United States or Gambia ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
It will be long before our larger life interprets itself in such imagination as Hawthorne's, such wisdom as Emerson's, such poetry as Longfellow's, such prophecy as Whittier's, such wit and grace as Holmes's, such humor and humanity as Lowell's. The literature of those great men was, if I may suffer myself the figure, the Socinian graft of a Calvinist stock.
The background to Longfellow's "Sandalphon" is so fine an arras that it gives the poet a splendor not usual to his bourgeois lays. The music runs through so many phases of emotion, and approves itself so original and exaltedly vivid in each that I put it well to the fore of American compositions.
But perhaps I liked the loft best because the books were handiest there, and because I could be alone. At any rate, it was there that I read Longfellow's "Spanish Student," which I found in an old paper copy of his poems in one of the barrels, and I instantly conceived for it the passion which all things Spanish inspired in me.
The dinner, I repeat, was a very good dinner indeed the Huxleys, I took it, must be well to do the company agreeable; a bit pragmatic, however, I thought. The gentleman by the name of Spencer said he loved music and wished to hear Mrs. Watterson sing, especially Longfellow's Rainy Day, and left the others of us Huxley, Mill, Tyndall and myself at table.
As we stood beneath the arched roof of the cupola, beside the pure white tombs of glistening marble, a verse from Longfellow's "Psalm of Life" was repeated in a low tone of voice. Instantly there rolled through the dimly-lighted vault above a soft and solemn repetition, which sounded as though voices were repeating the psalm in the skies, with such music and pathos as to dim our eyes with tears.
All my bright hopes were obscured, my ardent longings quenched by fashionable matter-of-fact; and, Min herself had gone from me, without one single parting word! I was born to be unlucky, I think; everything went wrong with me now. Like the lonely, hopeless hero in Longfellow's translation of Min's favourite Coplas de Manrique, I might well exclaim in my misery
Advancing thus through the gamut of human experience he might have closed the scene with the immortal line loved of all poets: "In sua voluntade e nostra pace." Thus indeed, reviewing Longfellow's life as a whole, we discern his days to be crowded with incident and experience.
Longfellow's poetic service to his countrymen has thus become a national asset, and not merely because in his three best known narrative poems, "Evangeline," "Hiawatha," and "The Courtship of Miles Standish," he selected his themes from our own history. "The Building of the Ship," written with full faith in the troubled year of 1849, is a national anthem.
Maggie, watching her, knew that Paul had spoken to her. Afterwards in the study the atmosphere was electric. Grace read The Church Times, Paul the Standard, Maggie Longfellow's Golden Legend, which she thought foolish. Grace looked up. "So I understand, Maggie, that you don't want me to come with you and Paul this summer?"
He has a fancy for making a volume, or getting some one else to do it, of his favorite ghost stories, 'The Flying Dutchman, 'Peter Rugg, and a few others." On another occasion the record says: "Passed the evening at Longfellow's. As we lifted the latch and entered the hall door, we saw him reading an old book by his study lamp.
Word Of The Day