I guess he doesn't get much respect these days, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. Although when most non-poets think of famous American poems, his greatest hits tend to crop up.
We never studied Longfellow in school but I'm a bit fond of the furry fellow. Years ago when visiting some family who had moved to the 'burbs of Boston, we would occasionally get a wintertime feast in the town of Sudbury at The Wayside Inn, a place I absolutely loved because it was colonial-old and quietly writerly. Longfellow stayed there on occassion and published Tales of a Wayside Inn in 1863.
Their website explains it well:
Longfellow's Wayside Inn is proud to be the oldest operating Inn in the
country, offering comfort and hospitality to travelers along the Boston
Post Road since 1716.
How quaint is the horse-bound journey of the poet finding this inn like a port in a storm? Pretty f*ing quaint, I thought. Add to that an old timey dining room with some old timey vittles. You had me at words New England Oysters.
Years later I visited Plymouth and Concord Massachusetts with friends over Thanksgiving weekend and we made a trip to see not only Cranberry World but Longfellow's house, now a National Park Service site, near Harvard Square in Boston. Unfortunately it was closed for the holiday weekend but we did pick up some buttons offered in a box at the front gate, buttons with Longfellow's image and the declaration: "I'm a poet too!"
To this day, that is my favorite button.
So I have mixed feelings about Longfellow. Poets beat him up for being an imitator of the English Romantics. But…I have that button and he had good taste in motels.
Also, while reading Hand of the Poet, I came across a poem that spoke to me as a toiler of verse. It was the poem "A Psalm of Life." You know, the one where he coined the term "footprints in the sands of time."
(By the way, what cliche have you coined lately?)
The poem goes as follows:
TELL me not, in mournful numbers,
Life is but an empty dream ! —
For the soul is dead that slumbers,
And things are not what they seem.
Life is real ! Life is earnest!
And the grave is not its goal ;
Dust thou art, to dust returnest,
Was not spoken of the soul.
Not enjoyment, and not sorrow,
Is our destined end or way ;
But to act, that each to-morrow
Find us farther than to-day.
Art is long, and Time is fleeting,
And our hearts, though stout and brave,
Still, like muffled drums, are beating
Funeral marches to the grave.
In the world's broad field of battle,
In the bivouac of Life,
Be not like dumb, driven cattle !
Be a hero in the strife !
Trust no Future, howe'er pleasant !
Let the dead Past bury its dead !
Act,— act in the living Present !
Heart within, and God o'erhead !
Lives of great men all remind us
We can make our lives sublime,
And, departing, leave behind us
Footprints on the sands of time ;
Footprints, that perhaps another,
Sailing o'er life's solemn main,
A forlorn and shipwrecked brother,
Seeing, shall take heart again.
Let us, then, be up and doing,
With a heart for any fate ;
Still achieving, still pursuing,
Learn to labor and to wait.
I guess it bears repeating:
Let us, then, be up and doing,
With a heart for any fate ;
Still achieving, still pursuing,
Learn to labor and to wait.
Think about that vis-à-vis your own life's efforts. I posted the following quote on my Facebook page last week after watching the documentary The War Room, a behind-the-scenes look at the campaign of Bill Clinton. After winning the election, James Carville, when congratulated for his successes in the campaign, gave this speech to his staff:
"There is a simple doctrine: outside of a
person's love, the most sacred thing that they can give is their labor.
And some how or another, along the way we tend to forget that. And labor
is a very precious thing that you have and anytime you can combine
labor with love, you've made a merger…people are gonna tell you you're
lucky. You're not. The harder you work, the luckier you get."
Growing up, I never believed it was honorable to be a writer. I thought it was a soft job, like being a philosopher or a politician. A thinker doesn't work. I believed that until the day I saw Mark Twain's typewriter in a museum in Hannibal, Missouri. In a single moment I realized writing is a physical act. Typing itself is labor. Writing is work.
Love the work and wait.
Take the virutal tour of Longfellow's house.
Chaucer Review, 1835
