Longfellow Is Quoted

Evening Star, Issue 23817, 22 February 1941, Page 3

Longfellow Is Quoted

When -Mr Baldwin spoke in praise of 1 Precious Bane.’ tlio sales of an unknown novelist leapt into figures that were almost astronomical. A few weeks after the King hail quoted from a versifier none ol ns had ever heard 01. her words were to be seen everywhere, framed in passe-partout or 'embroidered on samplers. J’oeis, wo like to think, are the unacknowledged legislators ol mankind; but it cannot be denied that a nod of encouragement from an acknowledged legislator is a help to poets who must live in an ago where the generous and discriminating patron is an anachronism. Last week an ambassador from one great nation to another carried a letter of introduction in which was quoted a stanza of verse. Because Air Wendell Willkie > delivers to ■ Air Churchill a letter in which Air ißoosevelt quotes Longfellow, practical men reading the war nows come, in a time of paper shortage, too, on a sentence chopped up into short lines with unnecessary margins; and into living rooms used to epics of the turl and a different type of American rhythm drops the unaccustomed sound of phrases inflated yet sincere : Thou, too, sail ou. 0 Ship of State! Sail on. 0 Union, strong and great I Humanity with all its fears, With all the hopes of future years, is hanging breathless on thy fate! If Air Churchill can repeat such a verse, it must he all right; but the young shake their heads, looking at one another with humorous indulgence. Poor old Longfellow, their smiles imply. That name, long unheard, brings back to their elders thoughts of their school days. They remember ‘ Uxeelsior ’ and ‘ The .Psalm of Life.' If they are unwise enough to mention these gems, their children hoot with laughter. ‘ Kxeelsior.’ a father protests, was a hue poem, and he has to listen while his son jeers at the immodest maiden who importuned the unknown youth to stay and rest his weary head upon her breast. If a mother says quietly that she still likes

Written by PANACHE, jor the hveiling Star.

the ‘ I’salm of Life,’ her daughter kindly points out its silliness, especially the silliness of those footsteps on the sands that wore supposed to hearten the longsighted mariner who, shipwrecked, was at the same time sailing on the solemn main. The mother who conlcsses to having sung ' I Stood on the Bridge at Aiidnight ’ heroines a, period piece. : Hiawatha.’ with music, perhaps, four old Longfellow! In a prefatory memoir to the poet's works. \V. .M. Rossetti records how tho professor of modern languages resigned his chair at Harvard, and, still in his prime, settled down with his family near Boston, surrounded by a largo' circle of literary and other friends, highly and deservedly esteemed, not only as a, man of letters, but for his honourable, straightforward, and unalfeeted character. He was twice married, and survived his second wife. Neither in his youth nor in his honourable retirement does Longfellow fit in with the formula to which our poets have accustomed ns. Aspiring to be called poet, ho did. not die young. His beard was patriarchal, not Bohemian or oven after Van Dyke. When he travelled in Europe it was to study the literature of Spain and Scandinavia rather than to seek amorous adventures or offer Ids life on a foreign battlefield fighting for a country and for loyalties to which ho had not been born. _ He was not a misogynist, ho was neither eccentric nor curmudgeonly. Ho had no famous idiosyncrasies, no limp, no flaming intolerance, no title, no hump, no deplorable table manners. “His graceful and lovely nature.” says Oliver Wendell Holmes, “ can hardly find expression in any form without giving pleasure to others.” Flicking over the pages of an old copy of Longfellow, 1. came again and again on the lovely and graceful phrases that had so charmed me once. “ This is the forest primrose.” Here it was. and Evangeline with her blue kirtle. and ships that pass in the night, and stars that blossom like the forget-me-nots of the angels. But I could not read to the end. 'J he sweetness is drawn out too long, and when there is honev in everv dish the diner longs for the tang of a savoury. But Longfellow never seems a savoury or even _a cup of black coffee. While tho honey is still dripping, he says grace. 1 turned to the ballads, and saw again the snow-white walrus tooth which Alfred’s old sea captain held in his brown right hand. I saw the brawny arms of the village blacksmith, and the bright flamingoes that flew like hlood-ved flags heloro the eyes of the dying slave. 1 saw the little girl with the flexible eye who sailed on tho schooner Hesperus. This is the Longfellow that can still charm, the Longfellow that paints with hold strokes in primary colours on the linn backcloth of the ballads. But the other Louglellow, the esteemed retired professor, left his bright reds and blues and yellows lor the drabber and more pretentions colours in which morals are painted. He abandoned the pleasant tinkle of caravans for the more pious sounds of New England. In the admirable words of W. M. Rossetti, he suffered from “ great •susceptibility to the spirit of his ago.” That is a failing which the age succeeding seldom forgives. So perish Hie old gods! Tint out. of the sea of time, I’ises a new land of song. Fairer than tho old, Longfellow had the. grace to write his own epitaph.