Homes of American Statesmen; With Anecdotical, Personal, and Descriptive SketchesVarious
History
Homes of American Statesmen; With Anecdotical, Personal, and Descriptive Sketches
Various
Historic buildings -- United States; Statesmen -- United States; United States -- Biography
But, however native Cantabs may feel, the temporary resident hails the
friendly watering-cart, which appears at intervals in the streets, since
the old town has changed itself into a city.
A flower-garden on the south side, separates Judge Story's house from
the village blacksmith, who has had the rare happiness of being
celebrated in the verses of his two fellow-townsmen, the poets
Longfellow and Lowell;
"Under 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 arm
Are strong as iron bands.
"His hair is crisp, and black, and long,
His face is like the tan,
His brow is wet with honest sweat,
He earns whatever he can,
And looks the whole world in the face
For he owes not any man.
"Week in, week out, from morn to night,
You can hear his bellows blow;
You can hear him swing his heavy sledge,
With measured beat and slow,
Like a sexton ringing 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 threshing floor."
Among the children who thus looked in upon the old smith in former days,
was Lowell himself, who has embodied this juvenile reminiscence in a few
lines, which may be appropriately inserted here, and the curious reader
may contrast the image they contain, with the parallel one in the
concluding lines from Longfellow, quoted above.
"How many times prouder than King on throne,
Loosed from the village school-dame's A's and B's,
Panting have I the creaky bellows blown,
And watched the pent volcano's red increase,
Then paused to see the ponderous sledge brought down
By that hard arm voluminous and brown,
From the white iron swarm its golden vanishing bees."
The village blacksmith is dead now; the fires which he lighted in the
forge have gone out, and an unknown successor wields the sledge, which
may still be heard as ever, from the piazza of his neighbor's house, and
down the road on the other side, as far as the row of lindens which
overshadow a mansion once inhabited by the worthy old Tory, Brattle, who
has given his name to the street.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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