Chapter 6

Story-telling poems that children of from ten to twelve years of age can enjoy are: _The Happiest Land_, _The Luck of Edenhall_, _The Elected Knight_, _Excelsior_, _The Phantom Ship_, _The Discoverer of the North Cape_, _The Bell of Atri_, _The Three Kings_, _The Emperor's Bird's Nest_ and _The Maiden and the Weathercock_. _The Windmill_ and the translation _Beware_ are especially lively, little poems; and _The Arrow and the Song_ and _Children_ are quite as cheerful though quieter. More serious is _The Day Is Done_, well liked for the restful melody; _The Old Clock on the Stairs_, with its curious refrain; and the famous _Psalm of Life_, the lesson of which has helped many a young boy and girl.

Among the story-poems for children older than twelve years are Longfellow's greatest works, _Evangeline_, _Hiawatha_ and _The Courtship of Miles Standish_; and the minor poems, _Elizabeth_, _The Beleaguered City_ and _The Building of the Ship_. Nature poems that appeal to readers of this age are the _Hymn to the Night_, _The Rainy Day_, _The Evening Star_, _A Day of Sunshine_, _The Brook and the Wave_, _Rain in Summer_, and _Wanderer's Night Songs_.

Children who are fond of imagining will enjoy _The Belfry of Bruges_ and _Travels by the Fireside_, and those who like song-poems may select _The Bridge_ or _Stay, Stay at Home, My Heart_.

Nearly all of the poems that have been named are found in collections of Longfellow's works under the titles of the volumes in which they were originally published. _A Psalm of Life_, for example, is one of the group entitled _Voices of the Night_; and _Paul Revere's Ride_ is one of the _Tales of a Wayside Inn_.

FOOTSTEPS OF ANGELS

_By_ HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW

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, And, like phantoms grim and tall, Shadows from the fitful firelight Dance upon the parlor wall;

Then the forms of the departed Enter at the open door; The beloved, the true-hearted, Come to visit me once more;

He, the young and strong, who cherished Noble longings for the strife, By the roadside fell and perished, Weary with the march of life!

They, the holy ones and weakly, Who the cross of suffering bore, Folded their pale hands so meekly, Spake with us on earth no more!

And with them the Being Beauteous,* Who unto my youth was given, More than all things else to love me, And is now a saint in heaven.

With a slow and noiseless footstep Comes that messenger divine, Takes the vacant chair beside me, Lays her gentle hand in mine.

And she sits and gazes at me With those deep and tender eyes, Like the stars, so still and saint-like, Looking downward from the skies.

Uttered not, yet comprehended, Is the spirit's voiceless prayer, Soft rebukes, in blessings ended, Breathing from her lips of air.

O, though oft depressed and lonely, All my fears are laid aside, If I but remember only Such as these have lived and died!

*[Footnote: This refers to Longfellow's first wife, Mary Storer Potter, whom he married in 1831. On his second visit to Europe, Mrs. Longfellow died at Rotterdam in 1835.]

TO H. W. L., ON HIS BIRTHDAY, 27TH FEBRUARY, 1867.

_By_ JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL

I need not praise the sweetness of his song, Where limpid verse to limpid verse succeeds Smooth as our Charles, when, fearing lest he wrong The new moon's mirrored skiff, he slides along, Full without noise, and whispers in his reeds.

With loving breath of all the winds his name Is blown about the world, but to his friends A sweeter secret hides behind his fame, And Love steals shyly through the loud acclaim, To murmur a _God bless you!_ and there ends.

* * * * *

Surely if skill in song the shears may stay And of its purpose cheat the charmed abyss, If our poor life be lengthened by a lay, He shall not go, although his presence may, And the next age in praise shall double this.

Long days be his, and each as lusty-sweet As gracious natures find his song to be; May Age steal on with softly-cadenced feet Falling in music, as for him were meet Whose choicest verse is harsher-toned than he!

While this little tribute may not be as simple to read as some of the things in this book, yet it is beautiful to those who can read it.

One of the fine things about good poetry is that it will not only bear study and examination, but will yield new beauty and new pleasure as it is better understood. For instance, take the first stanza above. Lowell says Longfellow's poetry is sweet and easily understood and that one line follows another smoothly. To make us see how smoothly, he makes a beautiful comparison, draws for us an exquisite picture. As smooth, he says, as is our own river Charles when at night, fearing to disturb by so much as a single ripple the reflection of the crescent moon, a mirrored skiff, it glides along noiselessly but whispering gently to the reeds that line its shores.

Again, Lowell says that the very winds love Longfellow, and waft his name about the world, giving him fame and honor; but his friends know him to be a man with a loving heart, and so they steal up to him and murmur through the noisy shoutings of the crowd a simple _God bless you!_ which they know Longfellow will appreciate on his birthday more than all his fame.

To understand the first line in the third stanza, we must know of the three Fates who in the old Greek myth controlled the life of every man. One spun the thread of life, a second determined its course, and the third stood by with shears ready to cut the thread where death was due. Lowell says if being a skillful poet will make a man immortal, if our life can be lengthened by a song, then Longfellow shall not leave us even though his body goes, and in another generation his fame shall be doubly great.

THE VILLAGE BLACKSMITH

_By_ HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW

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.

His hair is crisp and black and long; His face is like the tan; His brow is wet with honest sweat,-- He earns whate'er he can; And looks the whole world in the face, For he owes not any man.

Week in, week out, from morn till night. You can hear his bellows blow; You can hear him swing his heavy sledge, With measured beat and slow, Like sexton ringing the village bell When the evening sun is low.

And children, coming home from school, Look in at the open door; They love to see the naming forge, And hear the bellows roar, And catch the burning sparks that fly Like chaff from a threshing-floor.

He goes on Sunday to the church, And sits among his boys; He hears the parson pray and preach, He hears his daughter's voice, Singing in the village choir, And it makes his heart rejoice.

It sounds to him like her mother's voice, Singing in Paradise! He needs must think of her once more, How in the grave she lies; And with his hard, rough hand he wipes A tear out of his eyes.

Toiling--rejoicing--sorrowing, Onward through life he goes; Each morning sees some task begin, Each evening sees it close; Something attempted, something done, Has earned a night's repose.

Thanks, thanks to thee, my worthy friend, For the lesson thou hast taught! Thus at the flaming forge of life Our fortunes must be wrought; Thus on its sounding anvil shaped Each burning deed and thought!

What a clear little poem this is! From beginning to end there is scarcely a thing that needs to be explained. We can see the two pictures almost as though they had been painted for us in colors. If anything is obscure, it is the comparison of the sparks to the chaff from a threshing-floor. And if that isn't clear to us it is because times have changed, and we no longer see grain threshed out on a floor. His "limpid verse to limpid verse succeeds, smooth as our Charles!"

Longfellow uses skill in the song. He shows us the old blacksmith at his forge and draws us with the other children to see his work. We learn to love the strong old man, independent, proud and happy. We sympathize with him as he weeps and admire him so much that we delight at the lesson Longfellow so skillfully places at the end.

THE WRECK OF THE HESPERUS

_By_ HENRY WADSWOHTH LONGFELLOW

It was the schooner Hesperus, That sailed the wintry sea; And the skipper had taken his little daughter, To bear him company.

Blue were her eyes as the fairy-flax, Her cheeks like the dawn of day, And her bosom white as the hawthorn buds That ope in the month of May.

The skipper he stood beside the helm His pipe was in his mouth, And he watched how the veering flaw did blow The smoke now West, now South.

Then up and spake an old Sailor, Had sailed the Spanish Main, "I pray thee, put into yonder port, For I fear a hurricane.

"Last night the moon had a golden ring, And to-night no moon we see!" The skipper he blew a whiff from his pipe, And a scornful laugh laughed he.

Colder and colder blew the wind A gale from the Northeast; The snow fell hissing in the brine, And the billows frothed like yeast.

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."

He wrapped her warm in his seaman's coat Against the stinging blast; He cut a rope from a broken spar, And bound her to the mast.

"O father! I hear the church-bells ring. O say, what may it be?" "'Tis a fog-bell on a rock-bound coast!"-- And he steered for the open sea.

"O father! I hear the sound of guns. O say, what may it be?" "Some ship in distress, that cannot live In such an angry sea!"

"O father! I see a gleaming light. O say, what may it be?" But the father answered never a word, A frozen corpse was he.

Lashed to the helm, all stiff and stark, With his face turned to the skies, 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, Like a sheeted ghost, the vessel swept Towards the reef of Norman's Woe.

And ever the fitful gusts between A sound came from the land; It was the sound of the trampling surf, On the rocks and the hard sea-sand.

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; Like a vessel of glass, she stove and sank, 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 sea-weed, 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!

A DOG OF FLANDERS [Footnote: This story has been abridged somewhat]

_By_ LOUISE DE LA RAMEE

Nello and Patrasche were left all alone in the world. They were friends in a friendship closer than brotherhood.

Nello was a little Ardennois; Patrasche was a big Fleming. They were both of the same age by length of years, yet one was still young and the other already old. They had dwelt together almost all their days; both were orphaned and destitute and owed their lives to the same hand.

Their home was a little hut on the edge of a little Flemish village, a league from Antwerp.

It was the hut of an old man--a poor man--of old Jehan Daas, who in his time had been a soldier and who remembered the wars that had trampled the country as oxen tread down the furrows, and who had brought from his service nothing except a wound which had made him a cripple.

When Jehan Daas had reached his full eighty his daughter had died in the Ardennes, hard by Stavelot, and had left him in legacy her two- year-old son. The old man could ill contrive to support himself, but he took up the additional burden uncomplainingly, and it soon became welcome and precious to him. Little Nello--which was but a pet diminutive for Nicholas--throve with him, and the old man and the little child lived in the poor little hut contentedly.

They were terribly poor--many a day they had nothing at all to eat. They never by any chance had enough. To have had enough to eat would have been to have reached paradise at once. But the old man was gentle and good to the boy and the boy was a beautiful, innocent, truthful, tender-hearted creature; and they were happy on a crust and a few leaves of cabbage and asked no more of earth or heaven, save, indeed, that Patrasche should be always with them, since without Patrasche where would they have been?

Jehan Daas was old and crippled and Nello was but a child--and Patrasche was their dog.

A dog of Flanders--yellow of hide, large of limb, with wolflike ears that stood erect, and legs bowed and feet widened in the muscular development wrought in his breed by the many generations of hard service. Patrasche came of a race which had toiled hard and cruelly from sire to son in Flanders many a century--slaves of slaves, dogs of the people, beasts of the shafts and harness, creatures that lived training their sinews in the gall of the cart, and died breaking their hearts on the flints of the street.

Before he was fully grown he had known the bitter gall of the cart and collar. Before he had entered his thirteenth month he had become the property of a hardware dealer, who was accustomed to wander over the land north and south, from the blue sea to the green mountains. They sold him for a small price because he was so young.

This man was a drunkard and a brute. The life of Patrasche was a life of abuse.

His purchaser was a sullen, ill-living, brutal Brabantois, who heaped his cart full with pots and pans, and flagons and buckets, and other wares of crockery and brass and tin, and left Patrasche to draw the load as best he might while he himself lounged idly by the side in fat and sluggish ease, smoking his black pipe and stopping at every wine shop or café on the road.

One day, after two years of this long and deadly agony, Patrasche was going on as usual along one of the straight, dusty, unlovely roads that lead to the city of Rubens.

It was full midsummer and exceedingly warm. His cart was heavy, piled high with goods in metal and earthenware. His owner sauntered on without noticing him otherwise than by the crack of the whip as it curled around his quivering loins.

The Brabantois had paused to drink beer himself at every wayside house, but he had forbidden Patrasche to stop for a moment for a draft from the canal. Going along thus, in the full sun, on a scorching highway, having eaten nothing for twenty-four hours, and, which was far worse for him, not having tasted water for nearly twelve; being blind with dust, sore with blows, and stupefied with the merciless weight which dragged upon his loins, Patrasche, for once, staggered and foamed a little at the mouth and fell.

He fell in the middle of the white, dusty road, in the full glare of the sun; he was sick unto death and motionless. His master gave him the only medicine in his pharmacy--kicks and oaths and blows with the oak cudgel--which had been often the only food and drink, the only wage and reward, ever offered to him.

But Patrasche was beyond the reach of any torture or of any curses. Patrasche lay, dead to all appearances, down in the white powder of the summer dust. His master, with a parting kick, passed on and left him.

After a time, among the holiday makers, there came a little old man who was bent, and lame, and feeble. He was in no guise for feasting. He was poor and miserably clad, and he dragged his silent way slowly through the dust among the pleasure seekers.

He looked at Patrasche, paused, wondered, turned aside, then kneeled down in the rank grass and weeds of the ditch and surveyed the dog with kindly eyes of pity.

There was with him a little, rosy, fair-haired, dark-eyed child of a few years old, who pattered in amid the bushes, that were for him breast high, and stood gazing with a pretty seriousness upon the poor, great, quiet beast.

Thus it was that these two first met--the little Nello and the big Patrasche. They carried Patrasche home; and when he recovered he was harnessed to the cart that carried the milk cans of the neighbors to Antwerp. Thus the dog earned the living of the old man and the boy who saved him.

There was only one thing which caused Patrasche any uneasiness in his life, and it was this: Antwerp, as all the world knows, is full at every turn of old piles of stones, dark, and ancient, and majestic, standing in crooked courts, jammed against gateways and taverns, rising by the water's edge, with bells ringing above them in the air, and ever and again out of their arched doors a swell of music pealing.

There they remain, the grand old sanctuaries of the past, shut in amid the squalor, the hurry, the crowds, the unloveliness, and the commerce of the modern world, and all day long the clouds drift, and the birds circle, and the winds sigh around them, and beneath the earth at their feet there sleeps--Rubens.

And the greatness of the mighty master still rests upon Antwerp. Wherever we turn in its narrow streets his glory lies therein, so that all mean things are thereby transfigured; and as we pace slowly through the winding ways, and by the edge of the stagnant waters, and through the noisome courts, his spirit abides with us, and the heroic beauty of his visions is about us, and the stones that once felt his footsteps, and bore his shadow, seem to rise and speak of him with living voices. For the city which is the tomb of Rubens still lives to us through him, and him alone.

Now, the trouble of Patrasche was this:

Into these great, sad piles of stones, that reared their melancholy majesty above the crowded roofs, the child Nello would many and many a time enter and disappear through their dark, arched portals, while Patrasche, left upon the pavement, would wearily and vainly ponder on what could be the charm which allured from him his inseparable and beloved companion.

Once or twice he did essay to see for himself, clattering up the steps with his milk cart behind him, but thereon he had been always sent back again summarily by a tall custodian in black clothes and silver chains of office, and, fearful of bringing his little master into trouble, he desisted and crouched patiently before the church until such time as the boy reappeared.

What was it? wondered Patrasche.

He thought it could not be good or natural for the lad to be so grave, and in his dumb fashion he tried all he could to keep Nello by him in the sunny fields or in the busy market places.

But to the church Nello would go. Most often of all he would go to the great cathedral; and Patrasche, left without on the stones by the iron fragments of the Quentin Matsys's gate, would stretch himself and yawn and sigh, and even howl now and then, all in vain, until the doors closed and the child perforce came forth again, and, winding his arms about the dog's neck, would kiss him on his broad, tawny-colored forehead and murmur always the same words:

"If I could only see them, Patrasche! If I could only see them!"

What were they? pondered Patrasche, looking up with large, wistful, sympathetic eyes.

One day, when the custodian was out of the way and the doors left ajar, he got in for a moment after his friend, and saw. "They" were two great covered pictures on either side of the choir.

Nello was kneeling, wrapt as in an ecstasy, before the altar picture of the "Assumption," and when he noticed Patrasche and rose and drew the dog gently out into the air, his face was wet with tears, and he looked up at the veiled places as he passed them and murmured to his companion:

"It is so terrible not to see them, Patrasche, just because one is poor and cannot pay! He never meant that the poor should not see them when he painted them, I am sure. And they keep them shrouded there--- shrouded in the dark---the beautiful things! And they never feel the light, and no eyes look upon them unless rich people come and pay. If I could only see them I would be content to die."

But he could not see them, and Patrasche could not help him, for to gain the silver piece that the church exacts for looking on the glories of the "Elevation of the Cross" and the "Descent from the Cross" was a thing as utterly beyond the powers of either of them as it would have been to scale the heights of the cathedral spire.

The whole soul of the little Ardennois thrilled and stirred with an absorbing passion for art.

Going on his way through the old city in the early daybreak before the sun or the people had seen them, Nello, who looked only a little peasant boy, with a great dog drawing milk to sell from door to door, was in a heaven of dreams whereof Rubens was the god. Nello, cold and hungry, with stockingless feet in wooden shoes, and the winter winds blowing among his curls and lifting his poor, thin garments, was in rapture of meditation wherein all that he saw was the beautiful face of the Mary of "Assumption," with the waves of her golden hair lying upon her shoulders and the light of an eternal sun shining down upon her brow. Nello, reared in poverty, and buffeted by fortune, and untaught in letters, and unheeded by men, had the compensation or the curse which is called genius.

No one knew it--he as little as any. No one knew it.

"I should go to my grave quite content if I thought, Nello, that when thou growest a man thou couldst own this hut and the little plat of ground and labor for thyself and be called Baas by thy neighbors," said the old man Jehan many an hour from his bed.

Nello dreamed of other things in the future than of tilling the little rood of earth, and living under the wattle roof, and being called Baas by neighbors, a little poorer or a little less poor than himself. The cathedral spire, where it rose beyond the fields in the ruddy evening skies or in the dim, gray, misty morning, said other things to him than this. But these he told only to Patrasche, whispering, childlike, his fancies in the dog's ear when they went together at their work through the fogs of the daybreak or lay together at their rest amongst the rustling rushes by the water's side.

There was only one other besides Patrasche to whom Nello could talk at all of his daring fancies. This other was little Alois, who lived at the old red mill on the grassy mound, and whose father, the miller, was the best-to-do husbandman in all the village.

Little Alois was a pretty baby, with soft, round, rosy features, made lovely by those sweet, dark eyes that the Spanish rule has left in so many a Flemish face.