The First Posting

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 arms

Are strong as iron bands...

Week in, week out, from morn till 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...

Thanks, thanks to thee, my worthy friend,

For the lesson thou hast taught!

Thus at the flaming forge of life

Our fortunes must be wrought;

Thus on its sounding anvil shaped

Each burning deed and thought.

That's the Village Blacksmith, by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, and it's where I got the idea for the title of my blog. As a woman, I can't be the title character, but as a writer, a reader, and at the moment, a student, I think I qualify to call myself a wordsmith, someone who takes "each burning deed and thought" and, perhaps more importantly, words, and crafts them into something beautiful, functional or just plain interesting.

This blog will be a repository for my journal posts for Literary Theory and Criticism and later on as an archive for my various literary endeavors and their updates. Happy writing!