A forlorn and shipwrecked brother, Let us, then, be up and doing, Learn to labor and to wait. THE REAPER AND THE FLOWERS. In his diary, under date of December 6, 1838, Mr. Longfellow writes: "A beautiful holy morning within me. I was softly excited, I knew not why, and wrote with peace in my heart, and not without tears in my eyes, The Reaper and the Flowers, a Psalm of Death. I have had an idea of this kind in my mind for a long time, without finding any expression for it in words. This morning it seemed to crystallize at once, without any effort of my own.' This psalm was printed in the Knickerbocker for January, 1839, with the sub-title A Psalm of Death, and with the familiar stanza from Henry Vaughan, beginning: Dear beauteous death; the jewel of the just! THERE is a Reaper, whose name is Death, He reaps the bearded grain at a breath, "Shall I have naught that is fair?" saith he ; "Have naught but the bearded grain? Though the breath of these flowers is sweet to me, I will give them all back again." He gazed at the flowers with tearful eyes, He kissed their drooping leaves; It was for the Lord of Paradise He bound them in his sheaves. "My Lord has need of these flowerets gay," 66 Where He was once a child. They shall all bloom in fields of light, And saints, upon their garments white, And the mother gave, in tears and pain, She knew she should find them all again Oh, not in cruelty, not in wrath, 'T was an angel visited the green earth, THE LIGHT OF STARS. "This poem was written on a beautiful summer night. The moon, a little strip of silver, was just setting behind the groves of Mount Auburn, and the planet Mars blazing in the southeast. There was a singular light in the sky." H. W. L. It was published in the same number of the Knickerbocker as the last, where it was headed A Second Psalm of Life, and prefaced by another stanza from the same poem of Vaughan : It glows and glitters in my cloudy breast, Or those faint beams in which this hill is drest i THE night is come, but not too soon; All silently, the little moon Drops down behind the sky. There is no light in earth or heaven And the first watch of night is given Is it the tender star of love? The star of love and dreams? And earnest thoughts within me rise, Suspended in the evening skies, O star of strength! I see thee stand Within my breast there is no light The star of the unconquered will, And calm, and self-possessed. And thou, too, whosoe'er thou art, Be resolute and calm. Oh, fear not in a world like this, FOOTSTEPS OF ANGELS. "March 26, 1839. A lovely morning. Sat at home and wrote a third Psalm of Life, which I began long ago, but could never rightly close and complete till now. The beginning was written more than a year ago, and is copied under date of February 27, 1838; though, if I remember, I composed it a year earlier, even. In the afternoon I carried it to Felton and left it with him. He came up in the evening and said that he had read it to his wife, who 'cried like a child.' I want no more favorable criticism than this." The poem in its first form bore the title Evening Shadows, and will be found in the notes at the end of this volume. In its present form it was printed in the Knickerbocker, May, 1839, as Voices of the Night: a Third Psalm of Life. The reference in the fourth stanza is to the poet's friend and brother-in-law George W. Pierce, of whom he said long after: "I have never ceased to feel that in his death something was taken from my own life which could never be restored." News of his friend's death reached Mr. Longfellow in Heidelberg on Christmas eve, 1835, less than a month after the death of Mrs. Longfellow, who is referred to in the sixth and following stanzas. WHEN the hours of Day are numbered, And the voices of the Night Wake the better soul, that slumbered, To a holy, calm delight; Ere the evening lamps are lighted, Then the forms of the departed He, the young and strong, who cherished By the roadside fell and perished, They, the holy ones and weakly, And with them the Being Beauteous, With a slow and noiseless footstep And she sits and gazes at me Line 7. The beloved ones, the true-hearted, |