The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 12, No. 74, December, 1863

Lights the air with a dusky glimmer.

"Into the ocean faint and far
Falls the trail of its golden splendor,
And the gleam of that single star
Is ever refulgent, soft, and tender.

"Chrysaor rising out of the sea
Showed tints glorious and thus emulous,
Leaving the arms of Callirrhoë,
Forever tender, soft, and tremulous.

"Thus o'er the ocean faint and far
Trailed the gleam of his falchion brightly:
Is it a god, or is it a star,
That, entranced, I gaze on nightly?"

The blending of the poetical faculty and scholarly taste is seen, also, in his translations; and would not a translation of Dante's great poem be the crowning work of Longfellow's literary life?

But while we chat along the road, and pause to repeat these simple and musical poems, each so elegant, so finished, as the monk finished his ivory crucifix, or the lapidary his choicest gem, we have reached the Wayside Inn. It is the title of Longfellow's new volume, "Tales of a Wayside Inn." They are New-England "Canterbury Tales." Those of old London town were told at the Tabard at Southwark; these at the Red Horse in Sudbury town. And although it is but the form of the poem, peculiar neither to Chaucer nor to Longfellow, which recalls the earlier work, yet they have a further likeness in the sources of some of the tales, and in the limpid blitheness of the style and the pure objectivity of the poems.

The melodious, picturesque simplicity of the opening, in which the place and the persons are introduced, is inexpressibly graceful and masterly:—

"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,
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,
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,
And creaking and uneven floors,
And chimneys huge, and tiled, and tall."

The autumn wind moans without, and dashes in gusts against the windows; but there is a pleasant murmur from the parlor, with the music of a violin. In this comfortable tavern-parlor, ruddy with the fire-light, a rapt musician stands erect before the chimney and bends his ear to his instrument,—

"And seemed to listen, till he caught
Confessions of its secret thought,"

—a figure and a picture, as he is afterward painted,—

"Fair-haired, blue-eyed, his aspect blithe,
His figure tall and straight and lithe,"—

which recall the Norwegian magician, Ole Bull. He plays to the listening group of friends. Of these there is the landlord,—a youth of quiet ways, "a student of old books and days,"—a young Sicilian,—"a Spanish Jew from Alieant,"—

"A theologian, from the school
Of Cambridge on the Charles,"—

then a poet, whose portrait, exquisitely sketched and meant for quite another, will yet be prized by the reader, as the spectator prizes, in the Uffizi at Florence, the portraits of the painters by themselves:—

"A poet, too, was there, whose verse
Was tender, musical, and terse:
The inspiration, the delight,
The gleam, the glory, the swift flight
Of thoughts so sudden that they seem
The revelations of a dream,
All these were his: but with them came
No envy of another's fame;
He did not find his sleep less sweet
For music in some neighboring street,
Nor rustling hear in every breeze
The laurels of Miltiades.
Honor and blessings on his head
While living, good report when dead,
Who, not too eager for renown,
Accepts, but does not clutch, the crown."

The musician completes the group.

When he stops playing, they call upon the landlord for his tale, which he, "although a bashful man," begins. It is "Paul Revere's Ride," already known to many readers as a ballad of the famous incident in the Revolution which has, in American hearts, immortalized a name which this war has but the more closely endeared to them. It is one of the most stirring, ringing, and graphic ballads in the language,—a proper pendant to Browning's "How they brought the good news from Ghent to Aix."

The poet, listening with eager delight, seizes the sword of the landlord's ancestor which was drawn at Concord fight, and tells him that his grandfather was a grander shape than any old Sir William,

"Clinking about in foreign lands,
With iron gauntlets on his hands,
And on his head an iron pot."

All laughed but the landlord,—

"For those who had been longest dead
Were always greatest in his eyes."

Did honest and dull "Conservatism" have ever a happier description? But lest the immortal foes of Conservatism and Progress should come to loggerheads in the conversation, the student opens his lips and breathes Italy upon the New-England autumn night. He tells the tale of "The Falcon of Sir Federigo," from the "Decameron." It is an exquisite poem. So charming is the manner, that the "Decameron," so rendered into English, would acquire a new renown, and the public of to-day would understand the fame of Boccaccio.

But the theologian hears with other ears, and declares that the old Italian tales

"Are either trifling, dull, or lewd."

The student will not argue. He says only,—

"Nor were it grateful to forget
That from these reservoirs and tanks