 Since then what old cathedral town 
 
 Has missed her pilgrim staff and gown, 
 
 What convent-gate has held its lock 
 
 Against the challenge of her knock! 
 
 Through Smyrna's plague-hushed thoroughfares* 
 
 Up sea-set Malta's rocky stairs, 
 
 Gray olive slopes of hills that hem 
 
 Thy tombs and shrines, Jerusalem, 
 
 Or startling on her desert throne 
 
 The crazy Queen of Lebanon l 
 
 With claims fantastic as her own, 
 
 Her tireless feet have held their way; 
 
 And still, unrestful, bowed, and gray, 
 
 She watches under Eastern skies, 
 
 With hope each day renewed and fresh, 
 The Lord's quick coming in the flesh, 
 
 Whereof she dreams and prophesies! 
 
 Where'er her troubled path may be, 
 
152 JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER 
 
 The Lord's sweet pity with her go! 
 The outward wayward life we see, 
 
 The hidden springs we may not know. 
 Nor is it given us to discern 
 
 What threads the fatal sisters spun, 
 
 Through what ancestral years has run 
 The sorrow with the woman born, 
 » What forged her cruel chain of moods, 
 What set her feet in solitudes, 
 
 And held the love within her mute, 
 What mingled madness in the blood, 
 
 A lifelong discord and annoy, 
 
 Water of tears with oil of joy, 
 And hid within the folded bud 
 
 Perversities of flower and fruit. 
 It is not ours to separate 
 The tangled skein of will and fate, 
 To show what metes and bounds should stand 
 Upon the soul's debatable land, 
 And between choice and Providence 
 Divide the circle of events; 
 
 But He who knows our frame is just, 1 
 Merciful and compassionate, 
 And full of sweet assurances 
 And hope for all the language is, 
 
 That He remembereth we are dust! 
 
SNOW-BOUND 153 
 
 At last ! the great logs, crumbling low, 
 
 Sent out a dull and duller glow, 
 
 The bull's-eye watch that hung in view, 
 
 Ticking its weary circuit through, 
 
 Pointed with mutely-warning sign 
 
 Its black hand to the hour of nine. 
 
 That sign the pleasant circle broke: 
 
 My uncle ceased his pipe to smoke, 
 
 Knocked from its bowl the refuse gray, 
 
 And laid it tenderly away, 
 
 Then roused himself to safely cover 
 
 The dull red brand with ashes over. 
 
 And while, with care, our mother laid 
 
 The work aside, her steps she stayed 
 
 One moment, seeking to express 
 
 Her grateful sense of happiness 
 
 For food and shelter, warmth and health, 
 
 And love's contentment more than wealth, 
 
 With simple wishes (not the weak, 
 
 Vain prayers which no fulfillment seek, 
 
 But such as warm the generous heart, 
 
 O'er-prompt to do with Heaven its part) 
 
 That none might lack, that bitter night, 
 
 For bread and clothing, warmth and light. 
 
 Within our beds awhile we heard 
 
 The wind that round the gables roared, 
 
154 JOHN GREEN LEAF WHITTIER 
 
 With now and then a ruder shock, 
 
 Which made our very bedsteads rock. 
 We heard the loosened clapboards tost, 
 The board-nails snapping in the frost; 
 And on us, through the unplastered wall, 
 Felt the light sifted snow-flakes fall; 
 But sleep stole on, as sleep will do 
 When hearts are light and life is new; 
 Faint and more faint the murmurs grew, 
 Till in the summer-land of dreams 
 They softened to the sound of streams, 
 Low stir of leaves, and dip of oars, 
 And lapsing waves on quiet shores. 
 
 Next morn we wakened with the shout 
 
 Of merry voices high and clear; 
 And saw the teamsters drawing near 
 To break the drifted highways out. 
 Down the long hillside treacling slow 
 We saw the half-buried oxen go, 
 Shaking the snow from heads uptost, 
 Their straining nostrils white with frost. 
 Before our door the straggling train 
 Drew up, an added team to gain. 
 The elders threshed their hands a-cold, 
 Passed, with the cider-mug, their jokes 
 
SNOW-BOUND 155 
 
 From lip to lip; the younger folks 
 Down the loose snow-banks, wrestling, rolled, 
 Then toiled again the cavalcade 
 
 O'er windy hill, through clogged ravine, 
 And woodland paths that wound between 
 Low drooping pine-boughs winter-weighed. 
 From every barn a team afoot, 
 At every house a new recruit, 
 Where, drawn by Nature's subtlest law, 
 Haply the watchful young men saw 
 Sweet doorway pictures of the curls 
 And curious eyes of merry girls, 
 Lifting their hands in mock defense 
 Against the snow-ball's compliments, 
 And reading in each missive tost * 
 The charm which Eden never lost. 
 
 We heard once more the sleigh-bells' sound; 
 
 And, following where the teamsters led, 
 
 The wise old Doctor went his round, 
 
 Just pausing at our door to say, 
 
 In the brief autocratic way 
 
 Of one who, prompt at Duty's call, 
 
 Was free to urge her claim on all, 
 
 That some poor neighbor sick abed 
 At night our mother's aid would need. 
 
156 JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER 
 
 For, one in generous thought and deed, 
 What mattered in the sufferer's sight 
 The Quaker matron's inward light, 1 
 
 The Doctor's mail of Calvin's creed? 2 
 
 All hearts confess the saints elect 
 Who, twain in faith, in love agree, 
 
 And melt not in an acid sect 3 
 The Christian pearl of charity! 
 
 So days went on : a week had passed 
 Since the great world was heard from last* 
 The Almanac we studied o'er, 
 Read and reread our little store 
 Of books and pamphlets, scarce a score; 4 
 One harmless novel, mostly hid 
 From younger eyes, a book forbid, 
 And poetry, (or good or bad, 
 A single book was all we had,) 
 Where Ellwood's meek, drab-skirted Muse 5 
 A stranger to the heathen Nine, 5 
 Sang, with a somewhat nasal whine, 
 The wars of David and the Jews. 
 At last the floundering carrier bore 
 The village paper 6 to our door. 
 Lo! broadening outward as we read, 
 To warmer zones the horizon spread; 
 
SNOW-BOUND 157 
 
 In panoramic length unrolled 
 We saw the marvel that it told. 
 Before us passed the painted Creeks, 
 
 And daft McGregor on his raids 
 
 In Costa Rica's everglades. 
 And up Taygetus winding slow 
 Rode Ypsilanti's Mainote Greeks, 
 A Turk's head at each saddle bow! 
 Welcome to us its week-old news, 
 Its corner for the rustic Muse, 
 
 Its monthly gauge of snow and rain, 
 Its record, mingling in a breath 
 The wedding bell and dirge of death; 
 Jest, anecdote, and love-lorn tale, 
 The latest culprit sent to jail; 
 Its hue and cry of stolen and lost, 
 Its vendue sales and goods at cost, 
 
 And traffic calling loud for gain. 
 We felt the stir of hall and street, 
 The pulse of life that round us beat; 
 The chill embargo of the snow 
 Was melted in the genial glow; 
 Wide swung again our ice-locked door, 
 And all the world was ours once more! 
 
 *31asp, Angel, of the backward look 
 
158 JOHN GREEN LEAF WHIT TIER 
 
 And folded wings of ashen gray 
 
 And voice of echoes far away, 
 The brazen covers of thy book; 
 The weird palimpsest old and vast, 
 Wherein thou hid'st the spectral past; 
 Where, closely mingling, pale and glow 
 The characters of joy and woe; 
 The monographs of outlived years, 
 Or smile-illumed or dim with tears, 
 
 Green hills of life that slope to death, 
 And haunts of home, whose vistaed trees 
 Shade off to mournful cypresses 
 
 With the white amaranths underneath. 
 Even while I look, I can but heed 
 
 The restless sands' incessant fall, 
 Importunate hours that hours succeed, 
 Each clamorous with its own sharp need, 
 
 And duty keeping pace with all. 
 Shut down and clasp the heavy lids; 
 I hear again the voice that bids 
 The dreamer leave his dream midway 
 For larger hopes and graver fears: 
 Life greatens in these later years, 
 The century's aloe flowers to-day! 
 
 Yet, haply in some lull of life, 
 
SNOW-BOUND 159 
 
 Some Truce of God 1 which breaks its strife, 
 The worldling's eyes shall gather dew, 
 
 Dreaming in throngful city ways 
 Of winter joys his boyhood knew; 
 And dear and early friends — the few 
 Who yet remain — shall pause to view 
 
 These Flemish pictures of old days; 
 Sit with me by the homestead hearth, 
 And stretch the hands of memory forth 
 
 To warm them at the wood- fire's blaze S 
 And thanks untraced 2 to lips unknown 
 Shall greet me like the odors blown 
 From unseen meadows newly mown, 
 Or lilies floating in some pond, 
 Wood-fringed, the wayside gaze beyond; 
 The traveler owns the grateful sense 
 Of sweetness near, he knows not whence^ 
 And, pausing, takes with forehead bare 
 The benediction of the air. 
 
NOTES 
 
 THE VISION OF SIR LAUNFAL 
 
 Verse Form. You know that there are patterns or designs 
 for rugs and wall papers and fancy work. So it is with poetry. 
 Some recent poetry has a design or pattern that is hard to 
 recognize, but poems such as most of Longfellow's and Whit- 
 tier's and Lowell's are made in designs that are easily to be 
 traced. Sometimes there are four accents or beats to a line 
 in a poetry pattern; sometimes five. Sometimes there are 
 mixtures in the same poem. In The Vision of Sir Launfal 
 there are more lines with four accents than any other kind, as 
 
 " The buttercup catches the sun in its chalice." 
 You could hardly read this line aloud without noticing that 
 you accented the " but " in buttercup, the " catch " in catches, 
 the word sun, and the " chal " in chalice — four accents. 
 Find ten other lines that go like this. 
 
 The rhyme — that is, the correspondence or agreement in 
 sound in the last syllables of lines — shows much variety in 
 Sir Launfal. Take the first eight lines. You see that organist 
 rhymes with list, away with lay, instrument with sent, theme 
 with dream. Lowell did not tie himself down to making 
 perfect rhymes. On page 30 wood and blood, which look as 
 though they might rhyme, really don't; nor is chalice on 
 page 31 a very good rhyme with palace two lines below; nor 
 poor with door on page 36. However, when Lowell sets out 
 to make a rhyme, he usually succeeds, and there is some 
 pleasure in noticing the effect of rhyme in poetry. It gives 
 a kind of flavor or finish that prose does not have. 
 
 Lowell's Note on the Setting of the Poem. " According 
 to the mythology of the Romancers, the San Greal, or Holy 
 161 
 
162 NOTES 
 
 Grail, was the cup out of which Jesus Christ partook of the 
 Last Supper with His disciples. It was brought into England 
 by Joseph of Arimathea, and remained there, an object of 
 pilgrimage and adoration, for many years in the keeping of 
 his lineal descendants. It was incumbent upon those who 
 had charge of it to be chaste in thought, word, and deed; but, 
 one of the keepers having broken this condition, the Holy 
 Grail disappeared. From that time it was a favorite enter- 
 prise of the Knights of Arthur's Court to go in search of it. 
 Sir Galahad was at last successful in finding it, as may be 
 read in the seventeenth book of the Romance of King Arthur. 
 Tennyson has made Sir Galahad the subject of one of the 
 most exquisite of his poems. 
 
 " The plot (if I may give that name to anything so slight) 
 of the following poem is my own, and, to serve its purposes, 
 I have enlarged the circle of competition in search of the 
 miraculous cup in such a manner as to include not only 
 other persons than the heroes of the Round Table, but also 
 a period of time subsequent to the date of King Arthur's 
 reign." 
 
 Ways of Enjoying the Poem. There are two different 
 ways of enjoying the poem. One is to read it through and 
 enjoy the vivid descriptions and the story without worrying 
 about things that are beyond your comprehension. There 
 is a good deal to be said in favor of this way of reading such 
 a beautiful poem — beautiful in language and in sentiment — ■ 
 as is The Vision of Sir Launfal. The other way, a more 
 common kind of enjoyment for boys and girls just in their 
 teens, is to skim the poem through and make a list of strange 
 words that are hiding the full meaning of the poem. These 
 are then looked up in a dictionary or in the editor's notes. 
 My own boy of ten prefers to ask questions like, " Father, 
 what does auroral mean? " — making me a dictionary. Your 
 family may be dictionaries for you. When you know the 
 words, you can read the poem to get all the images and ideas 
 there are in it. 
 
NOTES 
 
 163 
 
 Some boys and girls would rather read the poem of Sir 
 Launfal without taking the trouble to understand it thor- 
 oughly; but some will get much more pleasure from it by 
 knowing fully what it means. 
 
 As you read the poem, see if you know what the following 
 words and expressions in the Prelude to Part First mean : 
 
 atilt 
 
 doth 
 
 lavish 
 
 sap 
 
 auroral 
 
 dross 
 
 lay (noun) 
 
 shrives 
 
 barren 
 
 drowsy 
 
 list 
 
 Sinais 
 
 benedicite 
 
 druid 
 
 maize 
 
 sprouted 
 
 booth 
 
 dumb 
 
 mean 
 
 strives 
 
 bubbles 
 
 ebbed 
 
 might (noun) 
 
 tasking 
 
 cap and bells 
 
 fee 
 
 murmur 
 
 taxed 
 
 chalice 
 
 fervor 
 
 musing 
 
 theme 
 
 chanticleer 
 
 flush (noun) 
 
 nice 
 
 thrilling (verb) 
 
 clod 
 
 flushes 
 
 palace 
 
 towers (verb) 
 
 couriers 
 
 groping 
 
 plot 
 
 traitor 
 
 craters 
 
 heifer 
 
 prophecies 
 
 tries 
 
 cringe 
 
 high-tide 
 
 rare 
 
 utter 
 
 deluge 
 
 illumined 
 
 ripply 
 
 vista 
 
 29, 1. Musing organist. I have often heard a pianist play 
 a few uncertain chords before starting to play a well-known 
 musical composition. Once I heard the great organist Guil- 
 mant do just what Lowell pictures in the opening lines of 
 the poem. Guilmant's first wavering uncertain notes were 
 like the darkness which brilliantly turns into dawn, as the 
 theme of the improvisation developed itself. Before begin- 
 ning the story of the poem, Lowell tunes up, as it were, by 
 giving a picture of the outdoor world at its first flush of 
 spring-time joy. This makes a good introduction to the 
 picturing of the hero of the poem in the first flush of youthful 
 enthusiasm, the springtime of life. 
 
 2. Our infancy. Wordsworth in his poem "Intimations 
 of Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood " 
 speaks of heaven as lying about us in our infancy. 
 
164 NOTES 
 
 3. Sinais. Just as Moses got close to God on Mt. Sinai, 
 so we can get close to God, Lowell says, not only as children 
 but as grown people, if we will appreciate the beauty and 
 free gift of his wondrous outdoor natural world — the skies, 
 the winds, the woods, the sea, the June day. 
 
 4. Druid wood. The reference is to the Druids, priests 
 in early days in Britain. They worshiped among oak trees. 
 So the poet thinks of a great far-stretching tree as holding out 
 its boughs as if in the act of bestowing a blessing. 
 
 30, 1. A cap and bells. The sign of a court fool or jester. 
 We give our lives for foolish things, says the poet, whereas 
 without giving anything we can have God's gift of June. 
 
 31, 1. Meadows green. It is often a trick of poets to put 
 an adjective after a noun like this. One of Lowell's early 
 favorites, Milton, often does this in his shorter poems. 
 
 2. Nice. This is a perfect use of the word. 
 
 32, 1. Couriers. One of the pleasures in reading the poem 
 is to see the poet's art in bringing into his descriptions impres- 
 sions not of sight only but of smell and touch or hearing. 
 By impressions from these various senses we have the an- 
 nouncement made to us that spring is here. 
 
 33, 1. Craters. Another of the pleasures in reading the 
 poem is in observing the attractive and sometimes curious 
 comparisons. Anger and trouble, the poet says, make ugly 
 holes in our lives. Spring covers these up, just as snow may 
 cover up the crater of an old volcano. 
 
 2. Richest mail. The Metropolitan Museum in New 
 York has specimens of richly polished and ornamented armor 
 worn by knights hundreds of years ago. The polished metal 
 was often inlaid with patterns of gold and jewels. See also 
 gilded mail. 
 
 3. Rushes. In humility before beginning his search, the 
 knight lay down on the rushes, the covering of the floor of 
 his castle. 
 
 34, 1. North Countree. Perhaps in England. See Lowell's 
 note on the setting (p. 162). 
 
NOTES 165 
 
 2. Pavilions. The tall trees which tried to overcome the 
 cold bareness of the castle which they surrounded. They 
 are referred to also as tents. 
 
 3. Charger. A spirited horse, a war-horse. The poem 
 combines word pictures of older days of chivalry with senti- 
 ments about the equality of men that are peculiar to modern 
 times. 
 
 4. Maiden knight. A knight who had not yet done knightly 
 deeds — young, untried, unharmed. 
 
 5. Three hundred summers. A poetical way of telling 
 the age of the castle. 
 
 35, 1 . Locust leaf. Do the small delicate leaflets on a locust 
 tree seem always lightly quivering? Note the device for 
 poetic beauty in the line — all the Vs. 
 
 2. Made morn. In his bright armor, Sir Launfal in his 
 vision shone like the morning light in the midst of the dark- 
 ness of the gloomy castle. 
 
 3. 'Ware. Another of the pleasures in the reading of the 
 poem is the discovery of the numerous quaint, old-fashioned 
 words such as these: 'ware, 'neath, 'gan, ere, doth, sate, 
 lightsome, darksome, swound. Old ballads have many such 
 expressions. Leper: leprosy is a contagious disease which 
 used to be greatly feared. It is under control now and cases 
 are rare, although there are a few lepers in the United States 
 at present. 
 
 37, 1. Five thousand summers old. This is much more 
 interesting than very old or immemorially old, or some such 
 term. 
 
 2. All the cold. Just as a description of June set the tone 
 for the vision of the knight starting out, so the description 
 of December sets the tone for the knight's sorrowful return 
 in his vision after his apparently fruitless search for the Grail. 
 Lowell made his description of the brook from an actual 
 winter scene that deeply impressed him one night. 
 
 38, 1. Ice-fern leaf. The delicate tracery of the ice on 
 the brook looked like ferns. 
 
166 NOTES 
 
 2. Mortal builder's. An allusion to a great ice palace 
 built by a Russian empress. 
 
 3. Cheeks of Christmas. How could they grow red? 
 
 4. Corbel. How would Lowell know the architectural 
 words of the poem? 
 
 5. Flame-pennons droop. A person who likes to look at 
 an open fire in a fkeplace would do well to memorize these 
 14 lines beginning with " Within the hall." 
 
 40, 1. The cross. Knights in the Crusades wore the sign 
 of the cross. 
 
 41, 1. Rain-blanched bone. Classes always ask me what 
 this means. Have you ever seen a bone that has been long 
 lying out in the yard exposed to rain and all kinds of weather 
 — made white and marrowless? 
 
 43, 1. The Beautiful Gate. " The gate of the temple 
 which is called Beautiful " (Acts 3:2), where Peter healed the 
 lame man. 
 
 THE COURTSHIP OF MILES STANDISH 
 
 47, 1. In the Old Colony days: Beginning with a fairly 
 definite time reference, followed by a definite place reference 
 and the mention of a historical person, Longfellow suggests 
 at once the atmosphere of his poem, and puts the reader in 
 the frame of mind to follow the narrative of events in the 
 life of Captain Miles Standish of Plymouth Colony. The 
 poem, being narrative, is thus seen at the start to belong to 
 the general class called epic, to which belong such poems as 
 Longfellow's "Hiawatha" and "Evangeline " and Scott's 
 "Lady of the Lake". Compare note 37, 2. 
 
 2. Cordovan: In the Spanish town of Cordova the manu- 
 facture of goatskin leather was an important industry. 
 
 3. Miles Standish: The Plymouth captain is not neces- 
 sarily the hero, even though the poem takes his name for 
 its title. Yet, if by hero is meant the central male character 
 of a story, i. e., the character around whom the action of the 
 narrative centers, surely Standish is the hero of this poem, 
 
THE COURTSHIP OF MILES STANDISH 167 
 
 for his proxy courtship is the basis for the story and his 
 actions give structure to the poem. 
 
 As a matter of history, Captain Standish was thirty-six 
 years old when the Mayflower reached Plymouth, but the 
 poet, using history for the purpose of literary art, makes the 
 Puritan captain seem older than thirty-six. Near the site 
 of Standish's house at Duxbury, near Plymouth (in Massa- 
 chusetts), there has been erected a monument 110 feet high, 
 surmounted by a statue. 
 
 The historical basis for the poem can be easily under- 
 stood from the following extract from Anderson's Grammar 
 School History of the United States : 
 
 " The first permanent settlement of New England was by 
 a small band of Pilgrims, dissenters from the Church of Eng- 
 land, who had fled from their own country to find an asylum 
 from religious persecution. They were known in England as 
 Puritans. 
 
 " They at first went to Amsterdam, in Holland, whence 
 they removed to Leyden t At Leyden they lived eleven years 
 in great harmony, under the pastoral care of John Robinson; 
 but, from various causes, they became dissatisfied with their 
 residence, and desired to plant a colony in America, where 
 they might enjoy their civic and religious rights without 
 molestation. 
 
 " As many as could be accommodated embarked on board 
 a vessel called the Speedwell. The ship sailed to Southamp- 
 ton, England, where she was joined by another ship called 
 the Mayflower, with other Pilgrims from London. The two 
 vessels set sail, but had not gone far before the Speedwell 
 was found to need repairs, and they entered the port of Dart- 
 mouth, England. A second time they started, but again put 
 back — this time to Plymouth, where the Speedwell was 
 abandoned as unseaworthy. 
 
 " The Mayflower finally sailed alone, with about one hun- 
 dred passengers, the most distinguished of whom were John 
 Carver, William Brewster, Miles Standish, William Bradford, 
 
168 NOTES 
 
 and Edward Winslow. After a boisterous passage they 
 reached Cape Cod Bay; and there, in the cabin of the May- 
 flower, they signed a compact for their government, and 
 unanimously elected Carver Governor for one year. 
 
 " Several days were spent in searching for a favorable 
 locality At length, on the 21st of December, 1620, they 
 landed at a place which they called Plymouth, in memory 
 of the hospitalities which had been bestowed upon them at 
 the last English port from which they had sailed. The 
 winter was severe, and in less than five months nearly half 
 of that Pilgrim band died from the effects of exposure and 
 privations, Carver and his wife being among the number. 
 Bradford was thereupon elected Governor, and he continued 
 during thirty years to be a prominent man in the Colony." 
 
 48, 1. Sword of Damascus: Since the poem deals with 
 real and fictitious incidents of nearly three hundred years 
 ago, it is natural that there should be in the descriptions a 
 number of unfamiliar terms. Standish's weapons and armor 
 need explanation: the cutlass was a short, curved sword; the 
 corselet, a breastplate of armor; sword of Damascus, a sword 
 made of the fine steel for which the Syrian city of Damascus 
 was famous — such swords were often inscribed with a 
 sentence from the Koran; fowling-piece, a light gun for 
 shooting birds; musket, a war gun which was in colonial 
 times fired by means of a slow-match of twisted rope, but 
 which is now fired by a spring lock; matchlock, originally the 
 lock of a musket, but later the gun itself. Some of the other 
 peculiar words found in the poem will be defined, but many 
 will be left for the ingenuity and the patience of the student 
 to master in an unabridged dictionary like Webster's Inter- 
 national, the Century, the Standard, or, so far as completed, 
 the invaluable New English Dictionary, probably the best 
 dictionary ever made in any language. 
 
 2. Curved at the : There has been much adverse criticism 
 of Longfellow's meter, as being monotonous in its easy swing. 
 Yet it is really this easy motion that makes the poem so 
 
THE .COURTSHIP OF MILES ST AN DISH 169 
 
 fascinating as it is to persons just learning the pleasures of 
 poetry. The lines have six accents, the number of unac- 
 cented syllables varying. In general the feet, except for the 
 sixth, are dactylic; the sixth is trochaic. Yet the variations 
 from dactylic in the first five feet are sufficiently numerous 
 to prevent the poem from being monotonously regular. The 
 ninth line is an example of the normal meter — five dactylic 
 feet followed by one trochaic, six accents in all; but this is 
 the first entirely normal line in the poem, for in each of the 
 first eight lines there are some substitutions for dactylic 
 feet, usually trochaic feet. 
 
 3. John Alden : Twenty-one years old when the colony 
 was founded. 
 
 49, 1. Not Angles : The Angles were one of the Germanic 
 tribes that emigrated from the Continent to England; they 
 gave their name to England. English historians are fond of 
 telling the story to which Longfellow alludes. It is enter- 
 tainingly told in the following extract from Merrill's English 
 History : 
 
 " It was in the year 597 that the first missionaries to the 
 Saxons landed in Britain. They were sent by Pope Gregory 
 the Great. Before he became Pope his pity had been moved 
 by the sight of some Saxon children, sold for slaves in the 
 market-place of Rome. ' Who are these beautiful boys? ' 
 asked Gregory; ' and are they Christian children? ' ' No/ 
 said the slave-merchant; ' they are Angles, and come from a 
 heathen land.' Gregory was grieved and answered, ' If they 
 were Christians, they would be angels, not Angles' (NonAngli, 
 sed Angeli)." 
 
 2. scribe: Frequently Longfellow employs a curiously 
 involved word order which obscures the syntax of his sen- 
 tence. In cases of doubt about his meaning, put the sen- 
 tence into natural prose word order, and the difficulty will 
 vanish; as for instance, here: Suddenly breaking the silence, 
 Miles Standish, the Captain of Plymouth, interrupting the 
 diligent scribe, spoke in the pride of his heart. By this 
 
170 NOTES 
 
 change, it becomes apparent instantly that " scribe " is the 
 object of the participle " interrupting." It would be a pity- 
 to spend much time on the grammar of this poem except in 
 such cases as the above, where the solution of the grammatical 
 puzzle at once clears up the meaning. 
 
 3. Flanders: The Netherlands. Compare the adjective 
 Flemish, pages 49 and 159. 
 
 4. Arcabucero : Spanish word for archer, here meaning 
 musketeer. By scanning the line, you can readily determine 
 the pronunciation of the difficult word. 
 
 50, 1. "Truly the breath," etc.: Compare Psalms xxxiii, 
 6 and 20. 
 
 2. Serve yourself: By Standish's first few speeches the 
 poet conveys a distinct idea of the kind of man the captain 
 was. Vivid characterization is a leading merit of the poem. 
 The early introduction of the famous short, wise saying or 
 adage of Captain Standish produces a humorous effect when 
 the reader comes to what follows. This frolicsome humor 
 shown in the poem is another of its merits, for truly the 
 Pilgrim life was not all gloom. 
 
 3. Rest : A support for the gun when being fired. 
 
 51, 1. Laughed: Why did he laugh? 
 
 2. Preacher: The figure of speech by which the poet 
 speaks of a howitzer, or small cannon, as a preacher is called 
 metaphor. What other implied comparisons do you notice 
 in the poem? 
 
 3. Sagamore : What is the effect of the introduction of 
 the Indian words and names ? A sagamore was a leader of 
 one of the subdivisions of a tribe; a sachem, the chief of a 
 tribe; a pow-wow, a medicine-man or conjuror. Aspinet, Sa- 
 moset, etc., were real names mentioned in early chronicles ©f 
 Plymouth. 
 
 4. Forest: Syntax? 
 
 52, 1. Three: The condensation of poetry has already 
 been mentioned, 38, 3. How do you explain the construc- 
 tion of " three "? 
 
THE COURTSHIP OF MILES STANDISH 171 
 
 53, 1. Barriffe's Artillery Guide : Colonel William Barriffe, 
 a Puritan soldier, wrote a book entitled Militarie Discipline; 
 or, The Young Artillery Man. 
 
 2. Commentaries of Caesar: Not knowing Latin, the 
 captain read in a translation by an English scholar the com-' 
 mentaries written by Julius Caesar on his wars with the Gauls. 
 The account of the battle alluded to is in Section 10 of the 
 second book of Caesar's commentaries. 
 
 3. Thumb-marks thick: Alliteration. 
 
 54, 1. Homeward bound : The time when the chief events 
 of the poem happened is exactly fixed by this historical 
 reference. The Mayflower sailed homeward April 5, 1621. 
 
 55, 1. ' Better be first,' etc.: This is a fact of history, as 
 can be verified by referring to Plutarch's life of Caesar. 
 Iberian means Spanish. 
 
 56, 1. Nothing was heard, etc.: Is the repetition of this 
 line a blemish? 
 
 57, 1. Priscilla: Can you imagine to whom Alden was 
 writing the letters, and what he said in them about Priscilla? 
 Note the poet's method of introducing the name of the heroine 
 of the poem by intimating that Alden is in love with her. 
 
 58, 1. The Scriptures: See Genesis ii, 18. 
 
 2. Alone in the world: " Mr, Molines, and his wife, his 
 sone and his servant, dyed the first winter. Only his daugh- 
 ter Priscilla survived and married with John Alden, who are 
 both living and have 11 children." (Bradford's History of 
 Plymouth Plantation.) 
 
 59, 1. Taciturn: Reserved, silent. Used in its original 
 sense as derived from the Latin. 
 
 60, 1. Just as a timepiece: So many comparisons occur 
 in the poem that before the end the effect is tiresome. The 
 poet seems to strain after comparisons. What others do you 
 discover? 
 
 2. Maxim: Observe on pages 50 and 124 a word equiva- 
 lent to " maxim." 
 
 62, 1. So the strong will prevailed. Compare page 61. 
 
172 NOTES 
 
 2. Hanging gardens: An allusion to the hanging gardens 
 of Babylon, one of the seven wonders of the world. Does 
 Longfellow's nature description seem to have the real spirit 
 of the woods, or does it seem written from the library? 
 
 63, 1. Followed the flying feet: Is this a hint that Alden 
 loved Priscilla before the Pilgrims left England? 
 
 2. Astaroth . . . Baal: Ashtoreth was goddess of love, and 
 Baal the chief god in the Phoenician worship referred to in 
 Judges ii, 13, 1 Samuel xii, 10, and 1 Kings xi, 1-5. Note 
 Alden's Puritanical repression of his own natural emotions. 
 
 64, 1. Children: Metaphor. The poet speaks of the may- 
 flowers as children lost in the woods. 
 
 65, 1. Carded wool: In the process of spinning, the wool 
 was first picked clear of specks and burs. Then it was carded, 
 that is, combed out into straight lengths, the card being 
 something like the currycomb used in cleaning horses. After 
 being carded, the wool was pure white. 
 
 2. Old Puritan anthem : In the picture of colonial life the 
 poet has introduced here a most characteristic touch. The 
 Psalms, strong and rugged in words and music, were what 
 the Pilgrims liked in their meeting-houses and in their home 
 singing. That stirring exhortation to praise the Lord, viz., 
 the hundredth Psalm, with music going back to the time of 
 Luther, the German reformer, was a favorite song as trans- 
 lated by Henry Ainsworth. Persecuted in England, Ains- 
 worth in 1590 fled to Holland. Many of his commentaries 
 and translations were " Imprinted at Amsterdam." 
 
 66, 1. Life: Syntax? 
 
 2. Hand to the plow : Luke ix, 62. 
 
 3. Mercy endureth forever: Jeremiah xxxiii, 11. 
 
 72, 1. Hugh Standish: Compare page 123. A paragraph 
 from Young's Chronicles of the Pilgrims throws light on Long- 
 fellow's allusion to the ancestry of Miles Standish: " There 
 are at this time in England two ancient families of the name, 
 one of Standish Hall, and the other of Duxbury Park, both 
 in Lancashire, who trace their descent from a common 
 
THE COURTSHIP OF MILES STAN DISH 173 
 
 ancestor, Ralph de Standish, living in 1221. There seems 
 always to have been a military spirit in the family. Frois- 
 sart, relating in his Chronicles the memorable meeting between 
 Richard II and Wat Tyler, says that after the rebel was 
 struck from his horse by William Walworth, ' then a squyer 
 of the kynges alyted, called John Standysshe, and he drewe 
 out his sworde, and put into Wat Tyler's belye, and so he 
 dyed.' For this act Standish was knighted. In 1415 an- 
 other Sir John Standish fought at the battle of Agincourt. 
 From his giving the name of Duxbury to the town where he 
 settled, near Plymouth, and calling his eldest son Alexander 
 (a common name in the Standish family) I have no doubt 
 that Miles was a scion from this ancient and warlike stock." 
 2. Family arms : Longfellow's description of the Standish 
 family arms is difficult, for the words used in heraldry are 
 strange. The coat of arms consisted of crest, shield, and 
 motto. The crest was the ornament worn above the shield 
 on the helmet. In the Standish coat of arms the crest was 
 a cock argent, i.e., silver in color except for the comb, which 
 was the fleshly tuft growing on the cock's head, and the 
 wattle, which was the fleshly wrinkled excrescence growing 
 under the throat of the cock. Both comb and wattle were 
 gules, that is, red. The rest of the blazon, or coat of arms, 
 is not given. 
 
 73, 1. "Why don't you speak for yourself , John? " This 
 question has been so often quoted that it has become a part 
 of the language and is often used by persons who when they 
 employ it have no consciousness of its source in this poem. 
 
 74, 1. John Alden: The first character in this part is 
 John Alden. See the similar opening of Parts II, III, and 
 VI. Because of this putting of Alden to the front and letting 
 him win the hand of Priscilla, some critics call him the hero 
 of the poem. 
 
 2. Apocalyptical splendors: That is, glories described by 
 St. John in the Book of Revelation. See especially Revela- 
 tion xxi, 10, 11, and 15. 
 
 ; 
 
174 NOTES 
 
 75, 1. Dulse: A kind of sea-weed. Other words having 
 the flavor of old New England days are: " merestead " and 
 "glebe," page 113. 
 
 2. David's trangression : See 2 Samuel xi and xii. 
 
 77, 1. Walls of its waters: See the story of the escape of 
 the Israelites from Egyptian bondage, Exodus xiii and xiv, 
 especially the twenty-first and twenty-second verses of the 
 fourteenth chapter. 
 
 2. Her: Syntax? 
 
 78, 1. Seven houses: What other details do you notice 
 descriptive of Plymouth? Try to form as distinct a picture 
 as possible. 
 
 2. Hainault or Brabant : Counties of the Netherlands. 
 
 79, 1. Sped: That is, prospered, succeeded. 
 
 80, 1. Wat Tyler: See note 72, 1. Observe how Standish 
 in his anger contemptuously compares Alden with the traitor 
 Wat Tyler. 
 
 2. You, too, Brutus: For this allusion consult Shake- 
 speare's Julius Ccesar. What have you observed thus far 
 regarding the nature and range of Longfellow's allusions? 
 
 81, 1. Alden was left alone: The sentence length is here 
 skilfully varied. Be observant of such variations. 
 
 2. Father who seeth in secret: Matthew vi, 4. 
 
 82, 1. The hill: Metaphor. Elder Brewster is spoken 
 of as a snow-covered hill near to heaven. Brewster was 
 the ruling elder of the Plymouth church and preached 
 when John Robinson, the teaching elder or pastor, was ab- 
 sent. 
 
 2. The chronicles old : In this case the old chronicle con- 
 taining the sentence about the sifting of three kingdoms is 
 an election sermon of 1668 by Stoughton. 
 
 3. The skin : Actually the incident occurred in 1622, when 
 Canonicus, a chief of the Narragansett tribe, sent an Indian 
 named Tisquantum to Governor Bradford with a rattlesnake 
 skin filled with arrows. The latter returned it filled with 
 powder and bullets. 
 
THE COURTSHIP OF MILES ST AN DISH 175 
 
 83, 1. Voice of the Elder : John Robinson. The incident is 
 historical. 
 
 85, 1 . A stir and a sound : The first forty lines of Part V are 
 a general description of the actions of the Plymouth people 
 on the morning of the sailing of the Mayflower; the particular 
 courtship story is resumed on page 88. 
 
 2. Mighty men of King David : 2 Samuel xxiii, 8. 
 
 86, 1. Serried: Are you interested in Longfellow's vivid, 
 specific words? 
 
 87, 1. Beautiful were his feet: Adapted from the seventh 
 verse of Chapter lii of Isaiah. 
 
 88, 1. In the desert: Compare page 103. 
 
 90, 1. Spake: Archaic for spoke. What is the purpose in 
 the use of archaic words in the poem? 
 
 2. Stephen and Richard and Gilbert : Their last names were 
 Hopkins, Warren, and Winslow. 
 
 3. Plymouth Rock : Consult note on the fourth line of the 
 poem. At the present time in Plymouth a fragment of this 
 flat granite rock is enclosed by a railing and protected by a 
 canopy; the rock itself is covered by a wharf. 
 
 4. Master: Captain. 
 
 91, 1. Gunwale : Are you interested in this and in the 
 other technical nautical words — "thwarts" and "keel," 
 page 91; "windlass," "yards," and "braced," page 94? 
 
 92, 1. " Here I remain " : Do you call this the climax of 
 the poem? 
 
 94, 1. Set his hand: See note 66, 2. 
 
 2. The Gurnet: Gurnet's Nose is a headland at the en- 
 trance of Plymouth harbor. 
 
 3. Field of the First Encounter: The poet's appropriation 
 of phrases from old chronicles is well illustrated here. A 
 scouting party of Pilgrims landed from the Mayflower ahead 
 of the rest. In Bradford and Winslow's journal quoted h? 
 Young's Chronicles there is mention of an engagement be- 
 tween this scouting party and a band of Indians: " So aftei 
 we had given God thanks for our deliverance, we took om 
 
176 NOTES 
 
 shallop and went on our journey, and called this place The 
 First Encounter." 
 
 95, 1. Took courage: Acts xxviii, 15. 
 
 96, 1. Spirit of God: Genesis i, 2: " And the earth was 
 without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of 
 the deep. And the spirit of God moved upon the face of the 
 waters." How do you account for Longfellow's making so 
 many quotations from the Bible? 
 
 99, 1. "No!" In reading Part VI aloud, boys and girls 
 «eem hugely to enjoy making this "No" very emphatic. 
 
 100, 1. Like the beautiful rivers: Adapted from Genesis 
 ii, 10. 
 
 104, 1. Direful wrath: Compare Homer's Iliad, line 1: 
 
 Sing, O muse, the direful wrath of Achilles. 
 
 2. Manner was changed: In writing on the character of 
 Priscilla, include mention of her fascinating changes in 
 manner. 
 
 3. Holy Land : An allusion to the journeyings of the 
 Crusaders to the sepulchre of the Saviour. 
 
 107, 1. Friendship was, etc.: An interesting sentence, in 
 which emphasis is gained by the word order. 
 
 2. Goliath . . . Og: 1 Samuel xvii, 4, and Deuteronomy 
 Hi, 11. 
 
 3. Wampum: Beads made by North American Indians 
 from colored shells. 
 
 108, 1. Wattawamat: "Among the rest Wituwamat 
 bragged of the excellency of his knife. On the end of the 
 handle there was pictured a woman's face: ' but,' said he, 
 ' I have another at home wherewith I have killed both French 
 and English, and that hath a man's face on it, and by and 
 by these two must marry.' Further he said of that knife he 
 there had, Hinnaim namen, hinnaim michen, matta cuts; 
 that is to say, By and by it should see, and by and by it 
 should eat, but not speak. Also Pecksuot, being a man of 
 greater stature than the captain, told him, though he were a 
 
THE COURTSHIP OF MILES STAN DISH 177 
 
 great captain, yet he was but a little man; and, said he, 
 
 * though I be no sachem, yet I am a man of great strength 
 and courage.' " (Winslow's Relation of Standish's Expedi- 
 tion.) 
 
 110, 1. The boaster: That is, Pecksuot. 
 
 111, 1. Out of the lightning thunder: Light travels faster 
 than sound. 
 
 2. Hobomok: " Hobbamock stood by all this time as a 
 spectator, and meddled not, observing how our men de- 
 meaned themselves in this action. All being here ended, 
 smiling, he brake forth into these speeches to the Captain: 
 
 * Yesterday Pecksuot, bragging of his own strength and 
 stature, said, though you were a great captain, yet you were 
 but a little man; but to-day I see that you are big enough to 
 lay him on the ground.' " (Winslow's Relation.) The poet 
 has shortened the time; in the poem no day intervenes 
 between the insult and the blow. 
 
 113, 1. The ships . . . came: This is another definite 
 historical reference dating the time when the imaginary 
 incidents of the poem are supposed to have occurred and 
 helping to determine the amount of time elapsing in the 
 narrative. The ships, Anne and Little James, arrived at 
 Plymouth in August, 1623. 
 
 2. Waxing valiant in fight : Hebrews xi, 34. 
 
 114, 1. To this day: The descendants of John Alden still 
 own the land where his house stood in Duxbury, on the 
 Massachusetts coast, thirty-eight miles southeast of Boston. 
 On the old homestead site the Alden descendants gather from 
 many parts of the country each year for a family reunion. 
 
 115, 1. In the Proverbs: See the portion of the thirty- 
 first chapter of Proverbs descriptive of the virtuous woman. 
 
 117, 1. Bertha . . . Helvetia: Bertha, the housewifely 
 queen of a Burgundian king whose territory included Hel- 
 vetia (Switzerland), is represented on monuments as seated 
 on her throne in the act of spinning. 
 
 120, 1. Put them asunder: Adapted from the Biblical 
 
178 NOTES 
 
 sentence, " What therefore God hath joined together, let 
 not man put asunder," found in Matthew xix, 6, and Mark x, 9. 
 
 121, 1. The sun : Compare the description of the sun, page 
 87. See also the description of the high priest in the Bible 
 — Exodus xxviii, 34-36. 
 
 2. That of Ruth and of Boaz : Ruth iv, 11 and 12. 
 
 122, 1. Laudable custom of Holland: Longfellow quotes 
 the phrase from Bradford's History of Plymouth Plantation: 
 " May 12 was the first marriage in this place, which, accord- 
 ing to the laudable custome of the Low-Countries, in which 
 they had lived, was thought most requisite to be performed 
 by the magistrate, as being a civil thing, upon which many 
 questions aboute inheritances doe depende, with other things 
 most proper to their cognizans, and most consonante to the 
 scripturs, Ruth iv, and no wher found in the gospell to be 
 layed on the ministers as a part of their office." 
 
 123, 1. Rack: Vapor. 
 
 124, 1. Kent: A county in the southern part of England. 
 
 127, 1. Pleased with the image: What other instances 
 have you found where the poet has attributed the emotions 
 of men to inanimate objects? 
 
 2. Valley of Eshcol : Numbers xiii, 23. 
 
 128, 1. Rebecca and Isaac: Genesis xxiv, 64. 
 
 2. Old and yet ever new : The simple themes drawn from 
 the universal experiences of men are the ones that in litera- 
 ture are the most popular. That is one reason why Long- 
 fellow's "Courtship of Miles Standish" has been so widely 
 read. It is a true picture of colonial days in New England, 
 but more than this it is a narrative of human experiences 
 that seem true to nature no matter whether the Puritan life 
 is understood by the reader or not. 
 
SNOW-BOUND 179 
 
 SNOW-BOUND 
 
 129, 1. A Winter Idyl: In form, Whittier's poem, like 
 Poe's and unlike Longfellow's, is personal. It aims not to tell 
 a particular story, but to give a picture of the life of Whittier's 
 family during a winter storm. In presenting this specific 
 picture, the poet has been so true to family life that for two 
 generations men everywhere who have been familiar with 
 rustic scenes and people have exclaimed on the reality of 
 Whittier's description. Aiming to describe just what he 
 knew himself, his own household, he has succeeded in making 
 a description that seems universal. Yet he has chosen to 
 depict his characters in action rather than at rest. Since the 
 family was kept indoors by the snow, it seems natural that 
 the idyl should cover several days, as it does; the main action 
 covers three days with the two intervening nights, but the 
 whole time mentioned is a week. Over four hundred of the 
 seven hundred and fifty-nine lines of the poem are, however, 
 devoted to the characterization of the family gathered about 
 the " clean-winged hearth," one evening. It is an ideal 
 picturing of the life of an old-fashioned country home. This 
 poem, then, called by Whittier a winter idyl and often referred 
 to as a pastoral poem, may be considered lyric in character. 
 
 The versification is simple. Most of the lines are regular 
 iambic tetrameter, rhyming in couplets. Occasionally the 
 lines begin with a trochaic instead of with an iambic foot, 
 and there are infrequent substitutions for iambic feet in other 
 parts of a line, as on page 141, where the second foot of the 
 twelfth line is a spondee. Occasionally, too, three lines in 
 succession, as on page 133, rhyme; or there is a line which 
 jumps over a couplet to rhyme with the line that follows the 
 couplet, for instance, drew, low, snow, and through, on page 
 132. The student will discover for himself a few other 
 irregularities in the rhyme scheme. There has been adverse 
 criticism of the nature of the rhymes. The ears of critics are 
 offended by such harsh rhymes as on and sun, page 131; 
 
180 NOTES 
 
 breath and path, page 132; mute and foot, page 133. But in 
 both meter and rhyme the poem is for the most part simple 
 and pleasing. 
 
 2. Occult philosophy : What is the use of introducing the 
 poem by such a quotation as this? 
 
 3. That brief December day: From this time reference 
 are you misled into thinking that the poem will be a story? 
 
 130, 1. Homespun stuff: Compare page 139. The poet 
 explains in a brief autobiographical letter, written in 1882, 
 that his mother, in addition to her ordinary house duties, kept 
 busy spinning and weaving the linen and woolen cloth 
 needed in the family. 
 
 2. Coming: As in "The Raven" and "The Courtship," 
 when a sentence seems difficult to understand it is well to 
 try turning the words into an ordinary prose order; for 
 example, told the coming of the snow-storm. Try this with 
 any sentences that puzzle you at your first reading. After 
 thus re-phrasing the sentences, you will be ready to express 
 an opinion concerning the simplicity or the complexity, the 
 clearness or the obscurity, of Whittier's sentences. You will 
 know whether to call Whittier a smooth, cultured writer or 
 an unpolished, homespun poet. 
 
 3. Heard the roar: The Whittier home, a short walk 
 from Haverhill on the road to Salisbury, in the northeastern 
 corner of Massachusetts, was within sound of the sea. 
 
 4. Stanchion: The description of the barn is wonderfully 
 vivid. It strikes so many chords of memory that no matter 
 how many times the person who has seen such places reads 
 the description he thrills with enjoyment of the memories. 
 Are you familiar with all the words used in the description ? 
 
 5. Crested: Compare note 72, 2. 
 
 6. Querulous : Poets often assign to inanimate objects or 
 to the lower animals the emotions and thoughts of men. 
 Here Whittier has used subjective description in saying that 
 the cock sent a querulous challenge. Is the same true of 
 "lusty greeting," on page 133? 
 
SNOW-BOUND 181 
 
 131, 1. Like . . . ghosts: Likening the clothes-line posts 
 to ghosts, Whittier has used a simile, while Poe in line 8 of 
 " The Raven," likening the ember to a ghost, used a metaphor. 
 What difference do you notice between simile and metaphor? 
 Some of Whittier's figures of speech, like some of Longfellow's 
 notable sentences, have become a part of the popular language 
 and are used familiarly without consciousness of their origin. 
 
 2. Spherule: If you were describing a snow-storm, 
 would you use such words as "spherule," "geometric," 
 "pellicle," and "meteor"? Since Whittier had little school- 
 ing, are you not surprised that he knew such words? How 
 do you suppose he learned them, and what do they mean? 
 
 132, 1. Mound: Attribute complement of "showed." 
 What difference did the snow make in the appearance of 
 familiar objects near the house ? 
 
 2. Pisa's leaning miracle : Seven miles from the mouth 
 of the river Arno in Italy, is the city of Pisa, best known the 
 world over for its strange leaning tower built in 1350. The 
 tower, 179 feet high, is 24 feet off the perpendicular; the 
 cause of the leaning was perhaps an earthquake during the 
 building of the tower, but Prof. W. H. Goodyear of Brook- 
 lyn declares that it' was built originally as it now stands. 
 
 3. Our father: The brisk characterization of the father in 
 this poem and the appreciative characterizations of the other 
 members of the household show the absurdity of such sweep- 
 ing condemnation of Whittier as this by one critic: "His 
 characters, where he introduces such, are commonly abstrac- 
 tions with little of the flesh and blood of real life in them." 
 In "Snow-Bound," at least, Whittier has presented real 
 persons, not abstractions. 
 
 4. Buskins: Foot-coverings extending half-way to the 
 knee. Several hundred years before Whittier's time, the 
 word buskin was used to describe the high-heeled, thick- 
 soled shoes worn by tragic actors. 
 
 5. Aladdin's wondrous cave : Old and young, school-boys 
 and learned scholars, enjoy the tales of the Arabian nights. 
 
182 NOTES 
 
 The one referred to by Whittier tells about the wonderful 
 rfamp of Aladdin. 
 
 133, 1. Amun: Ammon, an Egyptian god often repre- 
 sented as a ram. 
 
 2. Church-bell: In his autobiographical letter, Whittier 
 says that the sound of the two church-bells of Haverhill 
 could be heard in the lonely homestead on Sundays. 
 
 3. Solitude: Syntax? 
 
 134, 1. Minded: Regarded with attention, noticed, 
 observed. 
 
 2. Buried brooklet: In his prose works Whittier often 
 refers to the little brook that ran near the farmhouse. Here 
 is one of his descriptions: " Our old homestead nestled under 
 a long range of hills which stretched off to the west. It was 
 surrounded by woods in all directions save to the southeast 
 where a break in the leafy wall revealed a vista of low green 
 meadows, picturesque with wooded islands and jutting capes 
 of upland. Through these a small brook, noisy enough as it 
 foamed, rippled, and laughed down its rocky falls by our 
 garden-side, wound, silently and scarcely visible, to a still 
 larger stream, known as the Country Brook. This brook in 
 its turn, after doing duty at two or three saw and grist mills, 
 the clack of which we could hear in still days across the inter- 
 vening woodlands, found its way to the great river [the Merri- 
 mac], and the river took up and bore it down to the great sea 
 [the Atlantic Ocean]." (From "The Fish I Didn't Catch.") 
 
 3. Wooded knolls : See note 134, 2. 
 
 135, 1. Crane . . . trammels: The "crane" was the 
 horizontal arm to which hooks called "trammels" were 
 attached for holding kettles or other vessels over the fire in 
 the open fireplace. 
 
 2. Andirons : Iron horizontal supports on which the 
 sticks or logs rested. "Andirons" were often wrought out 
 into fantastic shapes, such as heads of Turks. 
 
 136, 1. Clean-winged hearth: Though familiar to grand- 
 fathers of Yankee origin, such expressions as this are entirely 
 
SNOW-BOUND 183 
 
 outside the experience of young people of to-day and conse- 
 quently need explanation. In olden days the wing of a fowl, 
 usually a turkey wing, was placed beside the hearth for brush- 
 ing back the ashes and keeping the hearth clean. 
 
 2. Frost-line : Have you ever seen how the fire even in a 
 coal-stove will gradually dissipate the frost on a window- 
 pane? 
 
 3. Silhouette : In the description of the scene around the 
 hearth, what bookish words and what homely, colloquial 
 words does the poet use? The difficulties of Whittier's vo- 
 cabulary are caused by the use either of somewhat bookish 
 words or of homely words descriptive of a life fast fading 
 away. It is interesting to collect examples of both kinds of 
 Whittier's words. 
 
 4. Meet: Suitable. What does this adjective modify? 
 
 5. Brown October's: A phrase reminiscent of the old- 
 ballads of which Whittier was fond. 
 
 137, 1. Thou: W T hittier was a Quaker. See page 21. 
 
 2. Voices of that hearth are still: Compare note 146, 1. 
 This tone of memory, this expression of long-gathered emo- 
 tions, this personal element, makes the poem clearly lyric - 
 rather than epic. 
 
 3. Cypress- trees : Symbols of mourning. The lines might 
 be paraphrased thus: That person is to be pitied who in his 
 mourning cannot see hope beyond in heaven. 
 
 138, 1. Marbles: Marble monuments in a cemetery. 
 
 2. Sped the time: Pages 138-153 give the stories told' 
 around the fire. 
 
 3. " The chief of Gambia's," etc. This line is from a poem 
 by Mrs. Sarah Wentworth Morton, which appeared in Caleb- 
 Bingham's The American Preceptor, a popular school-book of 
 the time. 
 
 4. Slavery's shaping hand : Compare page 149. Regard- 
 ing Whittier's part in the anti-slavery movement, see page 22. 
 A few years after the publication of " Snow-Bound," the poet 
 edited the journal of John Woolman, a Quaker who before 
 
184 NOTES 
 
 the Revolutionary War wrote quaintly but eloquently against 
 slavery. The italicized lines which Whittier says were like a 
 trumpet call are from a poem by Mrs. Mercy Warren, wife of 
 a Revolutionary patriot of Massachusetts. 
 
 5. Memphremagog : This lake, the name of which means 
 " beautiful water," lies one-fifth in Vermont and four-fifths 
 in Canada. It is described by Baedeker as enclosed by rocky 
 shores and wooded hills. 
 
 6. Samp : Coarse hominy. A word like this helps to re- 
 produce the atmosphere of the curious stories of travel told 
 by the father. 
 
 7. St. Francois' : Lake St. Francis is an expansion of the 
 St. Lawrence River. At the bottom of page 138 and the top 
 of page 139 are given the father's memories of his Canadian 
 horseback journey, when he camped with trappers and Indians 
 and enjoyed the life in the French-Canadian villages. 
 
 8. Norman cap and bodiced zone : Descriptions of the 
 head-gear and dresses of the French-Canadian dancers. 
 
 139, 1. Salisbury's level marshes: The salt marshes of 
 Salisbury are over the New Hampshire line, but are, like the 
 Isles of Shoals where the father fished, near the Massachusetts 
 farm of the Whittiers. 
 
 2. Swept, scythe, etc.: An alliterative line. 
 
 3. Boar's Head: A bluff on the New Hampshire coast, 
 not far from the Whittier farm. The Isles of Shoals (see page 
 25) are nine rocky islands off Boar's Head, frequented as 
 summer resorts because of their pure sea-air and freedom 
 from mosquitoes. 
 
 140, 1. Cochecho town: The city of Dover, New Hamp- 
 shire, settled in 1623, lies on the Cocheco River. 
 
 2. She made us welcome: That is, she told the hearth' 
 side group nil about her early home. What lines give the 
 mother's contribution to the talk? What idea do you form 
 in your mind of the appearance and characteristics of the 
 mother? 
 
 3. Piscataqua: A New Hampshire river. 
 
SNOW-BOUND 185 
 
 141, 1. Some tale she gave: Compare the nature of the 
 tales told by the mother with those told by the father. 
 
 2. Sewel's ancient tome : William Sewel was a Dutch 
 Quaker whose History of the Quakers was translated into 
 English and several times reprinted. 
 
 3. Faith fire-winged: In the early days of the Quaker 
 faith in* England and the colonies, large numbers of its 
 adherents were burned to death or hanged. 
 
 4. Chalkley's Journal, old and quaint : Thomas Chalkley 
 was a Quaker preacher who was born in 1675. The greater 
 part of his life he spent in traveling about New England and 
 the southern colonies preaching. The quaint character of 
 his Journal, published kThis seventy-second year, is evident 
 in the following extract: "To stop their murmuring, I told 
 them they should not need to cast lots, which was usual in 
 such cases, which of us should die first, for I would freely 
 offer up my life to do them good. One said, ' God bless you! 
 I will not eat any of you.' Another said he would die before 
 he would eat any of me, and so said several. I can truly 
 say, on that occasion, at that time, my life was not dear to 
 me, and that I was serious and ingenuous in my proposition;, 
 and as I was leaning over the side of the vessel, thoughtfully 
 considering my proposal to the company, and looking in my 
 mind to Him that made me, a very large dolphin came up 
 towards the top or surface of the water and looked me in the 
 face; and I called the people to put a hook into the sea and 
 take him, for here is one come to redeem me (I said to them). 
 And they put a hook into the sea, and the fish readily took 
 it, and they caught him. He was longer than myself. I 
 think he was about six feet long, and the largest that ever I 
 saw. This plainly showed us that we ought not to distrust 
 the providence of the Almighty. The people were quieted 
 by this act of Providence, and murmured no more. We 
 caught enough to eat plentifully of till we got into the capes 
 of Delaware." 
 
 5. Offered: The subject is "Who," six lines above. 
 
186 NOTES 
 
 6. Child of Abraham : Consult Genesis xxii, 13. 
 
 7. Our uncle : How do the tales told by the uncle differ 
 from those told by the mother and father? 
 
 142, 1. Lyceum: Characteristic of the era in New Eng- 
 land was the lyceum, a building or an association for the 
 teaching of the people by public lectures. Many persons who 
 had scanty opportunities for schooling were able to acquire 
 a fair education by attendance at the lyceum and by reading. 
 Whittier himself thus gained much. In his later years he 
 became an enthusiastic patron of the Amesbury Lyceum; 
 there such men as Beecher and Phillips lectured at his invi- 
 tation. In recognition of his attainments he received, the 
 year of the publication of "Snow-Bound," the Harvard 
 honorary degree of Doctor of Laws, and three years later, in 
 1869, was made a trustee of Brown University. 
 
 2. Apollonius : Apollonius of Tyana was regarded as a 
 worker of miracles. He lived in the time of Christ. 
 
 3. Hermes: Compare Milton's lyric, "II Penseroso." 
 Hermes Trismegistus was an Egyptian philosopher who lived 
 in Alexandria early in the Christian era. He is said to have 
 invented the art of writing in hieroglyphics. 
 
 4. White of Selborne : Gilbert White, author of Natural 
 History and Antiquities of Selborne, m said by the poet to 
 have magnified the Surrey hills of southern England just as 
 the simple, guileless uncle magnified ^the common features 
 of his immediate neighborhood in northeastern Massachu- 
 setts. 
 
 143, 1. The dear aunt : The verb for this subject is found 
 in the first line of page 144. What was the character of the 
 aunt? How do you picture her personal appearance? Miss 
 Hussey had the reputation of making the best squash pies 
 that were ever baked. 
 
 144, 1. Warp of circumstance: In " Snow-Bound," 
 Whittier himself weaves through the warp of circumstantial 
 details of his home life something of the woof- thread of 
 poetical romance. The details do not seem merely petty 
 
SNOW-BOUND 187 
 
 and commonplace, but through the spirit of the writer be- 
 come invested with poetic sentiment and charm. In the 
 history of literature, Whittier belongs to the great world- 
 movement spoken of on page 27, his first model being a 
 leader in that movement, Robert Burns. Whittier's par- 
 ticular part in the movement, as exemplified in his "Snow- 
 Bound," is that of the accurate, sensible observer of rustic 
 life. In contrast to Longfellow, who is the cultured library- 
 poet, Whittier stands for specificness and accuracy of homely 
 observation. Whittier's minuteness of detail is admirably 
 suggested by his ow-n phrase on page 159 when he speaks of 
 his poem as containing " Flemish pictures of old days." The 
 Flemish artists were distinguished by their attention to 
 minute detail. In the particular phase of literature known 
 as American, Whittier is one of the chief writers of the group 
 of New England poets who, about the time of the publication 
 of his first poem, entered upon a long period of literary 
 supremacy in America. 
 
 2. But: Part of speech? 
 
 3. Beside : What other examples do you notice of prepo- 
 sitions following their objects? 
 
 145, 1. Never outward swings: It is a beautiful, pathetic 
 figure of speech by w T hich the poet thus refers to the death 
 of his elder sister. 
 
 2. Motley-braided : Braided in many colors, like the old- 
 fashioned rag carpets still to be seen in some country dis- 
 tricts. Note that Whittier uses few hyphenated adjectives, in 
 contrast to Tennyson, for instance, in his Idylls of the King. 
 
 3. One little year ago : Whittier's younger sister died in 
 1864, the year before he wrote the poem. 
 
 146, 1. A loss in all familiar things: In his biography of 
 Whittier, George R. Carpenter refers to the memory mood 
 in which the poem was written: " It was an old man, tender- 
 hearted, who thus drew the portraits of the circle of which 
 he and his brother alone survived. The mood was one of 
 wistful and reverential piety — the thoughtful farmer's 
 
188 NOTES 
 
 mood, in many a land, under many a religion, recalling the 
 ancient scenes more clearly as his memory for recent things 
 grows less secure, living with fond regret the departed days, 
 yearning for friends long vanished. Our changed national 
 life, the passing away of the old agricultural conditions, the 
 breaking up of ancient traditions, has made this wistful and 
 reverential mood a constant element in our recent literature. 
 In poems and novels we have delighted to reconstruct the 
 past, as the Arab-singers before Mohammed began their 
 lays with the contemplation of a deserted camping-ground. 
 It was Whittier that introduced the new theme, best described 
 in the closing lines of his own poem." 
 
 147, 1. Master of the district school: Compare Gold- 
 smith's village schoolmaster in " The Deserted Village." It 
 is said that William Haskell, the schoolmaster of Whittier's 
 poem, never knew that he had been described in the poem. 
 
 2. Experience : One of the subjects of the verb " made," 
 on page 148. 
 
 148, 1. Rustic party: Are the three games mentioned still 
 played at parties? 
 
 2. Pindus-born Arachthus : The Arachthus is one of five 
 rivers which rise in Pindus, the great mountain-chain of 
 Greece. 
 
 3. Olympus : The Grecian mountain on the top of which 
 the gods were said to dwell. Like Charles Lamb, also lack- 
 ing college education, Whittier ,. ; is even fonder of classical 
 allusions than the college trained Longfellow. 
 
 149, 1. Plant: This is one of the verbs in the series 
 beginning "shall . . . assail," whose subject is "Who." 
 
 2. Another guest : Harriet, daughter of Judge Livermore, 
 of New Hampshire, a woman of great abilities and peculiari- 
 ties. She was once an independent missionary to the western 
 Indians, whom she believed to be the descendants of the lost 
 tribes of Israel. At another time she went about proclaiming 
 the second coming of Christ (see page 151). Her travels are 
 not exaggerated by the poet. 
 
SNOW-BOUND 189 
 
 150, 1. Heat-lightnings: A bold metaphor. 
 
 2. Petruchio's Kate: In The Taming of the Shrew by- 
 Shakespeare. 
 
 3. Siena's saint : St. Catherine. 
 
 151, 1. Crazy Queen of Lebanon : Lady Hester Stanhope, 
 daughter of the third Earl Stanhope. She was the most 
 trusted confidante of her uncle, William Pitt; on his death 
 she received a royal pension of £1200 a year. Becoming 
 disgusted with society life, she retired for a while into Wales, 
 and in 1810 left England to wander about until her death in 
 1829 among the half savage people of Mount Lebanon. 
 Harriet Livermore lived with her for a time until the two 
 quarreled " in regard to two white horses with red marks on 
 their backs which suggested the idea of saddles," on which 
 Lady Stanhope expected to ride into Jerusalem with the Lord. 
 
 152, 1. But He, etc. : The meaning is as follows: But He 
 who understands our physical limitations is just, merciful, 
 and compassionate; and the words, He remembers we are 
 dust, are full of sweet assurances and hope for all of us. 
 
 153, 1. At last: Note the transition phrase. Having 
 gathered the family around the hearth and given us their 
 stories and pictures, the poet breaks up his family circle with 
 the dying of the fire, that evening. 
 
 156, 1. Quaker matron's inward light: The Quakers be- 
 lieved that within themselves there burned a light from God 
 which should guide each one independently in his daily acts. 
 
 2. Calvin's creed: Born in 1509, John Calvin spent most 
 of his life in Geneva, Switzerland, preaching certain specific 
 religious doctrines which came to be called Calvinism: 1. 
 Particular Election; 2. Particular Redemption; 3. Moral 
 inability in a fallen state; 4. Irresistible grace; 5. Final 
 perseverance. The Puritans were rigid Calvinists, stern 
 and austere in their beliefs, but stirred by an intensely ideal, 
 imaginative faith. 
 
 3. Acid sect : See page 24 for light on Whittier's breadth 
 of sympathy. 
 
190 NOTES 
 
 4. Scarce a score : Probably no American poet had fewef 
 books in boyhood than Whittier. At home he had access to 
 a few miscellaneous volumes, mostly sermons, tracts, biog- 
 raphies, or journals of famous Quakers. He and his sister 
 read at night by candles one of the Waverley novels. The 
 book of poetry referred to four lines below was an epic poem, 
 Davideis, by the Quaker poet, Thomas Elwood, a friend of 
 John Milton's. In his autobiographical letter Whittier says 
 that as a boy he was a close student of the Bible. 
 
 5. The heathen Nine : The nine muses. 
 
 6. Village paper: Whittier's description of the general 
 contents of the village paper of his boyhood needs explana- 
 tion with regard to several points. The "painted Creeks" 
 referred to on page 157 were the Creek Indians at that time 
 being removed from Georgia and driven beyond the Missis- 
 sippi. "Daft McGregor" was Sir Gregor McGregor who was 
 attempting to found a colony in Costa Rica. " Taygetus " 
 was a mountain of Greece. " Ypsilanti's Mainote Greeks" 
 were inhabitants of the mountainous district of Maina, in 
 the Greek province of Laconia. The Mainotes, pronounced 
 mi-nots, were a wild, brave people who, under the leadership 
 of Ypsilanti, were prominent in the long war for freedom 
 from the Turks. " Vendue sales," page 157, were sales at 
 auction, still common in the central part of New York state 
 under the name " vandoo." The point of the whole descrip- 
 tion is in the fifth from the last line on page 157, where the 
 word " embargo " means restraint, and where it is suggested 
 that the village newspaper broke the bounds of the snow and 
 let the thoughts of the household move out across the world. 
 
 The interest that Whittier had in the local paper after he 
 was nineteen was often greatly increased by his seeing his 
 poems in print. It is said that the first newspaper containing 
 a poem of his was thrown to him in the field where he was 
 working with his uncle. 
 
 159, 1. Truce of God: An allusion to a formal cessation 
 of baronial petty warfare in the middle ages. The church 
 
SNOW-BOUND 191 
 
 forbade any baron to attack another between sunset on 
 Wednesday and sunrise on the following Monday. The 
 point of the allusion is that the poet hopes that the worldly 
 man's eyes in some reminiscent moment when he has broken 
 loose from the struggle of life shall grow wet with tears as 
 he thinks of his boyhood winter joys. 
 
 2. Thanks untraced : The last twenty lines of " Snow- 
 Bound " beautifully convey the poet's idea of the mission and 
 the reception of his poem. 
 
EXAMINATION QUESTIONS 
 
 I. THE VISION OF SIR LAUNFAL 
 
 1. What is a vision? What is a knight? 
 
 2. What did the knight, Sir Launfal, see in his vision? 
 
 3. What does the poem contain in addition to the vision 
 itself? 
 
 4. What customs of the days of chivalry are referred 
 to in the poem? Where else have you read about the doings 
 of knights? 
 
 5. What was the Holy Grail? How did Sir Launfal 
 in his vision find the Grail? 
 
 6. Suppose your class is going to have an entertainment 
 at Christmas. Suppose each pupil is going to write or 
 print a Christmas card. Write a stanza to be used on the 
 card that you contribute. Probably a sentiment suggested 
 by Lowell's poem might make a good basis for your verse- 
 making; for instance, the spirit of giving, good cheer to 
 rich and poor, thankful hearts, humility, nature's gifts, the 
 Christmas fireside. 
 
 7. What lines from Lowell's poem would be appropriate 
 for use on a Christmas card? 
 
 8. Suppose that a bronze tablet in honor of James Rus- 
 sell Lowell is to be erected in a Hall of Fame. What in- 
 scription would be good for such a tablet? What might a 
 speaker say at the time when the tablet is unveiled? 
 
 9. Discuss: June and December — a contrast and a com- 
 parison. 
 
 10. What does your family do when a tramp comes to 
 the door asking for food? 
 
 11. In what respects would it be impossible to carry out 
 
 193 
 
194 EX AM I NAT I OX QUESTIOXS 
 
 the idea of democracy given in the last four lines of The 
 Vision of Sir LaunfcU? 
 
 II. THE COURTSHIP OF MILES STANDISH 
 
 1. In a common history of the United States or in an 
 encyclopedia, read the account of Massachusetts colonial 
 life, and compare it with Longfellow's poem, in contents 
 and form. 
 
 2. Condense the entire poem into a single narrative 
 paragraph of about one hundred and fifty words, using 
 as topic sentence a statement of the theme of the poem. 
 
 3. As an exercise in the evaluation of words, add to 
 your paragraph or subtract from it so as to make it pre- 
 cisely one hundred and fifty words long. 
 
 4. From what you have read of Longfellow's fife and 
 works, do you think he might have made a successful 
 novel out of the material contained in this poem, if he 
 had tried? Give reasons for your answer. 
 
 5. The courtship in some novel that you have read 
 contrasted with that related in the poem. 
 
 6. A courtship as disclosed in a package of old letters 
 or in a dozen souvenir postal cards. 
 
 7. (a.) Character studies in the poem. 
 
 (6.) Do Miles Standish, John Alden, and Priscilla seem 
 like real persons? 
 
 8. Describe the house in which Standish lived. Sup- 
 plement by your imagination the details of the poem. 
 
 9. Describe the Captain. 
 
 10. After reading Part I aloud, would you prefer to 
 read the rest of the story in poetry or in prose? Reasons. 
 
 11. The picture that is in your mind of the scene 
 between Alden and Priscilla in Part III. 
 
 12. Could you keep your face straight while you were 
 reading of the proposal? Why or why not? 
 
 13. Do the girls like this part of the poem best? 
 
EXAMINATION QUESTIONS 195 
 
 14. Do the boys prefer Part IV to Part III? 
 
 15. Are you more interested in the descriptions or 
 in the exciting passages? Why? 
 
 16. Do you enjoy reading aloud any part of the poem? 
 
 17. Describe Alden's new habitation. 
 
 18. Would you omit any of the lines of the poem? 
 If so, which? 
 
 19. Describe the wedding procession. 
 
 20. Write nine sentences each containing in your 
 own words the substance of one of the parts of the 
 poem. 
 
 .21. Imaginary account of the courtship of Miles 
 Standish and Rose. 
 
 22. Indian stories that you know. 
 
 23. Narratives of several battles. 
 
 24. Accounts of pioneer life. 
 
 25. A wedding. 
 
 26. What makes Longfellow's poem more interesting 
 than Poe's? 
 
 27. The place of "The Courtship of Miles Standish" 
 in the history of literature. 
 
 III. SNOW-BOUND 
 
 1. Early nineteenth century farm life of New England. 
 
 2. What do your grandparents say about the truth- 
 fulness of the picture given in Whittier's winter idyl? 
 
 3. The meaning of idyl. 
 
 4. Even though you have never lived on a farm, can 
 you appreciate and enjoy Whittier's poem? 
 
 5. If you have lived on a farm, are you prepared to 
 say that the poem seems true to life? 
 
 6. The family described in "Snow-Bound." 
 
 7. Nine pictures of real persons. 
 
 8. Description of the storm, of the barn, of the house, 
 and of the scenes outside the house. 
 
196 EXAMINATION QUESTIONS 
 
 9. Description of a snow-storm that has kept 
 from school. 
 
 10. Experiences sliding down straw-stacks, le», 
 from beams in the barn into the haymow, trying to : j. : 
 cows or do other farm chores. 
 
 11. Description of a fine new hip-roofed barn. 
 
 12. A lonely farmhouse in winter. 
 
 13. Summer scenes on a farm that you have visaed. 
 
 14. Winter and summer in the city. 
 
 15. Explain how to build a furnace fire, or how to ut 
 kindling, or how to keep from being run over. 
 
 16. The relative advantages of city and country ii . 
 
 17. Chores of a city boy. 
 
 18. Life in a city apartment or flat contrasted with a 
 boyhood life of Whittier. 
 
 19. State in a few words the theme of "Snow-Bonn. ." 
 and then in one paragraph write a well-proportionec 1 b a i- 
 mary of the entire poem. 
 
 20. Whittier 's life as a reformer and poet. 
 
 21. Whom do you admire the most, — Poe, Longfe'! 
 or Whittier? Why? 
 
 22. On comparing Whittier's "Snow-Bound ' ui ■ 
 Emerson's "Snow-Storm," what difference do you c ?serv 
 in the metrical form and in the contents? 
 
 23. Using your imagination to fill out the detail- /' 
 as vividly as you can, with gestures if they will help ' 
 full picture that is in your mind of the persons gath'^e I 
 around the hearth in the evening. Do not tell any of « he 
 conversation, simply describe the scene at some mome.t. 
 
 24. The fireside conversation. 
 
 25. Name six American and six English political ard 
 literary contemporaries of Whittier. 
 
 26. The characteristics of the literary era to which 
 Whittier belonged. (See page 27.) 
 
 27. Do you like " Snow-Bound " better than either " The 
 Raven "or "The Courtship of Miles StandishJJ? Reasons. 
 
 C 32 89 •■** 
 
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