IT IS NOT ALWAYS MAY
No hay pajaros en los nidos de antano. Translated in lines 12 and 24.
8. freighted: heavily laden.
EXCELSIOR
Mr. Longfellow explained fully the allegory of this poem in a letter to Mr. Henry T. Tuckerman. He said: "This (his intention) was no more than to display, in a series of pictures, the life of a man of genius, resisting all temptations, laying aside all fears, heedless of all warnings, and pressing right on to accomplish his purpose. His motto is Excelsior, 'higher.' He passes through the Alpine village,—through the rough, cold paths of the world—where the peasants cannot understand him, and where his watchword is 'an unknown tongue.' He disregards the happiness of domestic peace, and sees the glaciers—his fate—before him. He disregards the warnings of the old man's wisdom.... He answers to all, 'Higher yet'! The monks of St. Bernard are the representatives of religious forms and ceremonies, and with their oft-repeated prayer mingles the sound of his voice, telling them there is something higher than forms and ceremonies. Filled with these aspirations he perishes without having reached the perfection he longed for; and the voice heard in the air is the promise of immortality and progress ever upward."
Compare with this Tennyson's "Merlin and The Gleam," in which he tells his own experience.
7. falchion: a sword with a broad and slightly curved blade, used in the Middle Ages; hence, poetically, any type of sword.
THE DAY IS DOUR
26. In this stanza and the two following Longfellow describes what his poems have come to mean to us and the place they hold in American life. Compare with Whittier's "Dedication" to "Songs of Labor," Il. 26-36.
WALTER VON DER VOGELWEIDE