12. Explain the points of the simile and discuss its appropriateness. 35. Hospitality is personified, as indicated by the use of the capital. 37. skeleton at the feast. A reference to an eastern custom described by Herodotus in speaking of the Egyptians, as follows: "At their convivial banquets, among the wealthy classes, when they have finished supper, a man carries round in a coffin the image of a dead body carved in wood, made as like as possible in color and workmanship, and in size generally about one or two cubits in length; and showing this to each of the company, he says, "Look upon this, then drink and enjoy yourself; for when dead you will be like this."-Herodotus ii, 78. Tr. Cary. Cf., also, Scott, The Talisman, xxviii.

43. prime. The spring of life; youthful health, strength or beauty. 44. affluence. Abundance, profusion.

57. Cf. Longfellow, The Hanging of the Crane:

The crown of stars is broken in parts;

Its jewels, brighter than the day,
Have one by one been stolen away

To shine in other homes and hearts.

60. Cf. Longfellow, Auf Wiedersehen, Stanza I:

Until we meet again! That is the meaning
Of the familiar words, that men repeat

At parting in the street.

Ah yes, till then! but when death intervening
Rends us asunder, with what ceaseless pain
We wait for the Again!

THE FIRE OF DRIFTWOOD.

Written in 1846. Published in the volume entitled Seaside and Fireside, 1850.

An entry in Longfellow's journal of Sept. 29, 1846, gives an account of the visit to Marblehead, out of which this poem arose. "A delicious drive through Malden and Lynn to Marblehead to visit E. W. at the Devereux Farm by the seaside. Drove across the beautiful sand. What a delicious scene! The ocean in the sunshine changing from the silvery hue of the thin waves upon the beach, through the lighter and deeper green, to the rich purple in the horizon. We recalled the times past and the days when we were at Nahant. The Devereux Farm is by the sea, some miles from Lynn. An old-fashioned farm-house, with low

rooms and narrow windows rattling in the sea-breeze. After dinner we drove to Marblehead strange old place on a rocky promontory, with narrow streets, and strange, ugly houses scattered at random, cornerwise and everywise, thrusting their shoulders into the streets and elbowing the passers out of their way. A dismantled fort looks seaward. We rambled along the breastworks, which are now a public walk, and asked in vain for the Reef of Norman's Woe, which is, nevertheless, in this neighborhood. On returning to the Devereux Farm we sat on the rocks and listened to "the bellowing of the savage sea."

Marblehead is a seaport in Essex county, Massachusetts, fifteen miles north-east of Boston. It is built on an elevated and rocky peninsula four miles in length and two in width, projecting into Massachusetts Bay. It was once incorporated with Salem, which joins it on the west. Many of the houses date from the colonial period, and one of the churches was built in 1714. The population in 1890 was 8,200.

The Fire of Driftwood is an attempt to describe in language, as Tennyson has done in The Days That Are No More, the vague, evanescent feelings of longing and regret which are associated with the memories of the past. Longfellow finds-as does Tennyson also-that he can best accomplish his purpose not by direct lyric expression, but by calling in the aid of the concrete to typify for him his own abstract feelings and emotions. Both in the driftwood, speaking as it does of the wrecks of the past, as well as in the fitful and expiring flame, he finds a symbol of the "long-lost ventures of the heart," the dreams, the yearnings, the friendships, which have long expired, leaving only the sad memory in the heart.

The poet does not attempt to spiritualize his theme or to show the effect of such musings on the mind, as does Wordsworth. Cf. Intimations of Immortality: "The thought of our past years in me doth breed perpetual benediction." As in Tennyson's lyric, referred to above, the poem simply aims at giving expression to the mood, without examining into the relations of such moods to life.

It will be observed also that in the setting of the poem the poet has depicted such details as are in keeping with the general theme. As "sad and strange" as are the days that are no more, is the strange, oldfashioned town with its dismantled fort and quaint houses. The sea breeze is damp and cold, and the gloom of the room is in keeping with the gloom of the heart. Finally, the strangeness of the voices heard while the speaker is unseen, suggests the startling strangeness of our phopes and longings seen through the intervening years.

POETIC FORM.-In lyrical quality this poem resembles The Day is Done more than any other contained in these selections. Both poems are written in a decidedly minor key. In metrical form The Fire of Driftwood is quite regular. There is little variation from the almost uniform iambic tetrameter measure. Point out any instances of the

introduction of trochaic feet, and any examples of slurred syllables.

5-8. port. The harbor of Marblehead.

town, Marblehead.

lighthouse. On the point of the peninsula at the entrance to the harbor.

dismantled fort. Fort Sewall, constructed in 1742.

13-24. Cf. Scott, Lady of the Lake, Canto i, 33:

Again returned the scenes of youth,

Of confident undoubting truth;

Again his soul he interchanged

With friends whose hearts were long estranged,
They come, in dim procession led,

The cold, the faithless, and the dead;

As warm each hand, each brow as gay,

As if they parted yesterday.

17-20. Cf. Clough, As Ships Becalmed at Eve:

E'en so-but why the tale reveal

Of those, whom year by year unchanged,
Brief absence join'd anew to feel,

Astounded, soul from soul estranged?

28. a mournful rustling-which found expression in the mournful tones of the speakers.

29-32. Under such conditions the mind is naturally inclined to reverie, and conversation so subdued is easily broken. The leaping and expiring flame diverts the attention from mournful reminiscences of past life, only to fix the sympathies upon kindred themes.

41-4. The various sounds which "mingle vaguely" with their speech,-wind, ocean, and driftwood-fire, each and all speak to them of past wrecks and ventures lost at sea; hence, instead of breaking harshly in upon the "fancies floating through the brain," they are rather in sympathetic accord with those reveries whose kindred theme is the long-lost ventures of youth-wrecked friendships and wrecked hopes,

43. In the Middle Ages, when the fortunes of merchant vessels were much more uncertain than at present, the term venture was applied to the merchandise and hence also, as here, to the vessel itself.

Cf. Merchant of Venice, Act I, Sc. 1.:

Believe me, sir, had I such venture forth

The better part of my affections would
Be with my hopes abroad.

46. It was too true that life had its long-lost ventures, the thought of which brought sadness to the mind.

Written in 1848.

RESIGNATION.

Published in Seaside and Fireside, 1850.

Resignation was called forth by the death of Longfellow's infant daughter, Frances, who died Sept. 11, 1848, when scarcely one year of age. As the poet's journal for these months indicates, he was deeply affected by her loss.

The thought of the poem falls naturally into three parts, the first four stanzas constituting the introduction, the next seven the main thought of the poem, and the last two the conclusion. The introductory thought, based on scriptural teaching, is a restatement in figurative language, of a very trite truth. In the main body of the poem the author endeavors to raise the thought above the commonplace, by the expansion in concrete form of the idea of the soul's continued growth after death. This theme has been made use of by other poets, notably Browning; but Longfellow in this poem has endeavored to make a more practical use of it than they, by applying it to actual human life as a means of consolation. The last two stanzas draw the inevitable conclusion from the preceding thought and justify Resignation as a title for the poem.

POETIC FORM.-Resignation may be classified with the Psalm of Life as a lyric of reflection. The tone of Resignation is, however, more subdued than that of The Psalm. This difference of effect is produced partly by the use of the long pentameter lines in Resignation, lengthened still further by the use of feminine endings, and partly by the substitution of the iambic measure for the trochaic. Lines 35 and 45 exemplify the usual deviations from the standard foot.

7. Cf. Matthew ii, 18:

"In Rama was there a voice heard, lamentation and weeping and great mourning, Rachel weeping for her children, and would not be comforted because they are not."

9-12. Cf. II. Corinthians, iv, 17: but for a moment, worketh for us weight of glory."

"For our light affliction which is

a far more exceeding and eternal

10. Cf. earthly damps, 1. 14. Noxious vapors and exhalations from the earth produce disease. Hence the ground is spoken of as the source of evil.

19. Elysian-Heavenly; blessed. Elysium, in Greek myth, is the abode of the blessed after death.

25. Cf. Browning, Old Pictures in Florence, xxi, xxii :

There's a fancy some lean to, and others hate

That when this life is ended, begins

New work for the soul in another state,

Where it strives and gets weary, loses and wins:

Where the strong and the weak, this world's congeries,

Repeat in large what they practised in small,

Through life after life in unlimited series;

Only the scales to be changed, that's all.

Yet I hardly know.

When a soul has seen

By the means of Evil, that Good is best,

And through earth and its noise, what is heaven's serene,

When our faith in the same has stood the test

Why, the child grown man, you burn the rod;

The uses of labor are surely done;

There remaineth a rest for the people of God:

And I have had troubles enough, for one.

33-4. the bond which nature gives. Love, the strongest link of connection between parent and child.

Cf. Wordsworth's Michael:

Instinctive tenderness, the same
Blind spirit that is in the blood of all.

51-2. Cf. Tennyson's In Memoriam, v. :

I sometimes hold it half a sin

To put in words the grief I feel.