New-York tribune. [volume] (New York [N.Y.]) 1866-1924, 1881-08-14

ever had a line of Longfelow on the tongue More
painful still was the doubt that if 1 were to go to
any of them there, residing in the poets birthplace
and seek to stimulate their appreciation of the poet
by quoting from his pieces, would fail. NV mind
ran over his most popular lines, but nothing
would fit that typical audience His reflective,
lambent, picturesque poetry seemed for this pur-
pose to be short of universally. Now, had been
at the birthplace of Burns or Beranger, twenty
lines would have Jumped into my mouth at nod.
Thus does culture draw away from the natural
man. How could explain what Excelsior" even
meant to these poor onesf Whaj lyric line In
Longfellow would tell with the effect of Burnss
all but unconscious jig:
Green grow the rashes, O;
Green grow the rashes, o.
The sweetest hours that eer spend,
Are spent among the lasses, o.
There's nopght Ugh. but but care on every han,
What signifies the life o man,
An twere ma for the lasses, D.
No polished art nor delicate make poetry
like that, which is the experience of the poor poet
with the poor people. Humor and song uni
versal languages, and they too often polished
out of our acceptable poets. Perhaps Yankee
Doodle" is after all ouI only National piece else
why does every ear and memory seize upon it, and
did so seize without forethOught advice 1t
went from to like a bee and the feet began
go to the time of it, and laue and sympathy
flowed together. England poetry is often cold
Mr. Swinburne recently wrote to Mr.. Sedman, as
hear that the United States had furnished only two
good poets. Poe and Walt Whitman. The most
universal poet of the people is neither, but is
Stephen c. Foster, the song maker. The greatest
sale achieved by an American poet prob
ably by SAKE though the ballads of Will Carleton
have been felt by almost every class. Mr.. Long
fellow belongs to the type of ustrat ors in poetry
those who reduce scholarship and sensitilty pic
lures, like Palmers marbles Rogerss statuettes.
His imagination has the wing of the dove, delicate
yet able reach the olive twig every time. Whit
tiers is the hawks wing, shrill and rejoicing it
cleaves the for prey the harvest field for the
tomtit. Alas, where is the American hooking bird,
the native songster of our zone. who learn
from silence from man, and sing from very mis-
chefR / have found that to grow my flowers
need many things. but above all EARTH and fear
that poet without good deal of the earth never
can be interpreted to his fellow-worms.
Longfelow born here long before Maine
was admitted into the Union He was therefore
Massachusetts born. He and Hawthorne were
classmates at the college of the State at Brunswick
His poems bear the following apparent refersu ces
to this old house of his origin in Portland:
Happy he whom neither wealth fashion,
Nor the march OF the encroachiDg city,
From the hearth of his ancestral homestead.
We may build more splendid habtatons.
Fill our rooms with paintings aud with sculpture,
Buy with gold the old associations.
This is in another piece:
remember the sea fight far away
How IL Numbered DER the tidei
In their graves o'erlooking the tranquil bay,
Where they in battle died.
| Strange to me are the forms meet,
| When visit the dear old town,
| But the native air and sweet,
And the trees that oershadow each wellknown street
| As they balance up and down.
His poem to the htteth anniversary of his class in
| makes pOSSible references To
| thing:
| We halls in whose seclusion and repose
Phantoms of fame like exhalatons rose
| And vanished, we who are about TO die
| Ye do not answer us! We do not hear;
we are Iorgo ,,ie anu IN y9 or anstere
| Whether go whence or where.
What passing generations fill these halls,
| What passing voices echo from these walls,
| Ie heed not; we are only as the blast,
moment heard and then forever past.
ON THE sUsQUEHANNA.
| In seven days from being at Longfeow's birth
place at Cooper's grave, in the most beautiful
| little town the interior of New-York State, and
the freshest place for summer visitors Otsego Lake
| is next to Lake George in mountainous scenery
among the small lakes of New York State. As Lake
George is the source of the Champlan River system
| Otsego is the source of the Susquehanna, which
river is born able to leap from the lakes body right
at the settlement of Cooperstown, and there James
| Fenmore Cooper reared there wrote ant
quarreled and died, at the summit of the grea
system of waters of The Middle States, 800 feet
it is said. above the grave of the Susquehanna il
Chesapeake Bay. Biologists have said that ever
Lake Ontario and all the st. Lawrence system one,
flowed to the through the Susquehanna, and tn,
gravelly hills and many deep lakes al
tending southwark help the suggestion. Otseg
| Hail. the homestead of Judge Cooper and hi
strong minded son, stood the slopng bluff a few
| hundred feet from the lake and the little rive
which with such clear understanding unite thei
careers in corner of the plain of Coopersiown
Like many such unions of lofty ladies and youn
knights like Mary of the SCOTS welded in Darnley
the Susquehanna finds no tranquility and for 40
miles is unable to rest in its channel bear a shiT
Its bride of the Otsego bids farewell every tran
quill vision amidst the green hills of its origin an
proceeds by rapids and rpples cascades and deluges
shadows and CULTS all the way to the bay. 40
miles, which it enters without reelection, tumblin
wildly to the last. In the day of Fenimore Cooper
this river, although but 100 miles west of the lIud
: son. to which 1t flows parallel, was in the far West
. 1t was divided by the Allegheny range, the Heldc
bergs, Catskills, Highlands, Blue Mountains, etc
from the Hudson valley. Therefore its settlemeI
was 200 years later and the only battles fought
il in War of independence were between I'll
: insurgeni colonsts and the Indians in their rea
4 After the war, aboIt all the land upon the Susqu
A hanna in New York was public domain, given
soldiers or settled by speculative companies. TIL
T drama was all witnessed by Cooper, whose fami
4 possessed prior land right derived in some wa
from colonial grants, and they pressed upward fro
New-Jersey by the Mohawk route into this lefty c
I de sac and invited in the New gland and New
: York races and young Cooper them wit
}, his clear English apprehension brought from
II century of tranquil domesticaton in auvial Ne'
Jersey. He saw more rugged, more needy races thi
n his press into the hunting fields of the suspcio