Longfellow : Henry Wadsworth (1807-82), a popular of American poet, a professor of modern languages, having command of some ten languages.
... elements to be considered, the metrical form and the characteristic rhythm; both Clough and Longfellow have failed for the most part to get into their form the true metrical movement and missed too by that failure to get the true inner rhythm, the something more that is the soul of the hexameter. Of the two, Longfellow achieved the smoother half-success—or rather the more plausible failure. He realised that... dactylic monotone. Dactyl and spondee by themselves, pure and unmodulated, or the dactyl by itself cannot, unhelped and unrelieved, bear successfully the burden of a long poem in accentual metre. Longfellow treats us to a non-stop flow of even hexameters with few overlappings and insufficient use of pauses; such overlappings as there are are hardly noticeable, so mechanical is their intervention, so... power of the great classical metre. There can be in such an atmosphere no room and no courage to dare to rise into any uplifting grandeur or break out into any extreme of beauty. Both Clough and Longfellow tell their stories well and it is more for the interest of the contents than for the beauty of the poetry that we read them. But the hexameter was made for nobler purposes; it has been the medium ...
... were the constituents of their genius. Thus, a medium technically full of rhythmic resources of beauty and power got lifted to climax after climax of epic and pastoral and satire. Where in Longfellow or Clough, the two most famous among the accentual hexametrists, is any burst of climaxes in an adequate medium? Even Kingsley who is better at construction and metre-management has mostly a tenuous... consciously admitted as part of the technique: hence, though employed here and there, it could not be utilised to the top of its potentialities. Even in the hands of a poet finer than Kingsley, Clough or Longfellow, the movement lacks ease and power except for a few almost accidental steps. Here is a translation from the Iliad by George Meredith: Now, as when fire voracious catches the undipped... answered wherever the poet takes the help of the artist. It is the unrestricted and unjustified trochaic modulations in Clough that kill the soul of the hexameter rhythm in his verse. What makes Longfellow tame and feeble is the insensitive plethora of basic beats. Kingsley is spoiled by his thinness of inspiration, his instinctive skill as technician counterbalanced by his inanity as poet. All of ...
... Spenser, Tennyson or Swinburne has made it a main part of his work; but, more probably, there is a deeper cause inherent in the very principle and method of the endeavour. Two poets, Clough and Longfellow, have ventured on a Page 321 considerable attempt in this kind and have succeeded in creating something like an English hexameter; but this was only a half accomplishment. The rhythm... of Horace and Juvenal becomes in their hands something poor, uncertain of itself and defective. There is here the waddle and squawk of a big water-fowl, not the flight and challenge of the eagle. Longfellow was an admirable literary craftsman in his own limits, the limits of ordinary metre perfectly executed in the ordinary way, but his technique like his poetic inspiration had no subtlety and no power... greater qualities, are imperatively called for in the creation of a true and efficient English hexameter; it is only a great care and refinement or a great poetic force that can overcome the obstacles. Longfellow had his gift of a certain kind of small perfection on his own level; Clough had energy, some drive of language, often a vigorous if flawed and hasty force of self-expression. It cannot be said that ...
... the masses? Why not the hill-tribes and children too? If you speak of popular poets, Martin Tupper was a very popular poet at one time but nobody remembers him now. So with every popular poet. Longfellow, for instance: his poem with the line, "Life is real, life is earnest" was in everybody's mouth and in every schoolbook. Everyone understood him and got the Rasa. NIRODBARAN: It has been translated... translated into Bengali. SRI AUROBINDO: Yes? By Hem Banerji? NIRODBARAN: I don't know by whom. SATYENDRA: We had to commit it to memory. SRI AUROBINDO: But now? Nobody reads Longfellow. He is quite forgotten. PURANI: The Socialists themselves object to Longfellow's line: "Learn to labour and to wait." They won't wait. SRI AUROBINDO: No, it should rather be: "Learn to labour and be dictated ...
... poems of Clough and Longfellow are, I think, the only serious essays in the hexameter in English literature. Many have dallied with the problem, from the strange experiments of Spenser to the insufficient but carefully reasoned attempts of Matthew Arnold. But it is only by a long and sustained effort like Evangeline or the Bothie that the solution can really come. Longfellow in this connexion can ...
... ruin and had him degraded. His wife ran away with a monk. In the end the once-famous soldier used to stand under the Arch of his own triumph in Byzantium - a blind beggar yet unbroken in spirit. Longfellow in a poem on him concluded by weaving a versified version of the hero's own words: The unconquerable will This, too, can bear; - I still . Am Belisarius! As long as you ...
... habit; but for Page 137 making so difficult an innovation as the hexameter instinct and habit were not enough, a clear eye upon all these constituents was needed and it was not there. Longfellow, even Clough, went on the theory of accentual quantity alone and in spite of their talent as versifiers made a mess—producing something that discredited the very idea of the creation of an English ...
... construct the Homeric or Virgilian line on the principles of Classical quantity without attention to the natural English stress, he accepts the accentual hexameter as practised by Sou-they, Lockhart, Longfellow, Kingsley and Clough but adds 1 : "most unfortunately, many of the advocates of the 'accentual* against the 'quantitative hexameter'..have made a fatal mistake in maintaining that quantity (length ...
... has happened in French, in Bengali and other tongues. Is this book, then, one of which "love's labour's lost" must be said? By no means. There is in it a great deal of illuminating criticism on Longfellow, Clough and Kingsley. There are some extremely wise remarks on poetry, of which these are samples: Page 755 It is evident that a crowding or sparseness of consonants will make a great ...
... life: some deathless Artist Power which has fashioned the whole universe is conjured up in all Its immense and omniscient supremacy. Thompson, in essential significance, was anticipated by Longfellow in his poem Charles Sumner, ending: Page 359 Were a star quenched on high, For ages would its light, Still travelling downward from the sky, Shine on our mortal ...
... out over the phrases. Even sensitive students of the language like Bridges have fallen into the error of employing spurious lengths as well as slurring over the stress-factor, just as poets like Longfellow have ignored the intrinsic long when unstressed. Avoiding either oversight, Sri Aurobindo reaches a form in tune both with the spirit of the classical languages and with the genius of English. ...
... tune. The temper and tone of the hymn breathe intense aspiration. If the result of such aspiration is to be sought in any words inscribed by a God-worshipper I would pick out those which Longfellow has given us, called "Saint Teresa's Bookmark", evidently a translation of that Saint's own writing: Let nothing disturb thee. Nothing affright thee; All things are passing; ...
... much better for real Buddhism. That is always the case with spiritual things. It was after Constantine embraced Christianity that it began to decline in its substance. The King of Norway, about whom Longfellow wrote a poem, killed all the people who were not Christians and thus succeeded in establishing Christianity! The same happened to Mohammedanism where it succeeded and the followers of the Prophet ...
... Buddhism to those people who were really spiritual it would have been much better for real Buddhism. It was after Constantine embraced Christianity that it began to decline. The king of Norway, on whom Longfellow wrote a poem, killed all people who were not Christians Page 48 and thus succeeded in establishing Christianity! The same happened to Mohammedanism. When it succeeded, the followers ...
... seemed at one time the peak of fulfilment. The rest of the paragraph gallops into another field but it is delightful: And an intense favourite of mine among poems was Longfellow's The Leap of Roshan Beg. When I came across it I couldn't help featuring it in Mother India. Did you notice it ? You'll be surprised that the only reference to it I got from readers was ...
... Fall" of Adam without which there would have been no need for a Saviour to come on earth, for the "Son of God" to visit man's world in order to atone for the "Original Sin". I recall too a poem of Longfellow's which begins - Page 215 Saint Augustine! well hast thou said That of our vices we can frame A ladder, if we will but tread Beneath our feet each deed of shame - and ...
... Virgin Mary. I wonder if there was any monastery in the places of Christian Europe with which I feel most familiar without ever seeing them in the present life: the Rhineland and, in the poet Longfellow's words, "the ancient town of Bruges, the quaint old Flemish city". The second aspect of my touch of depth-on-depth with you emerges from the quick transition I made from my Christ-coloured ...
... once dead there's no more dying then, through Donne's One short sleep past we wake eternally, And death shall be no more : Death, thou shalt die, Page 102 to Longfellow's There is no death! What seems so is transition, This life of mortal breath Is but a suburb of the life elysian, Whose portal we call death. A percipient friend 1 opines: ...
... increasing brightness. But even the vital and popular elements in the work may have different values—Shakespeare's vitality has the same appeal now as then; Tennyson's has got very much depreciated; Longfellow's is now recognised for the easily current copper coin that it always was. You must remember that when I speak of the vital force in a poet as something necessary, I am not speaking of something that ...
... increasing brightness. But even the vital and popular elements in their work may have different values—Shakespeare's vitality has the same appeal now as then; Tennyson's has got very much depreciated; Longfellow's is now recognised for the easily current copper coin that it always was. You must remember that when I speak of the vital force in a poet as something necessary, I am not speaking of something that ...
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