which was included in The New Hymn and Tune Book, 1914, but which has not passed into other books.
H.W.F.
Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth, D.C.L., Portland, Maine, February 27, 1807—March 24, 1882, Cambridge, Massachusetts. He graduated from Bowdoin College in 1825. After four years of study in Europe he was appointed to the Chair of Modern Languages at Bowdoin, but removed to Harvard in 1835, upon his election as professor of Modern Languages and Belles-Lettres in the latter College. He retained that Professorship until 1854, when he retired to give himself time for authorship in prose and verse. He became one of the most widely read and beloved poets in the English-speaking world, and after his death a marble bust commemorating him was placed in Westminster Abbey. In the strict sense of the term he was not a hymn-writer, his brother, [Samuel Longfellow], q.v., twelve years his junior, far surpassing him in this field, but hymn-book editors have culled selections from his poems which they could use, as follows:
1. Ah, what a sound! The infinite fierce chorus,
From his poem “The Arsenal at Springfield,” published in The Belfry of Bruges, 1845. Four stanzas, beginning as above, are included in The Pilgrim Hymnal, 1935. In S. Longfellow’s and Johnson’s Book of Hymns, 1848, the selected stanzas from this poem begin
Down the dark future through long generations,
and the hymn appeared in this form in other collections.
2. Alas, how poor and little worth,
Tr. from the Spanish of Don Jorge Manrique, (d. 1479), in Longfellow’s Poetry of Spain, 1833.
3. All are architects of fate,
The first three stanzas of Longfellow’s poem, “The Builders,” written in 1846. Included in Hymns of the Spirit, 1937.
4. All is of God; If he but wave his hand.
From the poem “The Two Angels,” in his Birds of Passage, 1858; included in S. Longfellow’s and Johnson’s Hymns of the Spirit, 1864.
5. Blind Bartimeus at the gate,
From Miscellaneous Poems, 1841. Included in G. W. Conder’s 1874 Appendix to the (British) Leeds Hymn Book.
6. Christ to the young man said, “Yet one thing more.”
Written in 1848 for the ordination of the poet’s younger brother, Samuel Longfellow; published in the author’s Seaside and Fireside, 1851, and in H. W. Beecher’s Plymouth Collection, 1855, altered to read,
The Saviour said, “Yet one thing more”
In spite of the occasion for which it was written it is not a hymn but a hortatory poem of five stanzas in a most unusual 10.6.10.6 metre, for which it must have been difficult to find any singable tune.
7. I heard the bells on Christmas Day
This carol was written in 1864, for the Sunday School of the Unitarian Church of the Disciples, Boston, of which Rev. James Freeman Clarke was minister. The entire poem, entitled “Christmas Bells,” has seven stanzas, of which 1, 2, 6 and 7 are in The New Hymn and Tune Book, 1914, in Hymns of the Spirit, 1937, and in The Pilgrim Hymnal, 1935. The omitted stanzas contain references to the Civil War, in progress when the carol was written.
8. Into the silent land,
A translation from the German poem “Ins Stille Land! Wer Leitet uns hinüber,” by J. G. Salis-Seewis, 1808. Published by Longfellow in Voices of the Night, 1840. Included in Hedge and Huntington’s Hymns for the Church of Christ, 1853, and other American collections.
9. Tell me not in mournful numbers,
Published in Voices of the Night, 1839, as “A Psalm of Life; What the heart of the Young Man said to the Psalmist.” Included in several hymnals in Great Britain and America. In some collections it begins with the second stanza
Life is real! Life is earnest
10. There is no flock, however watched and tended
A cento from the author’s Seaside and Fireside, 1849.
11. We have not wings: we may not soar.
In 1850 the poet wrote “The Ladder of St. Augustine,” a poem in twelve stanzas, based upon a quotation from Sermon III, De Ascensione, by St. Augustine of Hippo, “De vitiis nostris scalam nobis facimus, si vitia ipsa calcamus.” (We shall make a ladder out of our vices, if we tread those vices under foot.) The three stanzas of the hymn are, respectively, the seventh, tenth and second stanzas of the poem.
H.W.F.
Longfellow, Rev. Samuel, Portland, Maine, June 18, 1819—October 3, 1892, Portland, was the youngest of the eight children of Stephen and Zilpah (Wadsworth) Longfellow. Stephen Longfellow had graduated from Harvard and had become one of the most prominent citizens of Portland. His son Samuel entered Harvard with the Class of 1839, just after his brother, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, more than twelve years his senior, had returned from Europe to begin his professorship at Harvard.
Samuel entered the Harvard Divinity School, from which he graduated in 1846, and served as minister of the Unitarian Church in Fall River, Massachusetts, 1848-51; the Second Unitarian Church, Brooklyn, New York, 1853-1860; and the Unitarian Church, Germantown, Pennsylvania, 1878-1883. In the intervals between these pastorates he did much occasional preaching, and, having independent means and no marital ties, made several prolonged visits to Europe. He had an attractive personality, was witty and highly intelligent, and was an acceptable though outspoken preacher, but he is now remembered for his contribution to American hymnody through the hymns which he wrote and the books which he edited. His accomplishment in this field was greater and more lasting than that of any other American in the middle period of the 19th century. Its development can best be traced in the books which he published.
The first of these was A Book of Hymns for Public and Private Devotions, which he and his classmate in the Divinity School, Samuel Johnson, daringly compiled while still students in the School. A not improbable story of the origin of the book reports that their friend, Rev. Francis Parker Appleton, then a young minister at Peabody, Massachusetts, had complained to them about the antiquated hymn-book which he found in use in his church, to which they replied that they would prepare a book for him which would express the religious aspirations of the rising generation. The book appeared in 1846, before either of the young editors had been ordained, and was an immediate success. It was first used in the First Unitarian Church at Worcester, Massachusetts, where Longfellow’s classmate and lifelong friend, Edward Everett Hale, had just been ordained at a service for which Longfellow wrote the ordination hymn, and it was promptly adopted by Theodore Parker for his congregation in Music Hall. The book was re-published in somewhat revised and enlarged form in 1848, and ran to 12 editions. It marked a new epoch in American hymnody because it was the product of young and adventurous but well-trained minds seeking to give utterance to the emotions stirred by the intellectual and political ferment of the times, and because of the new sources to which they turned. They were the first to see and make use of the hymnic possibilities of the poems of John Greenleaf Whittier, and to include in an American hymn-book Newman’s “Lead, kindly Light,” which they had found printed in a newspaper without the author’s name, though they altered the first line to read “Send kindly Light,” and another line further down. From their book it passed into other collections, with variant readings.
In 1859 Longfellow published a little collection entitled Vespers, hymns for use at the vesper services which he had instituted in his church in Brooklyn. In 1860 he published A Book of Hymns and Tunes for the Sunday School, the Congregation, and the Home, and in 1864 he and Samuel Johnson brought out their second notable book, Hymns of the Spirit, (not to be confused with the hymn book with the same title published by the Beacon Press in 1937). This book contained most of the later hymns written by the two editors, and a good many new hymns by other authors who were glad to contribute them. Its literary level was higher than that of their first book, but it had less popular success, in part, perhaps, because they failed to set the words to tunes, which had become the common practice in the period since their earlier book appeared. In 1876 he brought out A Book of Hymns & Tunes for the Congregation & the Home, a revision of his earlier book with a similar title, in which several of his earlier hymns appear in revised form. In 1887 he printed privately A Few Verses of Many Years.
After his death a small volume entitled Hymns and Verses by Samuel Longfellow was published in 1894 with a very brief introductory note by his niece, Miss Alice M. Longfellow. It included 41 hymns which she thought were his, followed by 30 short poems of no outstanding excellence. Some of the “hymns” included seem never to have come into use as such; some of her attributions were mistaken; she omitted some hymns which he wrote or adapted but cited in his books as “Anonymous” because based on the work of others; and she did not always print the best of extant variant readings. This book, therefore, must be used with caution in compiling the list of Longfellow’s hymns, whether original or adapted.