Butler citizen. [volume] (Butler, Pa.) 1877-1922, 1882-04-05
LONGFELLOW'S POETIC
CHARACTER.
Extracts from u Sermon by
Rev. f.. A. Noble mt Chicago
Last Sunday.

Rev. r.. A. NODkc III (ulcfSO
Last Sunday.
Another silver cord is loosed anoth-
er golden bowl is broken. Another
voice which for full round half century
now has been making music in all our
hearts and homes has ceased its sing
ing and melted away into the everlast-
ing silence. Longfellow is dead.
1t does not seem possible. He was a,
part of the literary life of America when
the most of us were born. Through
all the years he has kept company
with us. and we have found him
as fresh, as sweet, and companionable
in the aftermath of his grand career as
when the dews Of the morning where
on him and men and women were
pausing to catch the delicate strains Of
his prelude notes. At the hreslde, in
the invalid chamber, out under the
stars in the soft summer time, away in
the solitudes of the forest or by the sea,
in the little log school house out on
the frontier, in the stately halls of learn
ing whore art spd science are at their
best, and vast libraries held all the
rarest treasures of the past, he mas
been familiar presence, and his name
has bad q home like sound. IT by any
chance, or at any moment the door
had opened and he had walked in to
be one of their circle, it would not
have seemed like visit from some OF
the great ones gone forever aud ever
by, as Homer, or Dante, or Milton, or
Goethe, but like the coming of a dear
friend whom we have not seen much,
and vet with whom, in one way or an
other, we had managed TO keep up
tender intimacy through all ths years,
and to walk in sweet fellowship.
Rulers come and go, we expect 1T.
Fitful geniuses drop down into the
midst of rs and utter their one thought,
or strike their two or three notes,
or do their strange, daring DEEDS, and
while we are yet wondering what it
all means, and II there is to be more
of it, they disappear We expect it.
Longfellow has been star, shining in
on us out of the clear heavens with o
steady light ever since the hour our
eyes first opened on literary excellence,
and we have walked il the warmth
and ruddiness of his beams; and ii IS
hard to think he has gone down be-
hind the western hills-has sunk below
the western horizon to rise upon US no
more.
His own words have fresh signifi=
canoe as we try to trace them out un-
der the shadow of his own death:
There is no death What seems so is transition.
This life of mortal breath
| Is hut suburb of the life elysian
Whose portal we call death.
| We see but dimly through the mist and vapors
Amid these earthly lamps
| What seem to us but sad funeral tapers
May be heavens distant lamps
| And though at times impetuous with emotion
And anguish long suppressed,
| The swelling heart heaves like the ocean
That cannot be at rest,
We will be patient, and assuage the feeling
We may not wholly stay;
| BY silence sauctifying, not cJncealiug,
The grief that must have way.
Even to the most casual reader OF
his books it will be evident that Mr.
Longfellow kept his heart open and
his voice attuned to living faith in
God The atmosphere in which he
had his home was sifted full of the
fine seeds Of doubt; be was intimate
with men who cunningly and obsti-
nately questioned everything schol.
ars illustrious for their scientific attain
ments, and of world wide reputation
for ability and learning, were his
friends; be was up in all the latest
phases of German thinking, 80 far as
this thinking had effected German
literature; but no sophistries and
plausabilities of atheism, no shrugs
and groans of agnostic despair, no mys-
teries of providence ever confused his
thought or dimmed his vision of the
Divine Father. To him humanity
was the suggestion and pledge of di
vinity behind. Trees. fields green
with verdure, sweet blossoms, noun.
tains, streams, oceans, the insects
wing, BIRDS songs, stars far away, and
smiles, and tears, and human voices
pitched to the accents of love, were all
eloquent of living God.
From first to last the held his place
amongst those whom he SO tenderly
addressed in his introduction to the
song of Hiawatha:
Who have faith in God and nature,
Who believe that in all ages
Every human heart is human,
That in even savage bosoms
There are longings, yearnings, strivings,
| For the good they comprehend not,
That the feeble hands and helpless,
Cropping blindly in the darkness,
Touch Gods right hand in that darkness
| And are lifted up and strengthened.
Another element revealed in a study
of Mr.. Longfellow's writings which
brings him into accord with lofty
Christian faith, and takes him right
along the line of Christian inspiration,
is the estimate he puts upon life. The
| first note with which he captured the
ear of the world was bis
"Psalm of life.n The deepest and
most stirring utterances in that early
production was the stanza:
Life is real, life is earnest,
And the grave is not its goal:
Dust thou art, to dust returnest,
Was not spoken OF the SOUL
But the crowning service rendered
by Mr.. Longfellow on his moral side
is the fine and ennobling purity in
which he walked and did his work.
Purity was the sentinel he put on
guard over his speech, and no tainted
utterance could escape detection and