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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!
^^^^^^^^^