Green gate of Paradise! let in the sun!
Unclose thy portals, that we may behold
Those fields elysian, where bright rivers run,
And waving harvests bend like seas of gold.

The poem was published with this additional stanza in The Democratic Review for December, 1841, but when it came to be added to the volume the stanza wa dropped.

I LIKE that ancient Saxon phrase, which calls

The burial-ground God's-Acre ! It is just;

It consecrates each grave within its walls, And breathes a benison o'er the sleeping dust.

God's-Acre! Yes, that blessed name imparts

Comfort to those who in the grave have

sown

The seed that they had garnered in their hearts,

Their bread of life, alas! no more their

own.

Into its furrows shall we all be cast,

In the sure faith, that we shall rise again At the great harvest, when the archangel's blast

Shall winnow, like a fan, the chaff and grain.

Then shall the good stand in immortal bloom,

In the fair gardens of that second birth; And each bright blossom mingle its perfume With that of flowers, which never bloomed

on earth.

With thy rude ploughshare, Death, turn up the sod,

And spread the furrow for the seed we

Sow;

This is the field and Acre of our God, This is the place where human harvests grow.

TO THE RIVER CHARLES

The three friends hinted at in the eighth stanza wer Charles Sumner, Charles Folsom, and Charles Amory. RIVER! that in silence windest

Through the meadows, bright and free

Till at length thy rest thou findest In the bosom of the sea!

Four long years of mingled feeling,
Half in rest, and half in strife,
I have seen thy waters stealing
Onward, like the stream of life.

Thou hast taught me, Silent River!
Many a lesson, deep and long;
Thou hast been a generous giver;
I can give thee but a song.

Oft in sadness and in illness,

I have watched thy current glide, Till the beauty of its stillness Overflowed me, like a tide.

And in better hours and brighter,
When I saw thy waters gleam,
I have felt my heart beat lighter,
And leap onward with thy stream.

Not for this alone I love thee,

Nor because thy waves of blue From celestial seas above thee

Take their own celestial hue.

Where yon shadowy woodlands hide thee,
And thy waters disappear,
Friends I love have dwelt beside thee,
And have made thy margin dear.

More than this; thy name reminds me
Of three friends, all true and tried ;
And that name, like magic, binds me
Closer, closer to thy side.

Friends my soul with joy remembers! How like quivering flames they start, When I fan the living embers

On the hearth-stone of my heart!

Tis for this, thou Silent River!
That my spirit leans to thee;
Thou hast been a generous giver,
Take this idle song from me.

BLIND BARTIMEUS

Written November 3, 1841. Mr. Longfellow writes under that date to Mr. Ward: "I was reading this

remarkable for their beauty. At once the whole scene presented itself to my mind in lively colors, - the walls of Jericho, the cold wind through the gateway, the ragged, blind beggar, his shrill cry, the tumultuous crowd, the serene Christ, the miracle; and these things took the form I have given them above, where, perforce, I have retained the striking Greek expressions of entreaty, comfort, and healing; though I am well aware that Greek was not spoken at Jericho. . . . I think I shall add to the title, supposed to be written by a monk of the Middle Ages,' as it is in the legend style."

BLIND Bartimeus at the gates
Of Jericho in darkness waits;

He hears the crowd;- he hears a breath
Say, "It is Christ of Nazareth!"
And calls, in tones of agony,
Ἰησοῦ, ἐλέησόν με !

The thronging multitudes increase;
Blind Bartimeus, hold thy peace!
But still, above the noisy crowd,
The beggar's cry is shrill and loud;
Until they say,
"He calleth thee !"
Θάρσει· ἔγειραι, φωνεῖ σε !

Then saith the Christ, as silent stands
The crowd, "What wilt thou at my
hands?"

And he replies, "Oh, give me light!
Rabbi, restore the blind man's sight."
And Jesus answers, "Traуe'

Ἡ πίστις σου σέσωκέ σε !

Ye that have eyes, yet cannot see,
In darkness and in misery,
Recall those mighty Voices Three,
Ἰησοῦ, ἐλέησόν με !

Θάρσει· ἔγειραι, ὕπαγε !
Ἡ πίστις σου σέσωκέ σε !

THE GOBLET OF LIFE

Mr. Longfellow, writing to Mr. Ward, November 3, 1841, says: "I shall send him [Mr. Benjamin] a new poem, called simply Fennel, which I do not copy here on account of its length. It is as good, perhaps, as Excelsior. Hawthorne, who is passing the night with me, likes it better." He afterward changed the title to that which the poem now bears.

FILLED is Life's goblet to the brim ;
And though my eyes with tears are dim,
I see its sparkling bubbles swim,
And chant a melancholy hymn
With solemn voice and slow.

Mark, in Greek, the last seven verses of which contain the story of blind Bartimeus, and always seemed to me

Conceal the goblet's shade or sheen,

Nor maddening draughts of Hippocrene, Like gleams of sunshine, flash between

Thick leaves of mistletoe.

This goblet, wrought with curious art, Is filled with waters, that upstart, When the deep fountains of the heart, By strong convulsions rent apart,

Are running all to waste.

And as it mantling passes round,
With fennel is it wreathed and crowned,
Whose seed and foliage sun-imbrowned
Are in its waters steeped and drowned,
And give a bitter taste.

Above the lowly plants it towers,
The fennel, with its yellow flowers,
And in an earlier age than ours
Was gifted with the wondrous powers,
Lost vision to restore.

It gave new strength, and fearless mood;
And gladiators, fierce and rude,
Mingled it in their daily food;
And he who battled and subdued,

A wreath of fennel wore.

Then in Life's goblet freely press
The leaves that give it bitterness,
Nor prize the colored waters less,
For in thy darkness and distress

New light and strength they give!

And he who has not learned to know
How false its sparkling bubbles show,
How bitter are the drops of woe,
With which its brim may overflow,
He has not learned to live.

The prayer of Ajax was for light;
Through all that dark and desperate
fight,

The blackness of that noonday night,
He asked but the return of sight,

To see his foeman's face.

Let our unceasing, earnest prayer
Be, too, for light, for strength to bear
Our portion of the weight of care,
That crushes into dumb despair

One half the human race.

O suffering, sad humanity! O ye afflicted ones, who lie

Childhood is the bough, where slumbered
Birds and blossoms many-numbered;
Age, that bough with snows encumbered.

Gather, then, each flower that grows,
When the young heart overflows,
To embalm that tent of snows.

Bear a lily in thy hand;
Gates of brass cannot withstand
One touch of that magic wand.

Bear through sorrow, wrong, and ruth,
In thy heart the dew of youth,
On thy lips the smile of truth.

Oh, that dew, like balm, shall steal
Into wounds that cannot heal,
Even as sleep our eyes doth seal;

And that smile, like sunshine, dart
Into many a sunless heart,
For a smile of God thou art.

EXCELSIOR

The original manuscript of Excelsior, showing the several drafts and interlineations, is preserved in the library of Harvard University. It was written on the back of a note from Mr. Sumner, and is dated at the close: "September 28, 1841. Half past 3 o'clock, morning. Now to bed." The suggestion of the poem came to Mr. Longfellow from a scrap of newspaper, a part of the heading of one of the New York journals, bearing the seal of the State, -a shield, with a rising sun, and the motto Excelsior. The intention of the poem was intimated in a letter from Mr. Longfellow written some time after to Mr. C. K. Tuckerman :

"I have had the pleasure of receiving your note in regard to the poem Excelsior and very willingly give you my intention in writing it. This 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 villagethrough the rough, cold paths of the world-where the peasants cannot understand him, and where his watchword is in an unknown tongue.' He disregards the happiness of domestic peace and sees the glaciers - his fate-before him. He disregards the warning of the old man's wisdom and the fascinations of woman's love. He answers to all, Higher yet!' The monks of 8t. 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 beard in the air is the promise of immortality and progrese ever upward. You will perceive that Excelsior, an adjective of the comparative degree, is used adver bially; a use justified by the best Latin writers." This he afterwards found to be a mistake, and explained excelsior as the last word of the phrase Scopus meus est excelrior.

Five years after writing this poem, Mr. Longfellow made the following entry in his diary: "December 8,

1846. Looking over Brainard's poems, I find, in a piece called The Mocking-Bird, this passage:—

Now his note

Mounts to the play-ground of the lark, high up
Quite to the sky. And then again it falls
As a lost star falls down into the marsh.
Now, when in Excelsior I said,

A voice fell, like a falling star,

Brainard's poem was not in my mind, nor had I in all probability ever read it. Felton said at the time that the same image was in Euripides, or Pindar, I forget which. Of a truth, one cannot strike a spade into the soil of Parnassus, without disturbing the bones of some dead poet."

Dr. Holmes remarks of Excelsior that "the repetition of the aspiring exclamation which gives its name to the poem, lifts every stanza a step higher than the one which preceded it."

THE shades of night were falling fast,
As through an Alpine village passed
A youth, who bore, 'mid snow and ice,
A banner with the strange device,
Excelsior!

His brow was sad; his eye beneath,
Flashed like a falchion from its sheath,
And like a silver clarion rung
The accents of that unknown tongue,
Excelsior!

In happy homes he saw the light
Of household fires gleam warm and bright;
Above, the spectral glaciers shone,
And from his lips escaped a groan,
Excelsior!

"Try not the Pass!" the old man said; "Dark lowers the tempest overhead, The roaring torrent is deep and wide!" And loud that clarion voice replied, Excelsior!

"Oh stay," the maiden said, "and rest
Thy weary head upon this breast!
A tear stood in his bright blue eye,
But still he answered, with a sigh,
Excelsior!

"Beware the pine-tree's withered branch'
Beware the awful avalanche !"
This was the peasant's last Good-night,
A voice replied, far up the height,
Excelsior!

At break of day, as heavenward
The pious monks of Saint Bernard
Uttered the oft-repeated prayer,
A voice cried through the startled air,
Excelsior!

A traveller, by the faithful hound,
Half-buried in the snow was found,
Still grasping in his hand of ice
That banner with the strange device,
Excelsior!

There in the twilight cold and gray,
Lifeless, but beautiful, he lay,
And from the sky, serene and far,
A voice fell, like a falling star,
Excelsior!

In the spring of 1842 Mr. Longfellow obtained leave of absence from college duties for six months and went abroad to try the virtues of the water-cure at Marienberg on the Rhine. When absent in Europe in the summer of 1842 Mr. Longfellow made an acquaintance with Ferdinand Freiligrath, the poet, which ripened into a life-long friendship. It was to this friend that he wrote shortly after his return to America [on leaving Bristol for New York]: "We sailed (or rather, paddled) out in the very teeth of a violent west wind, which blew for a week,-Frau die alte sass gekehrt rückwärts nach Osten' with a vengeance. We had a very boisterous passage. I was not out of my berth more than twelve hours for the first twelve days. I was in the forward part of the vessel, where all the great waves struck and broke with voices of thunder. There, 'cribbed, cabined, and coufined,' I passed fifteen days. During this time I wrote seven poems on slavery; I meditated upon them in the stormy, sleepless nights, and wrote them down with a pencil in the morning. A small window in the side of the vessel admitted light into my berth, and there I lay on my back and soothed my soul with songs. I send you some copies."

He had published the poems at once on his arrival in America in December, 1842, in a thin volume of thirty

TO WILLIAM E. CHANNING

THE pages of thy book I read,

And as I closed each one, My heart, responding, ever said, "Servant of God! well done!"

Well done! Thy words are great and bold; At times they seem to me,

Like Luther's, in the days of old,

Half-battles for the free.

Go on, until this land revokes

The old and chartered Lie,

The feudal curse, whose whips and yokes Insult humanity.

A voice is ever at thy side

Speaking in tones of might, Like the prophetic voice, that cried To John in Patmos, "Write!"

Write and tell out this bloody tale ; Record this dire eclipse,

This Day of Wrath, this Endless Wail, This dread Apocalypse!

one pages in glazed paper covers, adding to the seven an eighth, previously written, poem, The Warning. It is possible that his immediate impulse to write came from his recent association with Dickens, whose American Notes, with its "grand chapter on slavery," he speaks of having read in London.

The book naturally received attention out of all proportion to its size. It was impossible for one at that time to range himself on one side or other of the great controversy without inviting criticism, not so much of literary art as of ethical position. To his father, Mr. Longfellow wrote: "How do you like the Slavery Poems? I think they make an impression; I have received many letters about them, which I will send to you by the first good opportunity. Some persons regret that I should have written them, but for my own part I am glad of what I have done. My feelings prompted me, and my judgment approved, and still approves." The poem on Dr. Channing was written when the poet was ignorant of the great preacher's death.

"Since that event," he says in his prefatory note to the volume, "the poem addressed to him is no longer appropriate. I have decided, however, to let it remain as it was written, in testimony of my admiration for a great and good man."

THE SLAVE'S DREAM
BESIDE the ungathered rice he lay,
His sickle in his hand;

His breast was bare, his matted hair
Was buried in the sand.

Again, in the mist and shadow of sleep,
He saw his Native Land.

Wide through the landscape of his dreams
The lordly Niger flowed;
Beneath the palm-trees on the plain
Once more a king he strode;
And heard the tinkling caravans
Descend the mountain road.

He saw once more his dark-eyed queen
Among her children stand;

They clasped his neck, they kissed his cheeks,

They held him by the hand!
A tear burst from the sleeper's lids
And fell into the sand.

And then at furious speed he rode Along the Niger's bank;