Would remind them forevermore Of their native forests they should not see again. And everywhere The slender, graceful spars Poise aloft in the air, And at the mast-head, White, blue, and red, A flag unrolls the stripes and stars. Ah! when the wanderer, lonely, friendless, In foreign harbors shall behold That flag unrolled, "Twill be as a friendly hand Stretched out from his native land, Filling his heart with memories sweet and endless! All is finished! and at length Has come the bridal day Of beauty and strength. Today the vessel shall be launched! With fleecy clouds the sky is blanched, Slowly, in all his splendors dight, The great sun rises to behold the sight. Centuries old, Strong as youth, and as uncontrolled, Up and down the sands of gold. With ceaseless flow, His beard of snow 245 250 255 260 265 270 Her snow-white signals fluttering, blending, Ready to be The bride of the gray old sea. On the deck another bride Is standing by her lover's side. 285 Shadows from the flag and shrouds, The prayer is said, The service read, The joyous bridegroom bows his head; Down his own the tears begin to run. The shepherd of that wandering flock, But tedious to the bridegroom's ear. Of the sailor's heart, All its pleasures and its griefs, All those secret currents, that flow With such resistless undertow, And lift and drift, with terrible force, 290 295 300 305 310 315 Before, behind, and all around, 320 And climb the crystal wall of the skies, As if we could slide from its outer brink. Ah! it is not the sea, It is not the sea that sinks and shelves, 1. Pastors of sailors' churches, endeared 325 Bethel of Boston, whose sea-savored sermons are recalled in that below, as also in that of Melville's Father Mapple (Moby Dick, Chapter 9). That rock and rise With endless and uneasy motion, Now sinking into the depths of ocean. To the toil of the task we have to do, We shall sail securely, and safely reach The Fortunate Isles,2 on whose shining beach Then the Master, With a gesture of command, Waved his hand; And at the word, Loud and sudden there was heard, All around them and below, 330 335 340 345 Of tenderness and watchful care! Through wind and wave, right onward steer! Are not the signs of doubt or fear. Sail forth into the sea of life, 2. Established by Vergil's "fortunate isle" as journey's end, or paradise; cf. Aeneid, Book VI, 1. 639. 365 3. Carpenter's terms for the props and braces, that hold the vessel in the slip. 1849 O gentle, loving, trusting wife, And safe from all adversity Thou, too, sail on, O Ship of State! We know what Master laid thy keel, What Workmen wrought thy ribs of steel, Our hearts, our hopes, are all with thee, Our hearts, our hopes, our prayers, our tears, Our faith triumphant o'er our fears, Are all with thee, are all with thee! The Jewish Cemetery at Newport* How strange it seems! These Hebrews in their graves, At rest in all this moving up and down! 4. In his diary for July 9, 1852, at Newport, Rhode Island, the poet wrote: "Went this morning into the Jewish burying-ground *** There are few graves; nearly all are low tombstones of marble with Hebrew inscriptions, and a few words added in English or Portuguese. *** It is a shady nook, at the corner of two dusty, frequented streets, 370 375 380 385 390 395 [1849] 1850 with an iron fence and a granite gateway***"The poem was written in the difficult stanza of Gray's "Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard." Longfellow's poem appeared in Putnam's Monthly Magazine for July, 1854, and was included in the "Birds of Passage" section of The Courtship of Miles Standish (1858). The trees are white with dust, that o'er their sleep And these sepulchral stones, so old and brown, Of foreign accent, and of different climes; With Abraham and Jacob of old times. "Blessed be God! for he created Death!" The mourners said, "and Death is rest and peace;" Then added, in the certainty of faith, "And giveth Life that nevermore shall cease." Closed are the portals of their Synagogue, No Psalms of David now the silence break, No Rabbi reads the ancient Decalogue In the grand dialect the Prophets spake. Gone are the living, but the dead remain, Still keeps their graves and their remembrance green. How came they here? What burst of Christian hate, 30 Drove o'er the sea-that desert desolate- Taught in the school of patience to endure The life of anguish and the death of fire. All their lives long, with the unleavened bread And slaked its thirst with marah1 of their tears. 5. Exodus, second book of the Old 7. The majority of the colonial Jewish 8. Abraham's concubine, Hagar, and her son, Ishmael, were exiled when his 35 40 aged wife, Sarah, bore Isaac (Genesis xvi and xxi). 9. Like "ghetto," Judenstrass (German, "street of Jews") refers to a restricted urban area designated for Jews. 1. Hebrew, "bitterness." Marah was a spring of bitter, undrinkable water found by the famishing Israelites in the wilderness. Cf. Exodus xv: 23-26. 25 20 15 10 S |