Far upward in the mellow light
Rose the blue hills. One cloud of white,
Around a far uplifted cone,

In the warm blush of evening shone ;
An image of the silver lakes,
By which the Indian's soul awakes.

But soon a funeral hymn was heard
Where the soft breath of evening stirred
The tall, gray forest; and a band
Of stern in heart, and strong in hand,
Came winding down beside the wave,
To lay the red chief in his grave.

They sang, that by his native bowers
He stood, in the last moon of flowers,
And thirty snows had not yet shed
Their glory on the warrior's head;
But, as the summer fruit decays,
So died he in those naked days.

A dark cloak of the roebuck's skin
Covered the warrior, and within
Its heavy folds the weapons, made
For the hard toils of war, were laid;
The cuirass, woven of plaited reeds,
And the broad belt of shells and beads.

Before, a dark-haired virgin train
Chanted the death dirge of the slain;
Behind, the long procession came
Of hoary men and chiefs of fame,
With heavy hearts, and eyes of grief,
Leading the war-horse of their chief.

Stripped of his proud and martial dress,
Uncurbed, unreined, and riderless,
With darting eye, and nostril spread,
And heavy and impatient tread,

He came; and oft that eye so proud Asked for his rider in the crowd.

They buried the dark chief; they freed
Beside the grave his battle steed;
And swift an arrow cleaved its way
To his stern heart! One piercing neigh
Arose, and, on the dead man's plain,
The rider grasps his steed again.

L'ENVOI

This poem was written as a poetical summary of the volume Voices of the Night, which it closed, referring in its three parts to the three divisions of that volume. YE voices, that arose

After the Evening's close,

And whispered to my restless heart repose!

Go, breathe it in the ear

Of all who doubt and fear,

And say to them, "Be of good cheer!"

Ye sounds, so low and calm,
That in the groves of balm
Seemed to me like an angel's psalm!

Go, mingle yet once more
With the perpetual roar
Of the pine forest, dark and hoar!

Tongues of the dead, not lost, But speaking from death's frost, Like fiery tongues at Pentecost!

Glimmer, as funeral lamps,
Amid the chills and damps

Of the vast plain where Death encamps!

THE SKELETON IN ARMOR

The volume of Ballads and other Poems was published December 19, 1841, and contained all the verse which Mr. Longfellow had written since the publication of Voices of the Night, with the important exception of The Spanish Student. Besides the pieces here included under this division, the original volume contained two ballads translated from the German, and also The Children of the Lord's Supper, which will be found under the general division Translations near the close of this volume. The historical basis of The Skeleton in Armor is discussed in the Notes. This ballad, when first published in the Knickerbocker for January, 1841, was furnished with marginal notes after the manner of Cole

ridge's The Ancient Mariner, but in reprinting it in his volume the poet wisely discarded an apparatus, which, unlike Coleridge's, was merely a running index to the poem.

"SPEAK! speak! thou fearful guest!
Who, with thy hollow breast
Still in rude armor drest,

Comest to daunt me !
Wrapt not in Eastern balms,
But with thy fleshless palms
Stretched, as if asking alms,

Why dost thou haunt me ?"

"I was a Viking old!

My deeds, though manifold,
No Skald in song has told,
No Saga taught thee!
Take heed, that in thy verse
Thou dost the tale rehearse,
Else dread a dead man's curse;
For this I sought thee.

"Far in the Northern Land,
By the wild Baltic's strand,
I, with my childish hand,
Tamed the gerfalcon ;

And, with my skates fast-bound,
Skimmed the half-frozen Sound,
That the poor whimpering hound
Trembled to walk on.

"Oft to his frozen lair
Tracked I the grisly bear,
While from my path the hare
Fled like a shadow;
Oft through the forest dark
Followed the were-wolf's bark,
Until the soaring lark

Sang from the meadow.

"But when I older grew, Joining a corsair's crew, O'er the dark sea I flew

With the marauders. Wild was the life we led; Many the souls that sped, Many the hearts that bled, By our stern orders.

"Many a wassail-bout Wore the long Winter out; Often our midnight shout

Set the cocks crowing, As we the Berserk's tale Measured in cups of ale, Draining the oaken pail, Filled to o'erflowing.

"Once as I told in glee
Tales of the stormy sea,
Soft eyes did gaze on me,
Burning yet tender;
And as the white stars shine
On the dark Norway pine,
On that dark heart of mine
Fell their soft splendor.

"I wooed the blue-eyed maid,
Yielding, yet half afraid,
And in the forest's shade
Our vows were plighted.
Under its loosened vest
Fluttered her little breast,
Like birds within their nest
By the hawk frighted.

"Bright in her father's hall
Shields gleamed upon the wall,
Loud sang the minstrels all,
Chanting his glory;

When of old Hildebrand
I asked his daughter's hand,
Mute did the minstrels stand
To hear my story.

"While the brown ale he quaffed, Loud then the champion laughed, And as the wind-gusts waft

The sea-foam brightly,
So the loud laugh of scorn,
Out of those lips unshorn,
From the deep drinking-horn
Blew the foam lightly.

"She was a Prince's child, I but a Viking wild,

And though she blushed and smiled,
I was discarded!

Should not the dove so white
Follow the sea-mew's flight,
Why did they leave that night
Her nest unguarded?

"Scarce had I put to sea,
Bearing the maid with me,
Fairest of all was she
Among the Norsemen !
When on the white sea-strand,
Waving his armèd hand,
Saw we old Hildebrand,

With twenty horsemen.

"Then launched they to the blast,

Bent like a reed each mast,

Yet we were gaining fast, When the wind failed us; And with a sudden flaw Came round the gusty Skaw, So that our foe we saw Laugh as he hailed us.

"And as to catch the gale

Round veered the flapping sail,
'Death!' was the helmsman's hail,
'Death without quarter!'
Mid-ships with iron keel
Struck we her ribs of steel;
Down her black hulk did reel
Through the black water!

"As with his wings aslant,
Sails the fierce cormorant,
Seeking some rocky haunt,
With his prey laden,
So toward the open main,
Beating to sea again,
Through the wild hurricane,
Bore I the maiden.

"Three weeks we westward bore,
And when the storm was o'er,
Cloud-like we saw the shore
Stretching to leeward;
There for my lady's bower
Built I the lofty tower,
Which, to this very hour,
Stands looking seaward.

"There lived we many years; Time dried the maiden's tears; She had forgot her fears,

She was a mother; Death closed her mild blue eyes, Under that tower she lies Ne'er shall the sun arise On such another!

"Still grew my bosom then,
Still as a stagnant fen!
Hateful to me were men,
The sunlight hateful!
In the vast forest here,
Clad in my warlike gear,
Fell I upon my spear,
Oh, death was grateful!

"Thus, seamed with many scars,
Bursting these prison bars,
Up to its native stars

My soul ascended!

There from the flowing bowl
Deep drinks the warrior's soul,
Skoal! to the Northland! skoal!"
Thus the tale ended.

THE WRECK OF THE HESPERUS

Originally published in Park Benjamin's mammoth sheet, The New World. Of the composition of the ballad Mr. Longfellow writes as follows in his diary, under date of December 30, 1839: "I wrote last evening a notice of Allston's poems. After which I sat till twelve o'clock by my fire, smoking, when suddenly it came into my mind to write The Ballad of the Schooner Hesperus; which I accordingly did. Then I went to bed, but could not sleep. New thoughts were running in my mind, and I got up to add them to the ballad. It was three by the clock. I then went to bed and fell asleep. I feel pleased with the ballad. It hardly cost me an effort. It did not come into my mind by lines, but by stanzas."

It was the schooner Hesperus,

That sailed the wintry sea;

And the skipper had taken his little daughtèr,

To bear him company.

Down came the storm, and smote amain
The vessel in its strength;

She shuddered and paused, like a frighted steed,

Then leaped her cable's length.

"Come hither! come hither! my little daughter,

And do not tremble so ;

For I can weather the roughest gale
That ever wind did blow."

The breakers were right beneath her bows,
She drifted a dreary wreck,

And a whooping billow swept the crew
Like icicles from her deck.

She struck where the white and fleecy waves
Looked soft as carded wool,

But the cruel rocks, they gored her side
Like the horns of an angry bull.

Her rattling shrouds, all sheathed in ice, With the masts went by the board ;

Against the stinging blast;

He cut a rope from a broken spar,

And bound her to the mast.

Ho! ho! the breakers roared!

At daybreak, on the bleak sea-beach, A fisherman stood aghast,

To see the form of a maiden fair, Lashed close to a drifting mast.

The salt sea was frozen on her breast,
The salt tears in her eyes;

And he saw her hair, like the brown seaweed,

On the billows fall and rise.

Such was the wreck of the Hesperus,
In the midnight and the snow!
Christ save us all from a death like this,
On the reef of Norman's Woe!

THE VILLAGE BLACKSMITH

In the autumn of 1839 Mr. Longfellow was writing psalms, as seen above, and he notes in his diary, October 5th: "Wrote a new Psalm of Life. It is The Village Blacksmith." A year later he was thinking of ballads, and he writes to his father, October 25th: "My pen has not been very prolific of late; only a little poetry has trickled from it. There will be a kind of ballad on a Blacksmith in the next Knickerbocker [November, 1840], which you may consider, if you please, as a song in praise of your ancestor at Newbury [the first Stephen Longfellow]." It is hardly to be supposed, however, that the form of the poem had been changed during the year. The suggestion of the poem came from the smithy which the poet passed daily, and which stood beneath a horse-chestnut tree not far from his house in Cambridge. The tree, against the protests of Mr. Longfellow and others, was removed in 1876, on the ground that it imperilled drivers of heavy loads who passed under it.

UNDER a spreading chestnut-tree

The village smithy stands ; The smith, a mighty man is he, With large and sinewy hands; And the muscles of his brawny arms Are strong as iron bands.