American Minute with Bill Federer: Henry Wadsworth Longfellow – American Fireside Poet – “Man is unjust, but God is just; and finally justice triumphs.”

“Listen my children and you shall hear

Of the midnight ride of Paul Revere,

On the 18th of April, in 75;

Hardly a man is now alive

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’ …

And yet, through the gloom and the light,

The fate of a nation was riding that night …

You know the rest. In the books you have read

How the British Regulars fired and fled, —

How the farmers gave them ball for ball,

From behind each fence and farmyard wall,

Chasing the redcoats down the lane,

Then crossing the fields to emerge again

Under the trees at the turn of the road,

And only pausing to fire and load …

For, borne on the night-wind of the Past,

Through all our history, to the last,

In the hour of darkness and peril and need,

The people will waken and listen to hear

The hurrying hoof-beats of that steed,

And the midnight message of Paul Revere.”

These lines are from the poem, Paul Revere’s Ride, written by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, who was born FEBRUARY 27, 1807.

His grandfather, Peleg Wadsworth, had been a general in the Revolutionary War.

He was famous for escaping from British Fort George in Castine, Maine.

Confined in a guarded room, and convinced they were going to shipped back to England, where they would be tried for treason and hung, they came up with a plan.

For three weeks, General Peleg Wadsworth and Major Benjamin Burton quietly used a gimlet – a small hand drill, to drill a circle of holes in the ceiling, using bread to plug the holes to avoid them being noticed.

Then, on a stormy night in June, 1781, they punched out the circle and climbed up.

Crawling along ceiling joists, they used blankets to lower themselves over the earthworks.

Then running to the banks of the Penobscot River, they found an Indian canoe, crossed and hid in the woods three days to evade search parties.

British Colonel John Campbell wrote to his superior, Sir Henry Clinton, June 22, 1781:

“I am sorry to inform your Excellency that on the 19th instant, the Rebel Brigadier General Wadsworth who was confined here in a Barrack Room, with one Burton once a Major of Militia, made their escape, by cutting a hole in the ceiling of the room, although two sentries were constantly posted at the door of the room and a window.”

Peleg Wadsworth was elected a U.S. Congressman from Maine. Henry’s father, Stephen, was also a U.S. Congressman.

Henry’s uncle, after whom he was named, was Henry Wadsworth, a Naval hero killed fighting Muslim Barbary Pirates at the Battle of Tripoli, 1804.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow was a Harvard professor and one of the popular American Fireside poets, along with:

Longfellow’s poems were noted for imparting cultural and moral values, focusing on life being more than material pursuits.

He wrote classics which captured the American imagination:

In Evangeline, Longfellow wrote:

“Man is unjust, but God is just; and finally justice triumphs.”

The house Longfellow lived in, 105 Brattle Street, Cambridge, Massachusetts, had previously been used as the Headquarters of General George Washington during the British’s Siege of Boston, July 1775-April 1776.

In 1842, Longfellow expressed his public support for abolishing slavery by publishing a collection, Poems on Slavery, which was reprinted by The New England Anti-Slavery Association.

In Poems on Slavery, “The Witnesses,” Longfellow criticized the slave trade in the Democrat Southern states:

“In Ocean’s wide domains,

Half buried in the sands,

Lie skeletons in chains,

With shackled feet and hands.

Beyond the fall of dews,

Deeper than plummet lies,

Float ships, with all their crews,

No more to sink nor rise.

There the black Slave-ship swims,

Freighted with human forms,

Whose fettered, fleshless limbs

Are not the sport of storms.

These are the bones of Slaves;

They gleam from the abyss;

They cry, from yawning waves,

We are the Witnesses!

Within Earth’s wide domains

Are markets for men’s lives;

Their necks are galled with chains,

Their wrists are cramped with gyves.

Dead bodies, that the kite

In deserts makes its prey;

Murders, that with affright

Scare school-boys from their play!

All evil thoughts and deeds;

Anger, and lust, and pride;

The foulest, rankest weeds,

That choke Life’s groaning tide!

These are the woes of Slaves;

They glare from the abyss;

They cry, from unknown graves,

We are the Witnesses!”

He was friends with vocal anti-slavery Senator Charles Sumner of Massachusetts.

Longfellow wrote a poem about the Ottoman Muslim invasion of Eastern Europe in the 1400s.

Courageous leaders in the fight were:

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow wrote a poem to commemorate Albania’s hero George Castriot (1405-1468), called “Skanderbeg” by Albanians and “Iskander” by Turks.

Skanderbeg was one of the boy hostages taken from Christian families by Sultan Murad II’s “devshirme,” to be raised in the Ottoman court, converted to Islam, and become a soldier in the Muslim army.

Skanderbeg served the Sultan for 20 years, but in 1443, he abandoned Islam and converted back to Christianity.

A similar trend is occurring today.

The British journal The New Statesman (5/17/13) cited Usama Hasan, a senior researcher at the Quilliam Foundation: “Many converts leave the faith … some stats say 50 per cent will leave within a few years.”

Pew Research Center (Jan. 27, 2011) reported “the number of people who become Muslims through conversion seems to be roughly equal to the number of Muslims who leave the faith.”

Skanderbeg then led a rebellion against his former Muslim master, Sultan Murad II.

He became a major obstacle to Turkish expansion into Europe.

Skanderbeg, which means treacherous, captured the Albanian city of Croia (Kruje) in 1444 by using a forged letter from Sultan Murad II.

Skanderbeg was noted for his hit-and-run and scorched-earth tactics, as well as punishing Venetian merchants who were selling military supplies to the Ottomans.

Among his many battles, Skanderbeg fought in:

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow wrote in his epic poem about Skanderbeg- Iskander:

… In the darkness of the night

Iskander, the pride and boast

Of that mighty Othman (Ottoman) host,

With his routed Turks, takes flight …

In the middle of the night,

In a halt of the hurrying flight,

There came a Scribe of the King

Wearing his signet-ring …

“Now write me a writing, O Scribe …

A writing sealed with thy ring,

To King Amurath’s Pasha

In the city of Croia (Kruje)

That he surrender the same

In the name of my master, the King (Sultan);

For what is writ in his name

Can never be recalled” …

Of Iskander’s scimitar

From its sheath, with jewels bright,

Shot, as he thundered: “Write!”

And the trembling Scribe obeyed …

… And Iskander answered and said:

“They lie on the bloody sod

By the hoofs of horses trod;

But this was the decree

Of the watchers overhead;

For the war belongeth to God,

And in battle who are we,

Who are we, that shall withstand

The wind of his lifted hand?” …

… Then swift as a shooting star

The curved and shining blade

Of Iskander’s scimitar

From its sheath, with jewels bright …

… Then again Iskander cried:

“Now follow whither I ride,

For here thou must not stay …

… No sound was heard but the sound

Of the hoofs of Iskander’s steed,

As forward he sprang with a bound …

… Then onward he rode and afar,

With scarce three hundred men,

Through river and forest and fen,

O’er the mountains of Argentar …

… Then his trumpeters in the van

On their silver bugles blew,

And in crowds about him ran

Albanian and Turkoman …

… Then to the Castle White

He rode in regal state,

And entered in at the gate …

… In all his arms bedight,

And gave to the Pasha

Who ruled in Croia (Kruje)

The writing of the King,

Sealed with his signet-ring.

And the Pasha bowed his head,

And after a silence said:

“Allah is just and great!

I yield to the will divine,

The city and lands are thine;

Who shall contend with Fate?” …

… Anon from the castle walls

The crescent banner falls,

And the crowd beholds instead,

Like a portent in the sky,

Iskander’s banner fly,

The Black Eagle with double head;

And a shout ascends on high,

For men’s souls are tired of the Turks,

And their wicked ways and works,

That have made of Ak-Hissar

A city of the plague;

And the loud, exultant cry

That echoes wide and far

Is: “Long live Scanderbeg!”

Longfellow was heartbroken when his wife died in a tragic house fire in 1861, and his son ran off to fight in the Civil War.

He occupied his time, as he spoke several European languages, on the monumental task of translating Dante Alighieri’s Divine Comedy: Infernoe, Purgatorio, and Paradiso, published in 1867.

In the last poem he wrote, The Bells of San Blas (1882), Longfellow described a forgotten small town on Pacific coast of Mexico:

“… But to me, a dreamer of dreams,

To whom what is and what seems

      Are often one and the same,—

The Bells of San Blas to me

Have a strange, wild melody,

      And are something more than a name.

For bells are the voice of the church;

They have tones that touch and search

      The hearts of young and old;

One sound to all …”

Longfellow died on March 24, 1882, in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

In 1884, he became the first non-British writer to be represented by a sculpted bust in London’s Poet’s Corner of Westminster Abbey.

President Franklin D. Roosevelt at a critical point in World War II, sent a message to Winston Churchill, writing in his own handwriting a verse from Longfellow’s “The Building of the Ship”:

“Sail on, O Ship of State!

Sail on, O UNION, strong and great!

Humanity with all its fears,

With all the hopes of future years,

Is hanging breath lesson thy fate!”

In a deeply reflective poem, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow wrote “A Psalm of Life,” 1838:

“Life is real! Life is earnest!

And the grave is not its goal;

Dust thou art, to dust returnest,

Was not spoken of the soul …

In the world’s broad field of battle,

In the bivouac of Life,

Be not like dumb, driven cattle!

Be a hero in the strife!

Trust no Future, howe’er pleasant!

Let the dead Past bury its dead!

Act,-act in the living Present!

Heart within, and God o’erhead!

Lives of great men all remind us,

We can make our lives sublime,

And, departing, leave behind us,

Footprints on the sands of time;

-Footprints, that perhaps another,

Sailing o’er life’s solemn main,

A forlorn and shipwrecked brother,

Seeing, shall take heart again.”

—

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