Taking each other for husband and wife in the Magistrate’s presence,
After the Puritan way, and the laudable custom of Holland.
Fervently then, and devoutly, the excellent Elder of Plymouth 15
Prayed for the hearth and the home, that were founded that day in affection,
Speaking of life and of death, and imploring Divine benedictions.
Lo! when the service was ended, a form appeared on the threshold,
Clad in armor of steel, a sombre and sorrowful figure!
Why does the bridegroom start and stare at the strange apparition? 20
Why does the bride turn pale, and hide her face on his shoulder?
Is it a phantom of air, — a bodiless, spectral illusion?
Is it a ghost from the grave, that has come to forbid the betrothal?
Long had it stood there unseen, a guest uninvited, unwelcomed;
Over its clouded eyes there had passed at times an expression 25
Softening the gloom and revealing the warm heart hidden beneath them,
As when across the sky the driving rack of the rain-cloud
Grows for a moment thin, and betrays the sun by its brightness.
Once it had lifted its hand, and moved its lips, but was silent,
As if an iron will had mastered the fleeting intention. 30
But when were ended the troth and the prayer and the last benediction,
Into the room it strode, and the people beheld with amazement
Bodily there in his armor Miles Standish, the Captain of Plymouth!
Grasping the bridegroom’s hand, he said with emotion, “Forgive me!
I have been angry and hurt, — too long have I cherished the feeling; 35
I have been cruel and hard, but now, thank God! it is ended.
Mine is the same hot blood that leaped in the veins of Hugh Standish,
Sensitive, swift to resent, but as swift in atoning for error.
Never so much as now was Miles Standish the friend of John Alden.”
Thereupon answered the bridegroom: “Let all be forgotten between us, — 40
All save the dear old friendship, and that shall grow older and dearer!”
Then the Captain advanced, and, bowing, saluted Priscilla,
Gravely, and after the manner of old-fashioned gentry in England,
Something of camp and of court, of town and of country, commingled,
Wishing her joy of her wedding, and loudly lauding her husband. 45
Then he said with a smile: “I should have remembered the adage, —
If you would be well served, you must serve yourself; and moreover,
No man can gather cherries in Kent at the season of Christmas!”
Great was the people’s amazement, and greater yet their rejoicing,
Thus to behold once more the sunburnt face of their Captain, 50
Whom they had mourned as dead; and they gathered and crowded about him,
Eager to see him and hear him, forgetful of bride and of bridegroom,
Questioning, answering, laughing, and each interrupting the other,
Till the good Captain declared, being quite overpowered and bewildered,
He had rather by far break into an Indian encampment, 55
Than come again to a wedding to which he had not been invited.
Meanwhile the bridegroom went forth and stood with the bride at the doorway,
Breathing the perfumed air of that warm and beautiful morning.
Touched with autumnal tints, but lonely and sad in the sunshine,
Lay extended before them the land of toil and privation; 60
There were the graves of the dead, and the barren waste of the sea-shore,
There the familiar fields, the groves of pine, and the meadows;
But to their eyes transfigured, it seemed as the Garden of Eden,
Filled with the presence of God, whose voice was the sound of the ocean.
Soon was their vision disturbed by the noise and stir of departure, 65
Friends coming forth from the house, and impatient of longer delaying,
Each with his plan for the day, and the work that was left uncompleted.
Then from a stall near at hand, amid exclamations of wonder,
Alden the thoughtful, the careful, so happy, so proud of Priscilla,
Brought out his snow-white bull, obeying the hand of its master, 70
Led by a cord that was tied to an iron ring in its nostrils,
Covered with crimson cloth, and a cushion placed for a saddle.
She should not walk, he said, through the dust and heat of the noonday;
Nay, she should ride like a queen, not plod along like a peasant.
Somewhat alarmed at first, but reassured by the others, 75
Placing her hand on the cushion, her foot in the hand of her husband,
Gayly, with joyous laugh, Priscilla mounted her palfrey.
“Nothing is wanting now,” he said with a smile, “but the distaff;
Then you would be in truth my queen, my beautiful Bertha!”
Onward the bridal procession now moved to their new habitation, 80
Happy husband and wife, and friends conversing together.
Pleasantly murmured the brook, as they crossed the ford in the forest,
Pleased with the image that passed, like a dream of love, through its bosom,
Tremulous, floating in air, o’er the depths of the azure abysses.
Down through the golden leaves the sun was pouring his splendors, 85
Gleaming on purple grapes, that, from branches above them suspended,
Mingled their odorous breath with the balm of the pine and the fir-tree,
Wild and sweet as the clusters that grew in the valley of Eshcol.
Like a picture it seemed of the primitive, pastoral ages,
Fresh with the youth of the world, and recalling Rebecca and Isaac, 90
Old and yet ever new, and simple and beautiful always,
Love immortal and young in the endless succession of lovers.
So through the Plymouth woods passed onward the bridal procession.
TALES OF A WAYSIDE INN
This popular collection was initially published in 1863. The frame narrative depicts a group of people staying at a Wayside Inn in Sudbury, Massachusetts, close to the poet’s home in Cambridge, as each character narrates a story of their choice. The conception has often drawn comparisons to Chaucer’s famous medieval collection The Canterbury Tales. The characters used by Longfellow were actually based on friends of the poet, who were easily recognisable at the time of publication.
Longfellow partly undertook composition of this demanding project to combat grief over the death of his wife Fanny in 1861. He also had to endure many personal struggles during the American Civil War, including his oldest son’s illnesses and injuries while serving in the Army of the Potomac.
While preparing the publication, Longfellow visited the real-life Wayside Inn in 1862 with his friend and publisher James Thomas Fields. At the time, it was called the Red Horse Tavern and had closed after the owner, Lyman Howe, died in 1861. It would not open again as an inn until 1897. Longfellow referred to it as “a rambling, tumble-down building”
The collection was first published on November 23, 1863, with an initial print run of 15,000 copies and it was immediately popular with readers. The New York Times described the collection as “a pleasant fiction” and an “excellent account”. A second series was published in 1870 and a third followed in 1873. Though they sold well, the latter two volumes were less popular than the first.
The most famous tale included in the collection was the previously published ballad Paul Revere’s Ride, which the poet was inspired to write after visiting the Old North Church in Boston on April 5, 1860. Longfellow began writing the poem the next day. It was first published in the January 1861 issue of The Atlantic Monthly. The poem is spoken by the landlord of the Wayside Inn and tells a par
tly fictionalised account of Paul Revere. In the narrative, Revere tells a friend to prepare signal lanterns in the Old North Church to inform him if the British will attack by land or sea. He would await the signal across the river in Charlestown and be ready to spread the alarm throughout Middlesex County, Massachusetts. The unnamed friend climbs up the steeple and soon sets up two signal lanterns, informing Revere that the British are coming by sea. Revere rides his horse through Medford, Lexington, and Concord to warn the patriots.
The first edition
The original title page
The Wayside Inn, located in Sudbury, Massachusetts
CONTENTS
Introductory Note
PART FIRST.
Prelude I.
The Landlord’s Tale
Paul Revere’s Ride
The Landlord’s Tale: Interlude
The Student’s Tale
The Falcon of Ser Federigo
The Student’s Tale: Interlude
The Spanish Jew’s Tale
The Legend of Rabbi Ben Levi
The Spanish Jew’s Tale: Interlude
The Sicilian’s Tale
King Robert of Sicily
The Sicilian’s Tale: Interlude
The Musician’s Tale
The Saga of King Olaf
The Challenge of Thor
King Olaf’s Return
Thora of Rimol
Queen Sigrid the Haughty
The Skerry of Shrieks
The Wraith of Odin
Iron-Beard
Gudrun
Thangbrand the Priest
Raud the Strong
Bishop Sigurd of Salten Fiord
King Olaf’s Christmas
The Building of the Long Serpent
The Crew of the Long Serpent
A Little Bird in the Air
Queen Thyri and the Angelica Stalks
King Svend of the Forked Beard
King Olaf and Earl Sigvald
King Olaf’s War-Horns
Einar Tamberskelver
King Olaf’s Death-Drink
The Nun of Nidaros
The Musician’s Tale: Interlude
The Theologian’s Tale
Torquemada
The Theologian’s Tale: Interlude
The Poet’s Tale
The Birds of Killingworth
The Poet’s Tale: Finale
PART SECOND
Prelude II.
The Sicilian’s Tale
The Bell of Atri
The Sicilian’s Tale: Interlude
The Spanish Jew’s Tale
Kambalu
The Spanish Jew’s Tale: Interlude
The Student’s Tale
The Cobbler of Hagenau
The Student’s Tale: Interlude
The Musician’s Tale
The Ballad of Carmilhan
The Musician’s Tale : Interlude
The Poet’s Tale
Lady Wentworth
The Poet’s Tale: Interlude
The Theologian’s Tale
The Legend Beautiful
The Theologian’s Tale: Interlude
The Student’s Second Tale
The Baron of St. Castine
The Student’s Second Tale: Finale
PART THIRD.
Prelude III.
The Spanish Jew’s Tale
Azrael
The Spanish Jew’s Tale: Interlude
The Poet’s Tale
Charlemagne
The Poet’s Tale: Interlude
The Student’s Tale
Emma and Eginhard
The Student’s Tale: Interlude
The Theologian’s Tale
Elizabeth
The Theologian’s Tale: Interlude
The Sicilian’s Tale
The Monk of Casal-Maggiore
The Sicilian’s Tale: Interlude
The Spanish Jew’s Second Tale
Scanderbeg
The Spanish Jew’s Second Tale: Interlude
The Musician’s Tale
The Mother’s Ghost
The Musician’s Tale: Interlude
The Landlord’s Tale
The Rhyme of Sir Christopher
The Landlord’s Tale: Finale
Paul Revere (1734-1818) was a silversmith, early industrialist and a patriot in the American Revolution.
“Paul Revere’s Ride” in its first published form — The Atlantic Monthly in 1861.
The statue of Paul Revere in Boston, inspired by the poem, with the Old North Church in the background.
Introductory Note
THE PLAN for a group of stories under the fiction of a company of story-tellers at an inn appears to have visited Mr. Longfellow after he had made some progress with the separate tales. The considerable collection under the title of The Saga of King Olaf was indeed written at first with the design of independent publication. Nearly two years passed before he took up the task in earnest; then, in November, 1860, “with all kinds of interruptions,” he says, he wrote fifteen of the lyrics in as many days, and a few days afterward completed the whole of the Saga. Meanwhile he had written and published Paul Revere’s Ride, and before the publication of his volume he had printed one of the lyrics of the Saga and The Legend of Rabbi Ben Levi. Just when he determined upon the framework of The Wayside Inn does not appear; it is quite possible that he had connected The Saga of King Olaf, which had been lying by for two or three years, with his friend Ole Bull, and that the desire to use so picturesque a figure had suggested a group of which the musician should be one. Literature had notable precedents for the general plan of a company at an inn, but whether the actual inn at Sudbury came to localize his conception, or was itself the cause of the plan, is not quite clear.
He sent the book to the printer in April, 1863, under the title of The Sudbury Tales, but in August wrote to Mr. Fields: “I am afraid we have made a mistake in calling the new volume The Sudbury Tales. Now that I see it announced I do not like the title. Sumner cries out against it and has persuaded me, as I think he will you, to come back to The Wayside Inn. Pray think as we do.”
The book as originally planned consisted of the first part only, and was published November 25, 1863, in an edition of fifteen thousand copies, — an indication of the confidence which the publishers had in the poet’s popularity.
The disguises of characters were so slight that readers easily recognized most of them at once, and Mr. Longfellow himself never made any mystery of their identity. Just after the publication of the volume he wrote to a correspondent in England: —
“The Wayside Inn has more foundation in fact than you may suppose. The town of Sudbury is about twenty miles from Cambridge. Some two hundred years ago, an English family by the name of Howe built there a country house, which has remained in the family down to the present time, the last of the race dying but two years ago. Losing their fortune, they became inn-keepers; and for a century the Red-Horse Inn has flourished, going down from father to son. The place is just as I have described it, though no longer an inn. All this will account for the landlord’s coat-of-arms, and his being a justice of the peace, and his being known as ‘the Squire,’ — things that must sound strange in English ears. All the characters are real. The musician is Ole Bull; the Spanish Jew, Israel Edrehi, whom I have seen as I have painted him, etc., etc.”
It is easy to fill up the etc. of Mr. Longfellow’s catalogue. The poet is T. W. Parsons, the translator of Dante; the Sicilian, Luigi Monti, whose name occurs often in Mr. Longfellow’s Life as a familiar friend; the theologian, Professor Daniel Treadwell, a physicist of genius who had also a turn for theology; the student, Henry Ware Wales, a scholar of promise who had travelled much, who died early, and whose tastes appeared in the collection of books which he left to the library of Harvard College. This group was collected by the poet’s fancy; in point of fact three of them, Parsons, Monti, and Treadwell, were wont to spend their summer months at the inn.
The form was s
o agreeable that it was easy to extend it afterward so as to include the tales which the poet found it in his mind to write. The Second Day was published in 1872; The Third Part formed the principal portion of Aftermath in 1873, and subsequently the three parts were brought together, into a complete volume.
PART FIRST.
Prelude I.
ONE Autumn night, in Sudbury town,
Across the meadows bare and brown,
The windows of the wayside inn
Gleamed red with fire-light through the leaves
Of woodbine, hanging from the eaves 5
Their crimson curtains rent and thin.
As ancient is this hostelry
As any in the land may be,
Built in the old Colonial day,
When men lived in a grander way, 10
With ampler hospitality;
A kind of old Hobgoblin Hall,
Now somewhat fallen to decay,
With weather-stains upon the wall,
And stairways worn, and crazy doors, 15
And creaking and uneven floors,
And chimneys huge, and tiled and tall.
A region of repose it seems,
A place of slumber and of dreams,
Remote among the wooded hills! 20
For there no noisy railway speeds,
Its torch-race scattering smoke and gleeds;
But noon and night, the panting teams
Stop under the great oaks, that throw
Tangles of light and shade below, 25
On roofs and doors and window-sills.
Across the road the barns display
Their lines of stalls, their mows of hay,
Through the wide doors the breezes blow,
The wattled cocks strut to and fro, 30
And, half effaced by rain and shine,
The Red Horse prances on the sign.
Round this old-fashioned, quaint abode
Deep silence reigned, save when a gust
Went rushing down the county road, 35
Delphi Complete Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (Delphi Poets Series Book 13) Page 52