Pleased with the praise of her thrift from

him whose praise was the sweetest, Drew from the reel on the table a snowy skein of her spinning,

Thus making answer, meanwhile, to the flattering phrases of Alden; 'Come, you must not be idle; if I am a pattern for housewives,

Show yourself equally worthy of being the model of husbands.

Hold this skein on your hands, while I wind

it, ready for knitting;

Then who knows but hereafter, when fash

ions have changed and the manners, Fathers may talk to their sons of the good old times of John Alden!'

Thus, with a jest and a laugh, the skein on his hands she adjusted,

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Such were the tidings of evil that burst on the hearts of the hearers.

Silent and statue-like stood Priscilla, her face looking backward

Still at the face of the speaker, her arms uplifted in horror;

But John Alden, upstarting, as if the barb of the arrow

Piercing the heart of his friend had struck his own, and had sundered

Once and forever the bonds that held him bound as a captive,

Wild with excess of sensation, the awful delight of his freedom,

Mingled with pain and regret, unconscious of what he was doing,

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Clasped, almost with a groan, the motionless form of Priscilla,

Pressing her close to his heart, as forever his own, and exclaiming: 'Those whom the Lord hath united, let no man put them asunder!'

Happy husband and wife, and friends conversing together.

Pleasantly murmured the brook, as they crossed the ford in the forest, Pleased with the image that passed, like a dream of love, through its bosom, Tremulous, floating in air, o'er the depths of the azure abysses.

Down through the golden leaves the sun was pouring his splendors, Gleaming on purple grapes, that, from branches above them suspended, Mingled their odorous breath with the balm of the pine and the fir-tree, Wild and sweet as the clusters that grew in the valley of Eshcol.

Like a picture it seemed of the primitive, pastoral ages,

Fresh with the youth of the world, and recalling Rebecca and Isaac,

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Old and yet ever new, and simple and beautiful always,

Love immortal and young in the endless succession of lovers.

So through the Plymouth woods passed onward the bridal procession.

THE CHILDREN'S HOUR1

BETWEEN the dark and the daylight,

When the night is beginning to lower,

1 The ideal commentary on this poem is found in a letter of Longfellow's To Emily A-,' August 18, 1859:

'Your letter followed me down here by the seaside, where I am passing the summer with my three little girls. The oldest is about your age; but as little girls' ages keep changing every year, I can never remember exactly how old she is, and have to ask her mamma, who has a better memory than I have. Her name is Alice; I never forget that. She is a nice girl, and loves poetry almost as much as you do.

The second is Edith, with blue eyes and beautiful

Comes a pause in the day's occupations, That is known as the Children's Hour.

A whisper, and then a silence:
Yet I know by their merry eyes
They are plotting and planning together
To take me by surprise.

A sudden rush from the stairway,
A sudden raid from the hall!
By three doors left unguarded
They enter my castle wall!

They climb up into my turret

O'er the arms and back of my chair; If I try to escape, they surround me; They seem to be everywhere.

They almost devour me with kisses,
Their arms about me entwine,
Till I think of the Bishop of Bingen

In his Mouse-Tower on the Rhine!
Do you think, O blue-eyed banditti,
Because you have scaled the wall,
Such an old mustache as I am

Is not a match for you all!

I have you fast in my fortress,

And will not let you depart,
But put you down into the dungeon
In the round-tower of my heart.

And there will I keep you forever,
Yes, forever and a day,

Till the walls shail crumble to ruin,
And moulder in dust away!

1859.

PAUL REVERE'S RIDE1

20

30

40

1860.

LISTEN, my children, and you shall hear
Of the midnight ride of Paul Revere,

1 It is possible that Mr. Longfellow derived the story from Paul Revere's account of the incident in a letter to Dr. Jeremy Belknap, printed in Mass. Hist. Coll. V. Mr. Frothingham, in his Siege of Boston, pp. 57-59, gives the story mainly according to a memorandum of Richard Devens, Revere's friend and associate. The publication of Mr. Longfellow's poem called out a protracted discussion both as to the church from which

On the eighteenth of April, in Seventy-five; Hardly a man is now alive

6

Who remembers that famous day and year.
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.'

Then he said, 'Good-night!' and with muffled oar

Silently rowed to the Charlestown shore,
Just as the moon rose over the bay,
Where swinging wide at her moorings lay
The Somerset, British man-of-war;
A phantom ship, with each mast and spar 20
Across the moon like a prison bar,
And a huge black hulk, that was magnified
By its own reflection in the tide.

Meanwhile, his friend, through alley and street,

Wanders and watches with eager ears,
Till in the silence around him he hears
The muster of men at the barrack door,
The sound of arms, and the tramp of feet,
And the measured tread of the grenadiers,
Marching down to their boats on the shore. 30

the signals were hung, and as to the friend who hung the lanterns. The subject is discussed and authorities cited in Memorial History of Boston, iii, 101. (Cambridge Edition, p. 668.)

'Paul Revere's Ride' is the first story in the Tales of a Wayside Inn, a series of tales in verse set in a frame-work something like that of Chaucer's Canterbury Tales, and supposed to be told by a group of friends gathered at the Red-Horse Inn at Sudbury, about twenty miles from Cambridge. The story of Paul Revere is told by the landlord, whose portrait is thus drawn in the Prelude : ' —

But first the Landlord will I trace;
Grave in his aspect and attire ;

A man of ancient pedigree,

A Justice of the Peace was he,

Known in all dbury as The Squire.'

Proud was he of his name and race,

Of old Sir William and Sir Hugh,

And in the parlor, full in view,

His coat-of-arms, well framed and glazed, Upon the wall in colors blazed;

He beareth gules upon his shield,

A chevron argent in the field,

With three wolf's-heads, and for the crest
A wyvern part-per-pale addressed
Upon a helmet barred; below

The scroll reads, By the name of Howe.
And over this, no longer bright,
Though glimmering with a latent light,
Was hung the sword his grandsire bore
In the rebellious days of yore,
Down there in Concord in the fight.

Beneath, in the churchyard, lay the dead,
In their night-encampment on the hill,
Wrapped in silence so deep and still
That he could hear, like a sentinel's tread,
The watchful night-wind, as it went
Creeping along from tent to tent,
And seeming to whisper, All is well!'
A moment only he feels the spell

Of the place and the hour, and the secret dread

Of the lonely belfry and the dead;
For suddenly all his thoughts are bent
On a shadowy something far away,
Where the river widens to meet the bay,-
A line of black that bends and floats
On the rising tide, like a bridge of boats.

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60

Meanwhile, impatient to mount and ride,
Booted and spurred, with a heavy stride
On the opposite shore walked Paul Revere.
Now he patted his horse's side,
Now gazed at the landscape far and near,
Then, impetuous, stamped the earth,
And turned and tightened his saddle-girth;
But mostly he watched with eager search
The belfry-tower of the Old North Church,
As it rose above the graves on the hill,
Lonely and spectral and sombre and still.
And lo! as he looks, on the belfry's height
A glimmer, and then a gleam of light!
He springs to the saddle, the bridle he
turns,

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But lingers and gazes, till full on his sight
A second lamp in the belfry burns!

A hurry of hoofs in a village street,
A shape in the moonlight, a bulk in the dark,
And beneath, from the pebbles, in passing,
a spark

Struck out by a steed flying fearless and fleet;

That was all! And yet, through the gloom and the light,

The fate of a nation was riding that night; And the spark struck out by that steed, in his flight,

Kindled the land into flame with its heat. 80

He has left the village and mounted the steep,

And beneath him, tranquil and broad and deep,

Is the Mystic, meeting the ocean tides; And under the alders that skirt its edge, Now soft on the sand, now loud on the ledge,

Is heard the tramp of his steed as he rides.