I can see the breezy dome of groves, The shadows of Deering's Woods ; And the verse of that sweet old song, It flutters and murmurs still : "A boy's will is the wind's will, And the thoughts of youth are long, long thoughts." I remember the gleams and glooms that dart Across the schoolboy's brain; The song and the silence in the heart, That in part are prophecies, and in part Are longings wild and vain. And the voice of that fitful song Sings on, and is never still: "A boy's will is the wind's will, And the thoughts of youth are long, long thoughts." There are things of which I may not speak; There are dreams that cannot die ; There are thoughts that make the strong heart weak, And bring a pallor into the cheek, And a mist before the eye. And the words of that fatal song Come over me like a chill: "A boy's will is the wind's will, And the thoughts of youth are long, long thoughts." Strange to me now are the forms I meet When I visit the dear old town; But the native air is pure and sweet, And the trees that o'ershadow each well-known street, As they balance up and down, Are singing the beautiful song, Are sighing and whispering still: "A boy's will is the wind's will, And the thoughts of youth are long, long thoughts," And Deering's Woods are fresh and fair, And with joy that is almost pain My heart goes back to wander there, And among the dreams of the days that were, I find my lost youth again. And the strange and beautiful song, The groves are repeating it still: "A boy's will is the wind's will, And the thoughts of youth are long, long thoughts." In "The Ropewalk" and "Kéramos" we have further. sketches from boyhood's days. The school in which 66 he had his "gleams and glooms" was a dame's school, kept by Ma'am Fellows, whose only recorded maxim was that One should never smile in school hours." Poor, grim, little schoolmistress! she must have come from Salem. After he had learnt to spell at the knees of this instructress, the boy attended no fewer than three other schools, the last being the Portland Academy, wherein Jacob Abbott, author of "The Young Christian," was then an usher. During his schoolboy days Longfellow was ever studious, but wholly averse from sports and any exercise save walking. True, when he was a very little fellow, he rose in arms like a true-born patriot. His aunt wrote thus after the outbreak of the war in 1812: "Canada must be subdued, or the opportunity will be lost. Our little Henry is ready to march; he had his gun prepared and his head powdered a week ago." And two years later he writes to his father: "I wish you to buy me a drum." But there is a family tradition of his having begged a servant on a glorious Fourth of July to put cotton in his ears to deaden the sound of the cannon. His childish nerves shrank from noise, and even in late life he closed the shutters of his room during any thunderstorm. One of his book-plates bore for motto, "Non clamor, sed amor." Once, in school days, his elder brother took him to the woods with a gun, but he soon returned with tears in his eyes. He had shot a robin, and that was the last time he ever pulled a trigger. At home he enjoyed music, and there were many fine books. He pored over Cowper's Poems and "Lalla Rookh," declaimed from Ossian, and procured unending delight from the "Arabian Nights" and "Don Quixote." But the volume of volumes to him was Washington Irving's "Sketch Book." "Every reader has his first book:-I mean to say, one book among many others which in early youth first fascinates his imagination, and at once excites and satisfies the desires of his mind. To me this first book was the 'Sketch Book' of Washington Irving. I was a schoolboy when it was published, and read each succeeding number with ever-increasing wonder and delight, spell-bound by its pleasant humour, its melancholy tenderness, its atmosphere of reverie—nay, even by its gray-brown covers, the shaded letters of its titles, and the fine, clean type, which seemed an outward symbol of its style. The old fascination remains about it, and whenever I open its pages, I open also that mysterious door which leads back into the haunted chambers of youth." Henry went twice every Sunday to the Unitarian Church, carrying in winter his mother's foot-stove, in summer her nosegay. His first attempt at verse-writing was undertaken "to order" at school, when he was but nine years old. "You can write words, can you not?" said his teacher. "Yes." "You can put them together?" "Yes." "Then take your slate, go out behind the school-house, look about you, and write me something about what you see. That will be a composition." So Henry went forth, and he spied a fine turnip growing by the side of a barn. He had been allowed only half an hour for the execution of his task, therefore he made speed to study the turnip, and within the prescribed number of minutes took to the master a few verses wherein he had set forth his ideas on the vegetable that had arrested his attention. Thus early, some of his detractors might say, did he manifest his genius for the commonplace. At thirteen he wrote in Portland Academy a song called "Venice," and as the lines were preserved, with his signature attached in full, they were produced in America some time ago as the earliest extant offspring of his muse. However, a critic pointed out that the piece was merely an extract from the poetical works of Rogers, and most probably it had been copied out as a task. And now we come to the first published verses really written by the poet. Not far from Hiram, in Maine, there is a pretty little lake with a sandy beach, called Lovewell's (or Lovell's) Pond, and this was the scene of a somewhat heroic encounter between white settlers and Indians during the Franco-Indian War. "Lovell's Fight," as history has named this encounter, laid hold of young Longfellow's imagination. He worked up the story into a set of verses, and one night dropped his manuscript into the letter-box of The Argus. The deed was watched by an encouraging group of schoolfellows. But expectation was baulked; week after week passed, and the newspaper columns were scanned in vain. Then the young author sought the editor boldly, and asked for the return of the manuscript —a favour that was at once granted. The editor of Portland's rival paper-The Gazette-was now treated with, and this gentleman was less difficult to please. He printed the poem in his issue of November 17, 1820, and thus acquired the honour of being the first to help the young man towards recognition from the public. On the evening of November 16th, the poor lad stood for an hour at the door of the printing-office in Exchange Street, shivering with cold, but listening to the jarring sound of the ink-balls and the presses that were thudding as regularly as his own beating heart. Was it his poem they were thus labouring to multiply? In the morning, how slowly his father unfolded the damp sheet, and how carefully he dried it at the fire ere beginning to read it! And how much foreign news there seemed to be in it! At last Henry and a sympathetic sister who shared his secret obtained a peep over their parent's shoulder-and the poem was there! They spent most of the day reading it. In the evening they went to play with a son of Judge Mellen, and while the Judge was sitting by the fire in the twilight, with the young folk and a few elder neighbours around him, he said: "Did you see the piece in to-day's paper? Very stiff; remarkably stiff! Moreover, it is all borrowed, every word of it.” This was the first criticism Longfellow received from his public, and it caused him to wet his pillow with tears |