A most felicitous illustration of this trait is in "The Evening Star," an earlier poem. Chrysaor, in the old mythology, sprang from the blood of Medusa, armed with a golden sword, and married Callirrhoe, one of the Oceanides. The poet, looking at evening upon the sea, muses upon the long-drawn, quivering reflection of the evening star, and sings. How the verses oscillate like the swaying calm of the sea, while the image inevitably floats into the scholar's imagination:-- "Just above yon sandy bar, As the day grows fainter and dimmer, Lonely and lovely a single star 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 Callirrhoe, 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."