Questions
1. Make a list of the heroes whom you can remember in the procession.
2. Was there any one of them whom you did not know about before?
3. Which one would you like to read more about?
4. Do you know any facts about any of these heroes that are not told in this story? If so, write a title for the story you can tell, and be ready to tell it to your classmates.
5. Do you know the name of any hero whom you would have added to those in the procession?
6. Some of the figures are not mentioned by name. Give the names of any of these you remember.
[THE SKELETON IN ARMOR]
In the poem that follows, the poet tells us of a strange and fearful visitor that once came to him—the spirit of some ancient viking of the Northland all dressed in armor and carrying sword and shield.
In order to understand the poem, you must remember that the vikings were bold sea-rovers and fierce warriors who set out in their long swift boats in search after plunder and adventure. Some of them are even said to have come over to America long before Columbus ever dreamed of the new world. The poem was suggested to Mr. Longfellow by the finding of a skeleton clad in broken and rusted armor and buried in the sands of the New England shore, and by a very ancient tower that must have been built on the coast by the Northmen many years before 1492. These two facts are true, but of course the story that the poet made of them is merely a good story.
The poet's strange guest is one of these sea-robbers, who tells how as a youth he had won the love of a blue-eyed princess of the far North, only to find that her father forbade their marriage. In the first stanza the poet asks a question; the rest of the poem tells what the spirit of the viking said.
But you will want to read the story as the poet has told it.
"Speak! speak! thou fearful guest!
Who, with they hollow breast
Still in rude armor drest,
Comest to daunt me!
Wrapt not in Eastern balms,
But with thy fleshless palms
Stretched, as if asking alms,
Why dost thou haunt me?"
"Then, from those cavernous eyes
Pale flashes seemed to rise,
As when the Northern skies
Gleam in December;
And, like the water's flow
Under December's snow,
Came a dull voice of woe
From the heart's chamber.
"I was a Viking old!
My deeds, though manifold,
No Skald in song has told,
No Saga taught thee!
Take heed, that in thy verse
Thou dost the tale rehearse,
Else dread a dead man's curse;
For this I sought thee.
"Far in the Northern Land,
By the wild Baltic's strand,
I, with my childish hand,
Tamed the gerfalcon;
And, with my skates fast-bound,
Skimmed the half-frozen Sound,
That the poor whimpering hound
Trembled to walk on.