Quote of the Day (Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, on Friends Recalling ‘Many a Vanished Scene’)

“We sat and talked until the night,
      Descending, filled the little room;
Our faces faded from the sight,
      Our voices only broke the gloom.

“We spake of many a vanished scene,
      Of what we once had thought and said,
Of what had been, and might have been,
      And who was changed, and who was dead;

“And all that fills the hearts of friends,
      When first they feel, with secret pain,
Their lives thenceforth have separate ends,
      And never can be one again.”—American poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807-1882), “The Fire of Drift-wood,” in The Seaside and the Fireside (1850)

Remarkably, Longfellow wrote this scene, of two friends in a farmhouse somberly summarizing the passage of time, when he was only 43—more than a decade away from when he would lose his second wife in a fire, and when friends would die quietly of heartbreak, having sent their sons off to perish in a civil war of unforeseen carnage.

Over the years, improved life expectancy had kept many Americans from facing the same grim death counts that Longfellow’s characters quietly lamented. But over the last few months, as COVID-19 has struck at a wider swath of people, that blessing has increasingly vanished. 

Last spring, it was not uncommon to be asked how many people one knew had contracted COVID-19, or even died of it—with the implication being that, all things considered, it really wasn’t that bad. Today, more and more people would answer both questions in the affirmative.

In addition, indirect deaths are resulting from the pandemic: doctors’ appointments and elective surgery delayed because of fear of coming down with the virus, as well as rampant isolation, depression and substance abuse.

There is also the “secret pain” glimpsed by Longfellow, the unspoken sense between once-intimate friends that they “never can be one again.”

In his time, it would have meant the separate paths people took in terms of earning a living, family life, perhaps relocation. Today, another element has been introduced into the equation: politics, which increasingly infects what was once considered the private realm. Social media have made obvious what people seldom if ever spoke about before.

The result is that, if they don’t un-friend each other on Facebook and Twitter, old friends will likely stay silent about what now divides them. Peace may be maintained, but the ease in another’s company once enjoyed has faded, like the faces of Longfellow’s friends in the evening light.

Quote of the Day (Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, on ‘Autumn, Heralded by the Rain’)

“Thou comest, Autumn, heralded by the rain,
  With banners, by great gales incessant fanned,
  Brighter than brightest silks of Samarcand,
  And stately oxen harnessed to thy wain!”—American poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807-1882), “Autumn,” originally published in his The Belfry of Bruges and Other Poems (1845), reprinted in American Poetry, The Nineteenth Century: Volume One—Freneau to Whitman, edited by John Hollander (Library of America, 1993)

 The rain-preceded fall that Longfellow evokes here arrived Monday and yesterday, courtesy of the remnants, up here in the Northeast, of Hurricane Delta. Leaves have not changed color very much yet, but many arrive lie in profusion on the ground already—and that number is certain to grow shortly.

(The image accompanying this post shows the Charles River in Massachusetts, a short walk from Longfellow's home in Cambridge. I took this picture while visiting the area 12 years ago.)

Photo of the Day: Steeple of ‘Old North Church,’ Boston MA

Even without knowing it at first, I knew there was something important about this steeple when I saw it from a distance while I was in Boston 12 years ago this October.

Technically speaking, this is now the Episcopal Church’s Christ Church. But it is known to history as “Old North Church,” and if there’s a more famous steeple in American history or literature, I can’t think of one right now. I had to take this picture as soon as I became aware of it.

You know about it from Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s poem “Paul Revere’s Ride,” with the memorable lines:

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.”

A plaque downstairs commemorates Revere and William Dawes, the other rider who alerted the countryside that, per the steeple signal, the British were marching to Lexington and Concord by sea across the Charles River and not by land.

The two men, unnamed in Longfellow’s poem, who actually climbed the steeple and held high the two lanterns were Old North Church’s sexton, Robert Newman, and vestryman, Capt. John Pulling, Jr.—men whose courage was all the more conspicuous because, as Patriots, they went against the prevailing Loyalist sentiment in the congregation.

Here I am, using the phrase “technically speaking” again—this was not the original steeple glimpsed by Revere. This is actually the third on this spot. The first, the one seen by Revere, was destroyed in the 1804 “Great Gale of Boston.” The second, built two years later, fell down into Hull Street in 1954 as a result of Hurricane Carol. (Luckily, the steeple was swaying so long that the neighborhood had enough time to be evacuated.)

The steeple you see now was rebuilt a year later, and made to look more like the one that Revere saw—only this time, with added steel reinforcements to safeguard against future storms. So far—God willing—it has held.

Photo of the Day: Longfellow House, Cambridge MA

Even approaching this handsome example of Georgian architecture from the Charles River, as I did when I visited and photographed the site nearly a dozen years ago, Longfellow House commands attention.

With works such as “Paul Revere’s Ride,” “The Courtship of Miles Standish,” “The Song of Hiawatha” and “Evangeline,” Henry Wadsworth Longfellow remains the preeminent poet of American history. But his career extended far beyond these verses practically baked into Americans’ imaginations for the last century and a half, just as use of his house extended beyond even his long life.

Once the specter of COVID-19 fades, I urge readers who visit the Boston metro area to venture over to Cambridge for a stop at Longfellow House. It offers a chance to engage in history across several eras.

That history began well before Longfellow lived here. The home’s formal name, the Vassall-Craigie-Longfellow House, reflects its eight decades even before Longfellow got there.

John Vassall, a wealthy landowner, built the mansion as a colonial example of conspicuous consumption in 1759, only to flee it more than a decade later when his Loyalist sympathies made him persona non grata with neighbors.

Once Vassall left, the house didn’t stay vacant for long. George Washington used it as his headquarters for nine months as he successfully planned to drive the British out of Boston at the start of the American Revolution. (In 1844, Longfellow and his wife Fanny acquired a plaster case of a bust of the general by the French sculptor Houdon.)

Washington’s apothecary general, Andrew Craigie, modified the Brattle Street mansion in the early Federal period of the new republic. His renovations—including a large ell addition on the back of the house, as well as two symmetrical verandas on either side—provided the mansion with the basic structure and footprint it’s had ever since.

Craigie House, as it had become known, came on the market just when Longfellow, who had been renting near Harvard Square, needed a home for the family he was about to start with Fanny. The poet’s father-in-law, Boston industrialist Nathan Appleton, bought it for the young couple.

In this house achieved such fame and prosperity that he became the first American poet who could earn a living entirely on his writing. The seemingly easy grace of his literary style was matched by private contentment, as he and Fanny raised five children here.

All of that was shattered by a fire in 1861, when Fanny accidentally knocked over a candle as she was melting wax to seal locks of her children's hair. The resulting burns took her life and scarred Henry’s face to such an extent that he grew a beard to cover it.

In addition to explaining the domestic life and Henry and Fanny, the tour I took a dozen years ago also recounted colorful details in the lives of the Longfellow children. (One son, Charles, survived a terrible wound while serving in the Union Army in the Civil War, going on to write extensively about his experiences traveling in Asia in the postwar period.)

The house’s website also discusses how the family home was preserved into the 20^th century—notably through the poet’s grandson, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow Dana, a preservationist, scholar, pacifist and labor activist, who collected objects, photos, correspondence and other items that have helped guides at the house tell its story to succeeding generations of visitors.

Quote of the Day (Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, on ‘The Trailing Garments of the Night’)

“I heard the trailing garments of the Night

      Sweep through her marble halls!

I saw her sable skirts all fringed with light

      From the celestial walls!” —American poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807-1882), “Hymn to the Night,” in Voices of the Night (1839)

Quote of the Day (Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, on ‘Boastful Breath’)

“Big words do not smite like war-clubs,

Boastful breath is not a bow-string,

Taunts are not so sharp as arrows,

Deeds are better things than words are,

Actions mightier than boastings!”—American poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807-1882), The Song of Hiawatha (1855)

Most aware readers will understand immediately the public figure who, over the last several years, has most embodied the concept of “boastful breath.”  No other commentary on my part is necessary.

Quote of the Day (Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, on ‘The Forest Primeval')

“This is the forest primeval. The murmuring pines and the hemlocks,

Bearded with moss, and in garments green, indistinct in the twilight,

Stand like Druids of eld, with voices sad and prophetic,

Stand like harpers hoar, with beards that rest on their bosoms.

Loud from its rocky caverns, the deep-voiced neighboring ocean

Speaks, and in accents disconsolate answers the wail of the forest.”—American poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807-1882), Evangeline: A Tale of Acadie (1847)

Quote of the Day (Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, on ‘Lives of Great Men’)

“Lives of great men all remind us

        We can make our lives sublime,

And, departing, leave behind us

        Footprints on the sands of time;

Footprints, that perhaps another,

        Sailing o'er life's solemn main,

A forlorn and shipwrecked brother,

        Seeing, shall take heart again.”—American poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807-1882), “A Psalm of Life,” in Voices in the Night (1839)

These lines at least part of the reason why I’ve always been such an avid reader of biographies.