The Greatest English Classic: A Study of the King James Version of the Bible and Its Influence on Life and LiteratureMcAfee, Cleland Boyd
History
The Greatest English Classic: A Study of the King James Version of the Bible and Its Influence on Life and Literature
McAfee, Cleland Boyd
Bible -- History; Bible -- Influence; Bible and literature; Bible. English -- Versions -- Authorized
As for Longfellow, he is shot through with
Scripture. No man who did not know Scripture
in more than a passing way could have written
such a sentence as this: "There are times when
the grasshopper is a burden, and thirsty with the
heat of labor the spirit longs for the waters of
Shiloah, that go softly." There are two strikingly
beautiful expressions from Scripture. Take
another familiar saying in the same essay when
he says the prospect for poetry is brightening,
since but a short time ago not a poet "moved
the wing or opened the mouth or peeped." He
did not run across that in general current writing.
He got that directly from the Bible. In
his poems is an amazing amount of reference
to the Bible. One would expect much in the
"Courtship of Miles Standish," for that is a
story of the Puritans, and they spoke, naturally,
in terms of the Bible; yet, of course, they could
not do it in Longfellow's poem, if Longfellow
did not know the language of the Bible very well.
One might not expect to find it so much in
"Evangeline," but it is there from beginning to
end. In "Acadia," the cock crowed
"With the self-same
Voice that in ages of old had startled the penitent
Peter."
And,
"Wild with the winds of September,
Wrestled the trees of the forest, as Jacob of old
with the angel."
Evangeline saw the moon pass
Forth from the folds of the cloud, and one star
followed her footsteps,
As out of Abraham's tent young Ishmael
Wandered with Hagar."
There is a great deal of that sort of thing in his
writing. He has done for many what he did
for Lowell one day. Discouraged in settling
the form of a new edition of his own poems,
Lowell took up a volume of Longfellow just to
see the type, and presently found that he had
been reading two hours. He wrote Longfellow
he could understand his popularity, saying:
"You sang me out of all my worries." That is
a great thing to do, and Longfellow learned from
the Scripture how to do that in the "Psalm of
Life" and all his other poems.
We need only a word about Lowell himself.
He was the son of a minister, and so knew the
Bible from his infancy. He belonged to the
Brahman caste himself, but a good deal of the
ruggedness of the Old Testament got into his
writing. It is in "The Vision of Sir Launfal."
It is in his plea for international copyright where
the familiar lines occur:
"In vain we call old notions fudge,
And bend our conscience to our dealing,
The Ten Commandments will not budge,
And stealing will continue stealing."
There is hint of it in his quizzical lines about
himself in the Fable for Critics. He says that
he is in danger of rattling away
"Until he is as old as Methusalem,
At the head of the march to the last New Jerusalem."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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