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necessary. The strength and solid English qualities of the unrhymed pentameter would be out of place in this barbaric chant. Secondly, the Song of Hiawatha' must be read with little reference to the metric scheme. It will then be found that the metric scheme is overlaid with a beautiful rhythmic scheme of clause and sentence, breaking up the monotony of the trochees. Longfellow's sweet and simple phrase-music is woven into many novel combinations which are his own, which no one can exactly copy. But the real beauty of this poem does not lie in its form; it lies in the fact that it is an interpretation of an unfamiliar type of life, and as such possesses an ideal beauty and truth.

The group of American writers of the first half of the nineteenth century, the best-known members of which are Longfellow, Emerson, Holmes, Lowell, and Hawthorne, will always be regarded as having laid the foundations of American literature. Each of these men possessed a distinct artistic individuality; but they form one of the most interesting groups in history. The elements which give them similarity and unite them in our general conception are their common consciousness of the worth and reality of the moral quality in life, and their belief in the beauty of righteousness. Theirs was a temper of mind equally removed from the disordered pessimism which sees in the moral order only a mechanical balance of the forces of selfishness, from a shallow sentimental optimism, and from a servile reverence for organized dogma. Serenity, kindliness, and earnestness are the notes of sanity. Undoubtedly an artistic temperament is sometimes dominated by moods far different from these; and undoubtedly too the artist whose life vision is clouded by doubt or by denial of ethical truth, has a strange and unwholesome attraction. Such a one appeals at least to our sympathy for mental distress. We rejoice that the foundations of our literature were laid by artists of the normal and healthy type, and believe that a civilization which produced a poet like Henry Wadsworth Longfellow must hold in its heart some of the love of beauty and order and righteousness which was the underlying principle of his verse.

[All the following selections from Longfellow's Poems are reprinted by permission of Houghton, Mifflin & Co., publishers, Boston, Massachusetts.]

I

HYMN TO THE NIGHT

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!

I felt her presence, by its spell of might,
Stoop o'er me from above;

The calm, majestic presence of the Night,
As of the one I love.

I heard the sounds of sorrow and delight,
The manifold soft chimes

That fill the haunted chambers of the Night,
Like some old poet's rhymes.

From the cool cisterns of the midnight air
My spirit drank repose;

The fountain of perpetual peace flows there,—
From those deep cisterns flows.

O holy Night! from thee I learn to bear
What man has borne before!

Thou layest thy finger on the lips of Care,
And they complain no more.

Peace! Peace! Orestes-like I breathe this prayer!
Descend with broad-winged flight,

The welcome, the thrice-prayed for, the most fair,
The best-beloved Night!

THE BELEAGUERED CITY

HAVE read in some old, marvelous tale,
Some legend strange and vague,

That a midnight host of spectres pale
Beleaguered the walls of Prague.

Beside the Moldau's rushing stream,
With the wan moon overhead,

There stood, as in an awful dream,
The army of the dead.

White as a sea-fog, landward bound,
The spectral camp was seen;
And with a sorrowful, deep sound
The river flowed between.

No other voice nor sound was there,-
No drum, nor sentry's pace;
The mist-like banners clasped the air,
As clouds with clouds embrace.

But when the old cathedral bell

Proclaimed the morning prayer, The white pavilions rose and fell On the alarmèd air.

Down the broad valley fast and far
The troubled army fled;

Up rose the glorious morning star,-
The ghastly host was dead.

I have read in the marvelous heart of man,
That strange and mystic scroll,

That an army of phantoms vast and wan
Beleaguer the human soul.

Encamped beside Life's rushing stream,
In Fancy's misty light,

Gigantic shapes and shadows gleam
Portentous through the night.

Upon its midnight battle-ground
The spectral camp is seen,
And with a sorrowful, deep sound
Flows the River of Life between.

No other voice nor sound is there,
In the army of the grave;
No other challenge breaks the air,
But the rushing of life's wave.

And when the solemn and deep church bell
Entreats the soul to pray,

The midnight phantoms feel the spell,

The shadows sweep away.

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Down the broad Vale of Tears afar
The spectral camp is fled;
Faith shineth as a morning star,

Our ghastly fears are dead.

THE SKELETON IN ARMOR

"S"

PEAK! speak! thou fearful guest!
Who, with thy hollow breast
Still in rude armor drest,

Comest to daunt me!
Wrapt not in Eastern balms,
But with thy fleshless palms
Stretched as if asking alms,

Why dost thou haunt me?"

Then from those cavernous eyes
Pale flashes seemed to rise,
As when the Northern skies
Gleam in December;

And like the water's flow
Under December's snow,
Came a dull voice of woe

From the heart's chamber.

"I was a Viking old!
My deeds, though manifold,
No skald in song has told,

No Saga taught thee!
Take heed that in thy verse
Thou dost the tale rehearse,
Else dread a dead man's curse!
For this I sought thee.

"Far in the Northern Land,

By the wild Baltic's strand,

I, with my childish hand,

Tamed the gerfalcon;

And with my skates fast bound
Skimmed the half-frozen Sound,
That the poor whimpering hound
Trembled to walk on.

Oft to his frozen lair
Tracked I the grisly bear,