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Digitized by the Internet Archive

in 2009 with funding from

Sloan Foundation

http://www.archive.org/details/villageblacksmitOOIong

y^HIS Edition of The Village Blacksmith is published by special

ARRANGEMENT WITH MESSRS. HOUGHTON, MiFFLIN & Co. . THE AUTHORIZED

publishers of Mr. Longfellow's Works.

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'77/6' S7nith, a mighty man is he:'

The Village Blacksmith

HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW

ILLUSTRATED

NEW YORK

E. P. BUTTON & COMPANY31 West Twenty-third Street

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Copyright, iSSj,

By E. P. DuTTON AND Company.

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*ROCKWE LL 5> Li^^te!^ |C H U R C H I LL^i

T^RUE poet is also true priest. He takes of

earth's commonest things, the plain bread and

water of every-day toil and trial, and, having laid

loving, reverent hands upon them, he delivers them

unto us enriched with a new grace, a diviner virtue.

It is the sacrament of thought.

Half a century ago— and until within a few

years— a blacksmith's shop, of the old New Eng-

land village type, stood in Brattle street, Cambridge,

not far from Longfellow's home. Hundreds of

passers-by glanced at the low roof, the overhang-

ing boughs, the grimy smith at his forge, the

gazing children at the door, and went their way

without giving them a second thought. Not so

the poet. Where others saw but the veriest com-

INTRODUCTION.

monplacc he discovered fit material for tuneful

song,— love, sorrow, the patience of hope, the

strength of dut\', all the beauty and tragedy of

earnest human living. And though smith and

smithy, the sheltering tree, the loitering children,

poet and passers-by, alike are gone, the song

lives on. Its pictures fade not; its lessons grow

not old ; it will but become the more precious as

the times and customs which it commemorates

slide farther back into the past, and differ more

widely from those of to-day.

W. M. L. J.

ILLUSTRATIONS

DRAWN AND ENGRAVED UNDER THE SUPERVISION OF

GEORGE T. ANDREW.

ARTISTS,

Edmund H. Garrett, Jessie Curtis Shepherd,

Frank T. Merrill, Miss E. S. Tucker,

Chas. Copeland, F. B. Schell,

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T TNDER a spreading chestnut tree

The village smithy stands

;

The smith, a mighty man is he,

With large and sinewy hands

;

And the muscles of his brawny arms

Are strone as iron bands.

His hair is crisp, and black, and loni;",

His face is like the tan

;

His brow is wet with honest sweat.

He earns whate'er he can,

And looks the whole workl in the face.

For he owes not an)' man.

Week in, week out, from morn till night

You can hear his bellows blow

;

You can hear him swint; his hea\-\' sledge,

With measured beat and slow,

Like a sexton I'inging 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 threshins" floor.

He goes on Sunday to the church,

And sits among his boys

;

He hears the parson pray and preach,

Singing in the village choir,

And it makes his heart rejoice.

L

\

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 hes

;

And with his hard, rough hand he wipes

A tear out of his eyes.

Toiling,— rejoicing,— sorrowing.

Onward through hfe 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 flamhig forge of hfe

Our fortunes must be wrought

;

Thus on its sounding anvil shaped

Each burnincf deed and thought!

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