# Suggestive programs for special day exercises/Longfellow Day

LONGFELLOW DAY.
FEBRUARY TWENTY-SEVEN.
(All the selections except the first song are from the pen of Longfellow.)
Note.—The larger schools may be glad to make use of H., M. & Co’s dramatized form of “ Miles Standish,” which has been arranged for school exhibitions.
THE POET AND HIS SONGS.
For voices pursue him by day
And haunt him by night.
And he listens and needs must obey.
When the Angel says: “ Write!”
SUBJECTS FOR ESSAY.
Longfellow’s Travels.
The Homes of Longfellow.
Longfellow’s Works.
Evangeline’s Sad Quest. The Poet’s Sorrow.
Mission of The Poet.
THE CHILDREN’S HOUR.
(To the poet's own children.)
THE TWO ANGELS.
(This poem commemorates the death of Lowell’s wife and the birth of one of Longfellow’s children.)
Two angels, one of Life and one of Death,
Passed o’er our village as the morning broke;
The dawn was on their faces and beneath,
The somber houses hearsed with plumes of smoke.
Their attitude and aspect were the same.
Alike their features and their robes of white;
But one was crowned with amaranth, as with flame,
And one with asphodels, like flakes of light.   I saw them pass on their celestial way;
Then said I, with deep fear and doubt oppressed,
“Beat not so loud, my heart, lest thou betray
The place where thy beloved are at rest!”   And he who wore the crown of asphodels,
Descending at my door began to knock;
And my soul sank within me, as in wells
The waters sink before an earthquake’s shock.
I recognized the nameless agony,
The terror and the tremor and the pain,
That oft before had filled or haunted me
And now returned with threefold strength again.
The door I opened to my heavenly guest
And listened, for I thought I heard God’s voice;
And, knowing whatso’er he sent was best.
Dared neither to lament nor to rejoice.
Then with a smile that filled the house with light,
“ My errand is not Death, but Life,” he said!
And ere I answered, passing out of sight,
On his celestial embassy he sped.
’Twas at thy door, O friend! and not at mine,
The angel with the amaranthine wreath,
Pausing, descended, and with voice divine,
Whispered a word that had a sound like Death.   Then fell upon the house a sudden gloom, A shadow on those features fair and thin;
And softly, from that hushed and darkened room.
Two angels issued, where but one went in.
All is of God! If he but wave his hand.
The mists collect, the rain falls thick and loud.
Till, with a smile of light on sea and land,
Lo! he looks back from the departing cloud.
Angels of Life and Death alike are his!
Without his leave they pass no threshold o’er;
Who, then, would wish or dare, believing this.
Against his messengers to shut the door?
THE OLD CLOCK ON THE STAIRS.
Never here, forever there,
Where all parting, pain, and care,
And death and time shall disappear,— Forever there, but never here!
The horologe of Eternity
Sayeth this incessantly,— “Forever—never!
Never—forever!”
CLASS EXERCISE.
Thou, too, sail on, O Ship of State!
Sail on, O Union, strong and great!
Humanity with all its fears,
With all the hopes of future years.
Is hanging breathless on thy fate!
We know what master laid thy keel.
What workmen wrought thy ribs of steel.
Who made each mast, and sail, and rope.
What anvils rang, what hammers beat,
In what a forge and what a heat
Were shaped the anchors of thy hope!
Fear not each sudden sound and shock,
’T is of the wave and not the rock;
’T is but the flapping of the sail.
And not a rent made by the gale!
In spite of rock and tempest’s roar.
In spite of false lights on the shore,
Sail on, nor fear to breast the sea!
Our hearts, our hopes, are all with thee,
Our hearts, our hopes, our prayers, our tears.
Our faith triumphant o’er our fears.
Are all with thee,—are all with thee!
THE BUILDERS.
Thus alone can we attain
To those turrets, where the eye
Sees the world as one vast plain
And one boundless reach of sky.
PAUL REVERE’S RIDE.
Listen, my children, and you shall hear
Of the midnight ride of Paul Revere,
On the eighteenth of April, in Seventy-five;
Hardly a man is now alive
Who remembers that famous day and year.   He said to his friend, “If the British march
By land or sea from the town to-night,
Hang a lantern aloft in the belfry arch
Of the North Church Tower as a signal light—
One, if by land, and two, if by sea;
And I on the opposite shore will be,
Ready to ride and spread the alarm
Through every Middlesex village and farm,
For the country folk to be up and to arm.”   Then he said, “ Good night!” and with muffled ear
Silently rowed to the Charlestown shore,
Just as the moon rose over the bay.
Where swinging wide at her moorings lay
The Somerset, British man-of-war;
A phantom ship, with each mast and spar
Across the moon like a prison bar,
And a huge black hulk that was magnified
By its own reflection in the tide.
Meanwhile, his friend, through alley and street.
Wanders and watches with eager ears.
Till in the silence around him he hears
The muster of men at the barrack door.
The sound of arms and the tramp of feet.
And the measured tread of the grenadiers,
Marching down to their boats on the shore.
Then he climbed the tower of the Old North Church,
By the wooden stairs, with stealthy tread.
To the belfry-chamber overhead.
And startled the pigeons from their perch
On the sombre rafters that round him made
Masses and moving shapes of shade,— By the trembling ladder, steep and tall,
To the highest window in the wall,
Where he paused to listen and look down
A moment on the roofs of the town.
And the moonlight flowing over all.
Beneath in the churchyard lay the dead,
In their night-encampment on the hill.
Wrapped in silence so deep and still
That he could hear, like a sentinel’s tread,
The watchful night-wind, as it went
Creeping along from tent to tent.
And seeming to whisper, “ All is well!”
A moment only he feels the spell
Of the place and the hour, and the secret dread
Of the lonely belfry and the dead;
For suddenly all his thoughts are bent
On a shadowy something far away, Where the river widens to meet the bay,—
A line of black that bends and floats
On the rising tide, like a bridge of boats.
Meanwhile, impatient to mount and ride,
Booted and spurred, with a heavy stride
On the opposite shore walked Paul Revere.
Now he patted his horse’s side.
Now gazed at the landscape far and near,
Then, impetuous, stamped the earth,
And turned and tightened his saddle-girth;
But mostly he watched with eager search
The belfry-tower of the Old North Church,
As it arose above the graves on the hill,
Lonely and spectral and sombre and still.
And lo! as he looks, on the belfry’s height
A glimmer—and then a gleam of light!
He springs to the saddle, the bridle he turns.
But lingers and gazes, till full on his sight
A second lamp in the belfry burns!
A hurry of hoofs in a village street,
A shape in the moonlight, a bulk in the dark,
And beneath, from the pebbles, in passing, a spark
Struck out by a steed flying fearless and fleet:
That was all! And yet, through the gloom and the light.
The fate of a nation was riding that night;
And the spark struck out by that steed in his flight,
Kindled the land into flame with its heat.   He has left the village and mounted the steep.
And beneath him, tranquil and broad and deep.
Is the Mystic, meeting the ocean tides;
And under the alders, that skirt its edge,
Now soft on the sand, now loud on the ledge.
Is heard the tramp of his steed as he rides.
It was twelve by the village clock
When he crossed the bridge into Medford town.
He heard the crowing of the cock
And the barking of the farmer’s dog,
And felt the damp of the river fog.
That rises after the sun goes down.
It was one by the village clock,
When he galloped into Lexington.
He saw the gilded weathercock
Swim in the moonlight as he passed,
And the meeting-house windows, blank and bare,
Gaze at him with a spectral glare.
As if they already stood aghast
At the bloody work they would look upon.   It was two by the village clock,
When he came to the bridge in Concord town.
He heard the bleating of the flock,
And the twitter of birds among the trees,
And felt the breath of the morning breeze
Blowing over the meadows brown.
And one was safe and asleep in his bed
Who at the bridge would be first to fall,
Who that day would be lying dead,
Pierced by a British musket-ball.
You know the rest. In the books you have read.
How the British Regulars fired and fled,—
How the farmers gave them ball for ball,
From behind each fence and farm-yard wall.
Chasing the red-coats down the lane.
Then crossing the fields to emerge again
Under the trees at the turn of the road.
And only pausing to fire and load.
So through the night rode Paul Revere;
And so through the night went his cry of alarm
To every Middlesex village and farm,
A cry of defiance and not of fear,
A voice in the darkness, a knock at the door.
And a word that shall echo forever more;
For borne on the night-wind of the past,
Through all our history, to the last,
In the hour of darkness and peril and need.
The people will waken and listen to hear
The hurrying hoof-beats of that steed.
And the midnight message of Paul Revere.
FROM MY ARM-CHAIR.
To the children of Cambridge, who presented to me, on my seventy-second birthday, February 27, 1879, this chair made from the wood of the Village Blacksmith’s chestnut tree.—Longfellow.
THE BRIDGE.
The moon and its broken reflection
And its shadows shall appear,
As the symbols of love in heaven,
And its wavering image here.
QUOTATIONS.
Oh, fear not in a world like this, And thou shalt know ere long,
Know how sublime a thing it is
To suffer and be strong.
—From the Light of Stars.
Thus by aspirations lifted,
By misgivings downward driven,
Human hearts are tossed and drifted
Midway between earth and heaven.
—From King Trisanku.
Whatsoever thing thou doest
To the least of mind and lowest.
That thou doest unto Me!
—From The Legend Beautiful.
Spake full well in language quaint and olden,
One who dwelt beside the castled Rhine,
When he called the flowers, so blue and golden.
Stars that in earth’s firmament do shine.
—From the Flowers.
Come to me, O ye children!
And whisper in my ear
What the birds and the winds are singing
In your sunny atmosphere.
Ye are better than all the ballads
That ever were sung or said;
For ye are living poems.
And all the rest are dead.
—From Children.
When e’er a noble deed is wrought.
When e’er is spoken a noble thought,
Our hearts in glad surprise
To higher levels rise.
—From Santa Filomena.
There is no Death! What seems so is transition.
This life of mortal breath
Is but the suburb of the life elysian
Whose portal we call Death.
—From Resignation.
Lives of great men all remind us
We can make our lives sublime,
And, departing, leave behind us
Footprints on the sands of time.
—From The Psalm of Life.
God sent his singers upon earth
With songs of sadness and of mirth.
That they might touch the hearts of men.
And bring them back to heaven again.
—From The Singers.
Not in the clamor of the crowded street,
Not in the shouts and plaudits of the throng.
But in ourselves, are triumph and defeat.
—From The Poets.
We shall be sifted till the strength
Of self-conceit be changed at length
To meekness.
—From The Sifting of Peter.
Storms do not rend the sail that is furled;
Nor, like a dead leaf, tossed and whirled
In an eddy of wind, is the anchored soul.
—From Old St. David.
All common things, each day’s events
That with the hour begin and end.
Our pleasures and our discontents.
Are rounds by which we may ascend.   The heights by great men reached and kept,
Were not attained by sudden flight,
But they, while their companions slept.
Were toiling upward in the night.
—From The Ladder of St. Augustin.
Believe me, the talent of success is nothing more than doing what you can do well.—From Hyperion.
If we could read the secret history of our enemies, we should find in each man’s life sorrow and suffering enough to disarm all hostility.—From Kavanagh.
NATURE’S BOOK.
—Longfellow—“ The Fiftieth Birthday of Agassiz. ”
CHARITY.
The little I have seen of the world and know of the history of mankind, teaches me to look upon the errors of others in sorrow, not in anger. When I take the history of one poor heart that has sinned and suffered, and represent to myself the struggles and temptations it has passed—the brief pulsations of joy, the feverish inquietude of hope and fear, the tears of regret, the feebleness of purpose, the pressure of want, the desertion of friends, the scorn of a world that has little charity, the desolation of the soul’s sanctuary and threatening voices within—health gone, happiness gone, even hope, that stays longest with us, gone,—I have little heart for aught else than thankfulness that it is not so with me, and would fain leave the erring soul of my fellow-man with Him from whose hands it came.—From Hyperion.
THE THREE STATUES OF MINERVA.
In ancient times there stood in the citadel of Athens three statues of Minerva. The first was of olive-wood, and according to popular tradition had fallen from heaven. The second was of bronze, commemorating the victory of Marathon; and the third of gold and ivory,—a great miracle of art, in the Age of Pericles. And thus in the citidel of Time stands Man himself. In childhood, shaped of soft and delicate wood, just fallen from heaven; in manhood, a statue of bronze, commenorating struggle and victory; and, lastly, in the maturity of age, perfectly shaped in gold and ivory,—a miracle of art!—From Hyperion.
This work was published before January 1, 1929, and is in the public domain worldwide because the author died at least 100 years ago.
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