LONGFELLOW AT WORK.

Otago Witness, Issue 1480, 27 March 1880, Page 27

LONGFELLOW AT WORK.

HOW XHK AMERICAN BARD WROTE SOME OF

HIS FAMOUS TOEMS.

Longfellow's poems aro aa familiar to nil inßtrueWs as the language of the schoolroom. Ifivery aehool-boy reads and clcokims them ; every tftsiclier, like every preacher, quotes tbem. We once pa^ed an r-voniruf with Prof eta w ? .onijtellow, dining which he gavo us an account of the oriyin hia most popular poems. V\ r o will givt; fihe faisfcory ojthose whith f^va n<«ninon \>o xiho " llouvlera" and "Speav^rß." Tho kt VsAm of Lifn" is probably fcho bog!; kooffii o| thow schucl pooaoe, I'j \y<iß wj'it-

ten on a summer morning In 1838. He w*< a yonni? man then, full of aspiration and hope, and the poem was only an expression of his own feelings. He regarded it »8 » personal matter— like an entry in one a journal— and for a long time refrained front publishing it. Mr Longfellow relatid that on returning froaa hi? visit to the Queen, att English labourer stoppsd up to the carriage and asked to Bhake hands with the writer of the "Psalm of Life." "It was one of the best compliments I ever received," said tha demrcratic poet." Longfellow's study is a repository of the beautiful things of tho past j souvenirs, busts cf noble fdeuda,' merm'ntoes of departed poets— Tom Moore's wrtsts paper basket, Ooloridge's inkataud, a piece of Dante's coffin. In this stu-ly ataod aa old dock, with the colourings of age, rising from floor to ceiling. It numbered ihe houra in whioh h ; s best poeme were written. It was the old clock on the stairs.

The " Wreck of the Hesperus" was writ« ton in 1839, at midaight. A violent storm had ouourrei the night before ; the distress arid disasters at sea had been great, especially along the capee of the New England coast. The papers of the day wore full of the news of the disaster. The post wassitting alone in his study late that night, when tbe vision of the wrecked Hesperus camo drifting upon the disturbed tides of thought into hia miud. He went to bed, but could not sleep. He arose ( and wrote the poam, which' came into his mind by whole staozas, finishing them just as the clock— the old clock on the staira— was striking three. Sir Walter Scott says that he was led to write the romance of "Keuilworth" because the first sbauza of Mickle's famous ballad of '•' Cumnor Hall" haunted him — The dewa of sunjmor night did fall, Tbe moon, sweet regeut of the Hkjy Slivered the towoia of Cuamor Hull, And many an oak that grew thereby.

Longfellow says that ha was, as ho thinks, led to writo the *\ Wreok of the Hesperus" because the words "Norman Woe," which were associated with the disasters at sea, deemed to him so indescribably aad.

"Excolßior" was written after reoeiviag a letter from C harks Summer foil of lofty sentiments.

" Hiawatha " owes nsugh of its story and the embellishment of tnuaicd lodiau names to the researches of Schoolorafi. Abraham Le Fort, an Onondaca chief, who Mass Bup. postd graduate of Geneva College, furnished Sohooicraffc with aa Indina trtdition of Hia-. watha. You may find it in " Schoolorafi;," part 111, pago 314,— National Journal of Education.