Longfellow’s second volume, Ballads and Other Poems, contains only four translations, but one of them is Tegnér’s Children of the Lord’s Supper, in three hundred and fifty hexameter verses. The Belfry of Bruges contains a handful of translations from the German, including a lyric of Heine’s done in a way to cause regret that Longfellow did not put more of the Buch der Lieder into English. In The Seaside and the Fireside is given entire ‘The Blind Girl of Castèl Cuillè’ by the barber-poet Jasmin.
The translations bulk so large and are so plainly a labor of love that it would seem as if Longfellow regarded such work an important part of his poetic mission. At the present time there is no need to urge the translator to ‘aggrandize his office.’ He does so cheerfully. Sometimes it is done for him. Are we not told that Fitzgerald was a greater poet than Omar Khayyám? In 1840 the office had not grown so great.
This interpretative work by no means ended when Longfellow’s fame as a creative poet was at its height and there was every incentive to build for himself. When compiling (with Felton’s aid) the Poets and Poetry of Europe he translated many pieces for the volume. He gave years to reproducing in English the majesty of Dante’s verse, counting himself fortunate if his transcript, made in all reverence and love, approached its great original. This disinterestedness in the exercise of his art is so greatly to his honor that praise becomes impertinent. Catholic in his attitude toward workers in the field of poesy, Longfellow recognized the truth of the line
Many the songs, but song is one.
Longfellow’s early verse had all the requisites for popularity; it is clear, melodious, simple in its lessons, tinged with sentiment and melancholy, dashed with romantic color, and abounding in phrases which catch the ear and pulsate in the brain. The poet voices the longings, regrets, fears, aspirations, the restlessness, or the faith, which go to make up the warp and woof of everyday life. An allegory, a moralized legend, a song, a meditation, a ballad,—these are what we find in turning the leaves of Voices of the Night or the Ballads. Here is a certain popular quality not to be attained by taking thought. ‘A Psalm of Life,’ ‘Flowers,’ ‘The Beleaguered City,’ ‘The Village Blacksmith,’ ‘The Rainy Day,’ ‘Maidenhood,’ ‘Excelsior,’ ‘The Bridge,’ ‘The Day is Done,’ ‘Resignation,’ ‘The Builders,’ are a few among many illustrations of the type of verse which carried Longfellow’s name into every home where poetry is read. The range of emotions expressed is of the simplest. There is feeling, but no thinking. The robust reader who perchance has battened of late on sturdy diet, like Fifine at the Fair, hardly knows what to make of these poems, so little resistance do they offer to the mind. The meaning lies on the surface. But it is no less true that their essence is poetical. The one thing never lacking is the note of distinction. The human quality to be found in such a poem as the ‘Footsteps of Angels’ almost overpowers the poetic element. Nevertheless the poetry is there, and by virtue of this Longfellow’s early work lives.
Other poems show his scholar’s love for the past. They express the natural longing felt by an inhabitant of a crude new land for countries where romance lies thick because history is ancient. ‘The Belfry of Bruges’ and ‘Nuremberg’ are examples. Moreover Longfellow’s ballads have genuine quality. ‘The Skeleton in Armor’ illustrates his study of Scandinavian literature. ‘The Wreck of the Hesperus’ is based on an actual incident which came under his notice. The criticism reflecting on this ballad because the poet had never seen the reef of Norman’s Woe, is superfine. Longfellow was born and reared almost within a stone’s throw of the Atlantic. His knowledge of the ocean began with his first lessons in life. His sea poems are distinctive. ‘The Building of the Ship,’ ‘The Fire of Driftwood,’ ‘Sir Humphrey Gilbert,’ ‘The Secret of the Sea,’ ‘The Lighthouse,’ ‘Chrysaor,’ and ‘Seaweed,’ whether or not they deserve the praise Henley gives them, will always be accounted among Longfellow’s characteristic pieces.
Two other works may be noted in this section: the Poems on Slavery and a play, The Spanish Student. The first of these, though academic, shows how early Longfellow took his rank with the unpopular minority. The Spanish Student, a play based on La Gitanilla of Cervantes, was written con amore, and ‘with a celerity of which I did not think myself capable.’ Longfellow had great hopes of its success, though he seems not to have been ambitious for a dramatic presentation. The success was to come through the reader. The Spanish Student shows that Longfellow could have written good acting plays had he chosen to submit to the irritations and rebuffs which are the inevitable preliminary to dramatic good fortune.
VI
EVANGELINE, HIAWATHA, MILES STANDISH, TALES OF A WAYSIDE INN
Evangeline and Hiawatha mark the climax of Longfellow’s contemporary popularity and may be regarded as the principal bulwarks of his fame. There is an anecdote to the effect that Hawthorne, to whom the subject of Evangeline was proposed, was not attracted by it, while Longfellow seized on it eagerly. Such was the divergence of their genius. Longfellow’s mind always sought the fair uplands of thought, checkered with alternate sunshine and shadow; it did not willingly traverse deep ravines, gloomy and mysterious, or haunted groves such as those about which Hawthorne’s spirit loved to keep. The instinct which led the one poet to reject the narrative was as infallible as that which led the other to appropriate it.
The tale of Acadie is engrossing in its very nature, and whether told in prose or verse must always invite, even chain, the attention. It is dramatic without being melodramatic. The characters are not mere ‘persons’ of the drama, they are types. Evangeline will always stand for something more than the figure of an unhappy Acadian girl bereft of her lover. As Longfellow has painted her, she is the incarnation of beauty, devotion, maidenly pride, self-abnegation. So too of the other characters, Gabriel, old Basil, Benedict; each has that added strength which a character conceived dramatically is bound to have if it shall prove typical as well.