construction: the modeling (lines 17-50); the purchase of timber (lines 55–69); the building of the hull (lines 128-139, 176-207); the placing of the figure-head (lines 208-222); the procuring of timbers for masts (lines 228-245); the raising of the rigging (lines 246-257). A fine picture in words, the one which furnishes the best opportunity for an illustrator of the poem, is that of the evening hour of rest (lines 144-175). The setting is the dim porch of the Master's house. The Master sits in the back-ground in the attitude of a storyteller. The red glow from his pipe lights up his own features and the young people in the foreground - the hero and the heroine of the poem. The picture, with its deep shadows and its one dash of light in the center, might be painted by a disciple of the great master of light and shade, Rembrandt. IV. The conclusion of the poem.

When Longfellow sent the poem to his publisher, it ended as follows:

Line 360. How beautiful she is! How still

She lies within these arms that press
Her form with many a soft caress!
Modelled with such perfect skill,
Fashioned with such watchful care!
But, alas! oh, what and where
Shall be the end of thing so fair?
Wrecked upon some treacherous rock,
Or rotting in some noisome dock,
Such the end must be at length
Of all this loveliness and strength.

They who with transcendent power
Build the great cathedral tower,
Build the palaces and domes,
Temples of God and Princes' homes,
These leave a record and a name.
But he who builds the stately ships,

The palaces of sea and air,

When he is buried in his grave

Leaves no more trace or mark behind
Than the sail does in the wind,

Than the keel does in the wave.

He whose dextrous hand could frame
All this beauty, all this grace,

In a grave without a name
Lies forgotten of his race.

See Life, Letters, and Journal, Appendix V.

The publisher objected to this "sad" ending, and the poet wisely consented to change it. It is entirely out of harmony with the poem as a whole, which tells of glad activity and successful achievement. It would not do to conclude such a poem by a cynical arraignment of the world for neglecting its ship-architects, to say nothing of the false statement that it has preserved the names of all its great builders of churches and palaces. Moreover, the day of marriage and of launching the ship is a day for congratulation, not for foretelling evil. And the prophecy of disaster or decay for the ship foretells evil for the bride, so closely have the two been related throughout the poem. We are glad, therefore, that the poet changed lines 360-376 to an expression of good wishes for ship and bride. But two of these new lines (366, 367) are difficult to understand. They are in a paragraph referring to the ship, but they cannot possibly relate to the ship; neither are they coherently related to what is said of the bride in the next paragraph. Lines 375 and 376, also, seem to be rather irrelevant here. The final paragraph, fine as it is and much as we admire it, is national in its reference, has no thought-connection with the rest of the poem, and does not truly belong to it. It is joined by means of the word Union (see also line 104) and by a continuation of the figure, used so extensively through

the poem proper, applying to human life terms of the ship and the sea. Think of the dangers that beset our nation in 1849, when this poem was written, and explain the paragraph in detail. For remarks on the political significance of these lines, see Austin's Longfellow, page 315. The Master and the Workmen are doubtless the men who worked out our national constitution. What man do you suppose to be the "Master"? Name some of the "Workmen." Some one has suggested that "Master" (line 382) may mean the Spirit of Liberty, and that the founders of our government may be the "workmen" under that inspiration. These concluding lines were favorites of President Lincoln. See "Lincoln's Imagination," by Noah Brooks, in Scribner's Monthly, August, 1879.

V. Study the musical effects of the poem: end rime, internal rime, repetition, alliteration, assonance, onomatopoea. There is no regular line and stanza, but there is poetic rhythm of the most musical sort, and considerable regularity in the meter. The short lines quicken the action, and the longer ones make it slower. Are these devices used in the poem in harmony with the thought? Mr. George S. Hillard wrote to Longfellow: "I think that you deal most happily with that irregular and varying stanza, which sinks and swells under your hand, to my ear, like the gusts of a summer wind through a grove of trees." (Life, Letters, and Journal, II, 166.)

The poem is divided according to topics into paragraphs; it has no stanza-structure.

VI. Prepare to read the poem aloud. Try to express all Longfellow wishes us to think and feel in reading it, and bring out the music of the lines. Find in Longfellow's Journal for February 12, 1850, the account of Mrs. Kemble's reading of the poem. (See Life, Letters, and Journal, II, 172).

Longfellow's poem is the best of the imitations of Schiller's Song of the Bell, described in Thomas's Life and Works of Schiller. "The bell-founder is an idealist with a feeling for the dignity of man and of man's handiwork. As he orders his workmen to perform the successive operations involved in the casting of a bell, he delivers, from the depths of his larger experience, a little homily, suggested in each case by the present stage of the labor. The master's orders are given in a lively trochaic measure, while the homilies move at a slower gait in iambic lines of varying length. The fiction is handled with scrupulous attention to technical details, and is made to yield at the same time a series of easy and natural starting-points for a poetic review of life from the cradle to the grave. The great charm of the Song lies in its vivid pictures of the epochs, pursuits, and occurrences which constitute the joy and woe of life for an ordinary industrious burgher. Childhood and youth; the passion of the lover, sobering into the steadfast love of the husband; the busy toil of the married pair in field and household; the delight of accumulation and possession; the horrors of revolutionary fanaticism; the benediction of civic concord, - these are the themes that are brought before us in a series of stirring pictures that are irresistibly fascinating."

Dr. Thomas's statement about Schiller's meter is suggestive in connection with the study of Longfellow's meter. And it is to be observed that Schiller's poem leads up to the political condition of Europe in 1800, when the horrors of the French Revolution and the international complications rising out of it were uppermost in the thought of every European. Longfellow closes with a reference to the alarming political conditions in America in 1849.

For the influence of Horace on the last stanza of Longfellow's poem, see William Everett's "The Ship of State and the Stroke of Fate" (Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 76, pp. 18-23; July, 1895), where the critic shows Longfellow's indebtedness to the Fourteenth Ode of the First Book of Horace. Horace (B. C. 65-8) is probably expressing his fear that the dangers of civil strife are not yet past for Rome,

the rule of Augustus being at this time not acceptable to all the Roman parties. The following is Conington's translation of the Ode.

O luckless bark! new waves will force you back
To sea. O haste to make the haven yours!
E'en now, a helpless wrack,

You drift, despoiled of oars;

The Afric gale has dealt your mast a wound;
Your sailyards groan, nor can your keel sustain,
Till lash'd with cables round,

A more imperious main.

Your canvas hangs in ribbons, rent and torn;
No gods are left to pray to in fresh need.
A pine of Pontus born

Of noble forest breed,

You boast your name and lineage — madly blind,
Can painted timbers quell a seaman's fear?
Beware! or else the wind

Makes you its mock and jeer.

Your trouble late made sick this heart of mine,
And still I love you, still am ill at ease.

O, shun the sea, where shine

The thick-sown Cyclades.

Quintilian says that Horace refers "in allegory" to the "ship of state," in which case Longfellow's metaphor is the same; and his diction is strikingly similar.

THE HANGING OF THE CRANE

I. The story of the origin of this poem explains in great measure its form and diction. Longfellow was calling on a younger poet, Thomas Bailey Aldrich, who had just married. As they stood in the dining-room door, Mr. Longfellow