he owes not any man.Week in, week out, from morn till night,
You can hear his bellows blow;
You can hear him swing his heavy sledge,
With measured beat and slow,
Like a sexton ringing the village bell,
When the evening sun is low.
And children coming home from school
Look in at the open door;
They love to see the flaming forge,
And hear the bellows roar,
And catch the burning sparks that fly
Like chaff from a threshing-floor.
He goes on Sunday to the church,
And sits among his boys;
He hears the parson pray and preach,
He hears his daughter's voice
Singing in the village choir,
And it makes his heart rejoice.
It sounds to him like her mother's voice,
Singing in Paradise!
He needs must think of her once more,
How in the grave she lies;
And with his hard, rough hand he wipes
A tear out of his eyes.
Toiling,—rejoicing,—sorrowing,
Onward through life he goes;
Each morning sees some task begin,
Each evening sees it close;
Something attempted, something done,
Has earned a night's repose.
Thanks, thanks to thee, my worthy friend,
For the lesson thou hast taught!
Thus at the flaming forge of life
Our fortunes must be wrought;
Thus on its sounding anvil shaped
Each burning deed and thought!
[Notes: Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, one of the foremost among contemporary American poets. Born in 1807. His chief poems are 'Evangeline' and 'Hiawatha.'
His face is like the tan. Tan is the bark of the oak, bruised and broken for tanning leather.
Thus at the flaming forge of life, &c. = As iron is softened at the forge and beaten into shape on the anvil, so by the trials and circumstances of life, our thoughts and actions are influenced and our characters and destinies decided. The metaphor is made more complicated by being broken up.]
MEN OF ENGLAND
Men of England! who inherit
Rights that cost your sires their blood!
Men whose undegenerate spirit
Has been proved on land and flood:
By the foes ye've fought uncounted,
By the glorious deeds ye've done,
Trophies captured—breaches mounted,
Navies conquer'd—kingdoms won!
Yet remember, England gathers
Hence but fruitless wreaths of fame,
If the virtues of your fathers
Glow not in your hearts the same.
What are monuments of bravery,
Where no public virtues bloom?
What avail in lands of slavery
Trophied temples, arch, and tomb?
Pageants!—let the world revere us
For our people's rights and laws,
And the breasts of civic heroes
Bared in Freedom's holy cause.
Yours are Hampden's Russell's glory,
Sydney's matchless shade is your,—
Martyrs in heroic story,
Worth a thousand Agincourts!
We're the sons of sires that baffled
Crown'd and mitred tyranny:
They defied the field and scaffold,
For their birthrights—so will we.
[Notes: Thomas Campbell, born 1777, died 1844. Author of the 'Pleasures of Hope,' 'Gertrude of Wyoming,' and many lyrics. His poetry is careful, scholarlike and polished. Men whose undegenerate spirit, &c. In prose, this would run, "(Ye) men whose spirit has been proved (to be) undegenerate," &c. The word "undegenerate," which is introduced only as an epithet, is the real predicate of the sentence.
By the foes ye've fought uncounted. "Uncounted" agreeing with "foes."
Fruitless wreaths of fame. A poetical figure, taken from the wreaths of laurel given as prizes in the ancient games of Greece. "Past history will give fame to a country, but nothing more fruitful than fame, unless its virtues are kept alive."
Trophied temples, i.e., Temples hung (after the fashion of the ancients) with trophies.
Arch, i.e., the triumphal arch erected by the Romans in honour of victorious generals.
Pageants = "these are nought but pageants."
And (for) the beasts of civic heroes. Civic heroes, those who have striven for the rights of their fellow citizens.
Hampden, i.e., John Hampden (born 1594, died 1643), the maintainer of the rights of the people in the reign of Charles I. He resisted the imposition of ship-money, and died in a skirmish at Chalgrove during the Civil War.
Russell, i.e., Lord William Russell, beheaded in 1683, in the reign of Charles II. on a charge of treason. He had resisted the Court in its aims at establishing the doctrine of passive obedience.
Sydney, i.e., Algernon Sydney. The friend of Russell, who met with the same fate in the same year.
Sydney's matchless shade. Shade = spirit or memory.
Agincourt.
