He wrapped her warm in his seaman's coat He cut a rope from a broken spar, And bound her to the mast. "O father! I hear the church-bells ring, Oh say, what may it be?" “'T is a fog-bell on a rock-bound coast!" And he steered for the open sea. "O father! I hear the sound of guns, Oh say, what may it be?" "Some ship in distress, that cannot live In such an angry sea! "O father! I see a gleaming light, Lashed to the helm, all stiff and stark, The lantern gleamed through the gleaming snow On his fixed and glassy eyes. Then the maiden clasped her hands and prayed That saved she might be ; And she thought of Christ, who stilled the wave, On the Lake of Galilee. And fast through the midnight dark and drear, Through the whistling sleet and snow, Line 18. With his face to the skies, Like a sheeted ghost, the vessel swept And ever the fitful gusts between A sound came from the land; The breakers were right beneath her bows, She struck where the white and fleecy waves But the cruel rocks, they gored her side Her rattling shrouds, all sheathed in ice, At daybreak, on the bleak sea-beach, To see the form of a maiden fair, The salt sea was frozen on her breast, And he saw her hair, like the brown sea-weed, 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. 66 Wrote a In the autumn of 1839 Mr. Longfellow was writing psalms, as seen above, and he notes in his diary, October 5th: 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 was removed in 1876, against the protests of Mr. Longfellow and others, on the ground that it imperilled drivers of heavy loads who passed under it. The correction in the twenty-third line is not to the earliest form. It is one suggested during Mr. Longfellow's life-time, and accepted by him as a desirable one, but not actually made in any edition. Mr. Longfellow thought the original form had become fixed, and could not well be altered. UNDER a spreading chestnut-tree His hair is crisp, and black, and long, His face is like the tan; His brow is wet with honest sweat, And looks the whole world in the face, Week in, week out, from morn till night, Like a sexton ringing the village bell, And children coming home from school They love to see the flaming forge, And catch the burning sparks that fly He goes on Sunday to the church, And it makes his heart rejoice. It sounds to him like her mother's voice, He needs must think of her once more, And with his hard, rough hand he wipes Line 15. And watch the burning sparks that fly Toiling, - rejoicing, - sorrowing, Thanks, thanks to thee, my worthy friend, ENDYMION. THE rising moon has hid the stars; With shadows brown between. And silver white the river gleams, On such a tranquil night as this, When, sleeping in the grove, Like Dian's kiss, unasked, unsought, |