A Birthday!

Today, dear friends, is the birthday of one of my all-time favorite poets, and the reason why I can safely say I love dusty old white man poetry, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow--So, Happy 202nd birthday, Henry! Now, my readers have a lot to thank this man for -- he contributed the rhyme scheme from The Skeleton in Armor to my Chronicles of Narnia poem The Star's Daughter, the title and driving inspiration for my first major fanfic, The Meaning and Mystery of the Rose, the driving inspiration behind my ACHIEVE project, The Epic of Astrid, and above all other things, a longstanding love of narrative poetry.


I first met HWL here, at the Wayside Inn in Sudbury, Massachusetts. We went to have lunch there with my grandparent's neighbors, the Cammetts. I was about seven at the time and couldn't appreciate the book they gave me, a clothbound copy of The Tales of a Wayside Inn, a collection of narrative poems Longfellow wrote inspired by a summer he spent here in the 1860s. In it, a group of travelers (The Landlord, the Student, the Sicilian, the Spanish Jew, the Musician, the Theologian, and the Poet) meet around a fire and exchange stories. It's a wonderfully evocative collection, containing such classics as Paul Revere's Ride, that staple of the American History class, and it's been my friend through a lot of interesting adventures. Now in my slightly more appreciative age I want to go back and see the old place again, as I remember lunch being really good. There were also a lot of old millstones on the other side of the road and some wonderfully picturesque stone walls.

So, in commemoration of HWL's birthday, I want to share a snippet of one of my favorite poems with you - Emma and Eginhard, the poem responsible for The Meaning and Mystery of the Rose. This is one of many passages of his I can recite by heart; Hopefully those of you who know me will understand from this clipping why I like his work so much...

When Alcuin taught the sons of Charlemagne,
In the free schools of Aix, how kings should reign,
And with them taught the children of the poor
How subjects should be patient and endure,
He touched the lips of some, as best befit,
With honey from the hives of Holy Writ;
Others intoxicated with the wine
Of ancient history, sweet but less divine;
Some with the wholesome fruits of grammar fed;
Others with mysteries of the stars o'er-head,
That hang suspended in the vaulted sky
Like lamps in some fair palace vast and high.

In sooth, it was a pleasant sight to see
That Saxon monk, with hood and rosary,
With inkhorn at his belt, and pen and book,
And mingled lore and reverence in his look,
Or hear the cloister and the court repeat
The measured footfalls of his sandaled feet,
Or watch him with the pupils of his school,
Gentle of speech, but absolute of rule.

Among them, always earliest in his place.
Was Eginhard, a youth of Frankish race,
Whose face was bright with flashes that forerun
The splendors of a yet unrisen sun.
To him all things were possible, and seemed
Not what he had accomplished, but had dreamed,
And what were tasks to others were his play,
The pastime of an idle holiday...