Democratic Sentinel, Volume 10, Number 13, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 30 April 1886 — Longfellow’s First Poem. [ARTICLE]

Longfellow’s First Poem.

He was thirteen years old M’hen, after hearing a story about an Indian fight years before at Lovell’s Pond, there appeared in the Portland Gazette a poem on that event. The last verse will answer as a specimen: They died in their glory, surrounded by fame, And victory’s loud trump their death did proclaim. They are dead, but they live in each patriot’s breast, And their names are eugraven on honor’s bright crest. Other boys of thirteen have written better verses, and their “only interest lies in their being the first of his printed.” With a trembling and misgiving heart he had dropped them into the printing office letter-box. On the evening of the publication of the paper he stood shivering in the November air, casting many a glance at the windows as they trembled with the jar of tho ink-balls and the press, but afraid to venture in. His sister, who had been let into the secret, shared the impatience with which next morning he watched his father slowly unfolding the damp sheet and holding it before the wood fire, and then reading the paper, but, if he saw the verses signed “Henry,” saying nothing of them. At last they got hold of it. To the boy’s inexpressible delight the poem was there, and he read and reread it with immense satisfaction. In the evening he went with his father to a neighbor’s, and the talk turned upon poetry. “Did you see the piece in the paper to-day ?” asked the neighbor. “Very stiff; remarkably stiff. Moreover, it is all borrowed, every word of it.” The boy would gladly have sunk through the floor, and his pillow was wet with his tears that night. It was his first encounter with the “critic;” but it did not discourage him. From time to time other pieces appeared in the Gazette, and he wrote a carriers’ New Year’s address; but “they are not worth reprinting.” Although he himself won a wider fame than Bryant, his early efforts were not as successful, Bryant’s “Thanatopsis” being regarded as'unexcelled by few, if any, of his later poems.