WRITTEN AT BOPPARD ON THE RHINE AUGUST 25, 1842, just BEFORE LEAVING FOR HOME Half of my life is gone, and I have let The years slip from me and have not fulfilled The aspiration of my youth, to build Not indolence, nor pleasure, nor the fret Of restless passions that would not be stilled, But sorrow, and a care that almost killed,1 Kept me from what I may accomplish yet; Though, half-way up the hill, I see the Past Lying beneath me with its sounds and sights,— With smoking roofs, soft bells, and gleaming lights,- 9. Among Longfellow's sonnets, this is 10 [1845] 1846 fellow had reached the mid-point of the biblical three score and ten years. The poem was collected in The Belfry of Bruges, dated 1846, but published on December 23, 1845. 1. Longfellow's first wife had died in 1835, during his previous trip abroad. The Arsenal at Springfield2 This is the Arsenal. From floor to ceiling, Ah! what a sound will rise, how wild and dreary, Will mingle with their awful symphonies! I hear even now the infinite fierce chorus, Which, through the ages that have gone before us, On helm and harness rings the Saxon hammer, O'er distant deserts sounds the Tartar gong. I hear the Florentine, who from his palace Beat the wild war-drums made of serpent's skin; The bursting shell, the gateway wrenched asunder, Is it, O man, with such discordant noises, 2. Longfellow and his second wife on the next year collected it in The Belfry of Bruges. 3. A lyrical supplication for mercy; specifically, the first line of Psalm L, in the Latin Vulgate, used in the Catholic service: Miserere mei Domine ("Have mercy on me, Lord"). 4. The Cimbri, originally Danish, long opposed the Roman Empire. 5. Places of worship of Mexican and Central American Indians, the temple surmounting a truncated pyramidal mound. 1844 Thou drownest Nature's sweet and kindly voices, Were half the power that fills the world with terror, There were no need of arsenals or forts: The warrior's name would be a name abhorrèd! Down the dark future, through long generations, The echoing sounds grow fainter and then cease; I hear once more the voice of Christ say, "Peace!" Peace! and no longer from its brazen portals The blast of War's great organ shakes the skies! The holy melodies of love arise. Nuremberg 35 40 45 1844, [1845] 1846 In the valley of the Pegnitz, where across broad meadow-lands Rise the blue Franconian mountains, Nuremberg, the ancient, stands. Quaint old town of toil and traffic, quaint old town of art and song, Memories haunt thy pointed gables, like the rooks that round them throng: Memories of the Middle Ages, when the emperors, rough and bold, 5 Had their dwelling in thy castle, time-defying, centuries old; And thy brave and thrifty burghers boasted, in their uncouth rhyme, That their great imperial city stretched its hand through every clime.8 6. In "Nuremberg," and many other poems, Longfellow the teacher communicated his enthusiasm for the culture of the past to a middle-class audience largely untraveled. However, although he here recalls the romantic history of a medieval cathedral city, he emphasizes its democratic tradition, and, in the last line, reflects a dominant American attitude. The poem, inspired by the poet's visit in 1842, was written in 1844, appearing in Graham's Maga zine in June, and in The Belfry of Bruges the following year. 7. Nuremberg became a free imperial city in 1219, and for more than four hundred years its princes fostered traditions of freedom, providing a German Gothic Renaissance in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, and a favorable soil for the Protestant Reformation of Luther (1483-1546). 8. Paraphrase of an ancient German proverb. In the court-yard of the castle, bound with many an iron band, On the square the oriel window, where in old heroic days And above the cathedral doorways saints and bishops carved in stone, By a former age commissioned as apostles to our own. 15 In the church of sainted Sebald sleeps enshrined his holy dust, And in bronze the Twelve Apostles guard from age to age their trust;2 In the church of sainted Lawrence stands a pix of sculpture rare, Like the foamy sheaf of fountains, rising through the painted air. Here, when Art was still religion, with a simple, reverent heart, 25 Through these streets so broad and stately, these obscure and dismal lanes, Walked of yore the Mastersingers, 9. Kunigunde (died about 1039), wife of Henry II. She repudiated false charges by walking barefoot over hot irons, and was canonized as a saint in 1200. 1. "Melchior Pfinzing was one of the most celebrated German poets of the sixteenth century. The hero of his Tenerdank was the reigning Emperor, Maximilian ✶✶ ✶” [Longfellow's note]. 2. "The tomb of Saint Sebald, in the church which bears his name, is one of the richest works of art in Nuremberg. It is of bronze, and was cast by Peter Vischer and his sons, who labored upon it thirteen years. It is adorned with nearly one hundred figures, among which those of the Twelve Apostles are conspicuous for size and beauty" [Long chanting rude poetic strains. fellow's note]. 3. St. Lawrence Justinian (1381-1456), author of the constitution of the Augustinians, an order of monks whose large German following included Luther. In his note, Longfellow describes the "pix" of this church as "a tabernacle for vessels of the sacrament, ✶ ✶ ✶ an exquisite sculpture of white stone," sixtyfour feet high, reflecting the rich colors of the choir windows. 4. Albrecht Dürer (1471-1528), most celebrated painter of the German Renaissance, inventor of etching, and an "Evangelist" because of his magnificent woodcuts of biblical subjects, still treasured in old German Bibles. 5. He has gone forth. 6. Meistersingers; guilds of musicians and poets, chiefly from the artisan class, From remote and sunless suburbs came they to the friendly guild, Building nests in Fame's great temple, as in spouts the swallows build. As the weaver plied the shuttle, wove he too the mystic rhyme, And the smith his iron measures hammered to the anvil's chime; Thanking God, whose boundless wisdom makes the flowers of bloom In the forge's dust and cinders, in the tissues of the loom. poesy 35 Here Hans Sachs," the cobbler-poet, laureate of the gentle craft, Wisest of the Twelve Wise Masters, in huge folios sang and laughed. But his house is now an ale-house, with a nicely sanded floor, And a garland in the window, and his face above the door; 40 Painted by some humble artist, as in Adam Puschman's song, As the old man gray and dove-like, with his great beard white and long. And at night the swart mechanic comes to drown his cark and care, Vanished is the ancient splendor, and before my dreamy eye 45 Not thy Councils, not thy Kaisers, win for thee the world's regard; But thy painter, Albrecht Dürer, and Hans Sachs thy cobbler bard. Thus, O Nuremberg, a wanderer from a region far away, 50 As he paced thy streets and court-yards, sang in thought his careless lay: Gathering from the pavement's crevice, as a floweret of the soil, The nobility of labor,-the long pedigree of toil. 1844 1844, [1845] 1846 which flourished in various German cities from the fourteenth to the sixteenth centuries. That at Nuremberg, the most renowned, included Hans Sachs (cf. 1. 37, below). 7. Hans Sachs (1494-1576) of Nuremberg, the most talented of the Meistersingers, was also a shoemaker ("the gentle craft"); Wagner later made him the central figure in the opera Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg (1867). 8. "The Twelve Wise Masters was the title of the original corporation of the Mastersingers. Hans Sachs, *** though not one of the original Twelve, was the most renowned of the Mastersingers" [Longfellow's note]. 9. In his note, Longfellow translates some lines from this obscure German poet as the source of his description of Sachs, below. |