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Henry Wadsworth Longfellow was once one of the most popular American poets, but he has since disappeared from public favor due to a culture that no longer places importance on poetry. His style was a blend of Romantic and Victorian ideas packaged with a glorification of the American spirit, and he often discussed his views on nature, beauty, and friendship.

His identity was rooted thoroughly in America; he was descended from those who arrived on the Mayflower, and his ancestors participated in many events that led to the founding of the nation. This encouraged him to discuss the Revolutionary War in many of his works, especially in Paul Revere’s Ride, and he was a fierce abolitionist who believed that the secession of the Confederate States would lead to a loss of liberty won by the Founding Fathers.

In addition to his patriotic spirit, Longfellow was an artist and scholar who was devoted to the classics and to making ancient works more accessible to modern audiences. From his youth, he was an earnest reader, and his studies covered everything from popular fiction to Latin poetry. He always promoted the power of art to lead people to higher truths, and he believed that poetry was essential to culture.

A Rising Poetic Career

Longfellow attended Bowdoin College and studied classics, and it was there that he became a prolific poet and writer. Eventually, he was offered a position as a professor at the college, which he took, and it was in this position that he published his first book. He didn’t like teaching due to the paperwork associated with the field, and he continued to publish books of different genres out of hope that his literary career would take off.

Eventually, Longfellow became a professor at Harvard College, where he was able to publish more of his poetry. He published his first collection, Voices of the Night, in 1839, and his second, Ballads and Other Poems, was released in 1841. In 1842, his collection Poems on Slavery made his abolitionist views clear. By this time, he was well-established as a poet and writer, winning popular support even if some of his poems were panned by critics, including Edgar Allan Poe.

However, not everything went well for Longfellow during this time. After his first wife, Mary, died following a miscarriage in 1835, he found it difficult to form romantic attachments. When he met Frances Appleton soon after, he became deeply infatuated with her but she did not respond in kind. Feeling rejected, he fell into a deep depression and took his leave from Harvard in 1840. Three years later, Frances agreed to marry him, and his mental health began to recover.

It is uncertain as to the lasting psychological effects of these incidents, but it did not break his spirit. Instead, his early poems reveal his optimistic view of nature, an emphasis on the power of beauty, and a strong defense of art. He could have allowed his depression to overwhelm him. Instead, he channeled it to a higher cause: to guide humanity into recognizing the sublime that permeates all aspects of life.

The Neglect of Beauty

With renewed confidence in life, a growing family, and a bustling poetic career bringing in a handsome income, Longfellow was at the top of his world. It was in a spirit of renewed confidence that he expanded on his earlier themes in his 1845 collection, The Belfry of Bruges and Other Poems.

This collection is an accessible yet powerful work that rejoices in both nature and social life. Containing many translations and songs, the collection caters to a variety of tastes while emphasizing simplicity over grandiose language. The work itself is about the importance of poetry, and Longfellow connects the poetic spirit to all aspects of life.

In the opening poem, “Carillon,” we hear the bells of Bruges ring out as dusk calmly descends upon the town. They are “like a poet’s rhyme,” providing a human compliment to nature. As silence descends, the narrator’s mind is awakened to a history of art and beauty that permeates the town, and he says, “I thought how like these chimes / Are the poet’s air rhymes” because they are both ignored by a working public that deem “it no more… Than the hollow sound of brass.” Poetry, like music, is of a beauty that can be lost by the public who values more practical matters than the sublime.

The rest of the collection discusses how art is able to capture beauty and guide the spirit. Some poems describe how art has become common place, ignored and neglected, but still there for those sensitive enough to witness it. Other poems capture how art actually affects individuals. Of this later group, “The Arrow and the Song” is possibly the most important.

A Powerful Song of Friendship

“The Arrow and the Song” is a short but powerful poem. It contains three stanzas of four lines each that follows a simple AABB rhyme scheme, and its rhythm almost fits iambic tetrameter except in a few places:

I shot an arrow into the air,

It fell to earth, I knew not where;

For, so swiftly it flew, the sight

Could not follow it in its flight.

I breathed a song into the air,

It fell to earth, I knew not where;

For who has sight so keen and strong,

That it can follow the flight of song?

Long, long afterward, in an oak

I found the arrow, still unbroke;

And the song, from beginning to end,

I found again in the heart of a friend.

Although the tetrameter is disrupted in some places, the sing-song nature of the poem is retained throughout. The repetition of the rhyme “air/where” establishes a comparison through verbal similarity that is quickly undermined by each of the successor rhymes.

The first two stanzas parallel each other by comparing a tool of potential violence with art. Both “fly,” but the arrow is an object of practical matters and is measurable in its direct results while a song serves a social and emotional bond that cannot be measured. The former is only lost due to its speed while the latter is of an intangible substance, which can never be measured, codified, or traced.

Some readers believe that the “arrow” and the “song” are a metaphor for friendship as a whole, with the arrow representing the narrator leaving a friend behind while the song represents the friendship they previously shared. There are no standard signifiers to allow us to accept this metaphor.

The third stanza relates the arrow with the song, showing that both objects were able to find a home, but the image stops there. The arrow was “unbroke” and usable again, but it found no prey. Thus, the arrow was useless but reusable. The song, however, was either able to create “a friend,” increase a friendship, or was merely picked up by someone who was always a friend. Thus, the song was both useful and reusable in a way that defies all expectations.

Both the arrow and the song were “released” without a specific object or intent, but the arrow, the practical object, became useless because it was not properly aimed. It is quite possible that the song was able to bond with a friend because it was not aimed, but that is not necessarily the case. We do not know what the relationship of the friend is to the song, but what matters is that the song was able to spread to another.

Poetry and Friendship

By comparing a practical object to art, Longfellow shows us that beauty is able to find purpose without having to be intentional or even identifiable. This is not an argument of “art for art’s sake.” Instead, the poem rejoices in the ability of humanity to bind with one another through art even if we are unsure exactly how that takes place. Practical objects require precision, but art only requires a human connection.

The question the poem then poses to us is the nature of that connection. Was the song able to find purchase because it was beautiful? Because it was truthful? Because the song was entertaining or interesting? We are not given this answer, but the collection as a whole provides insight into what Longfellow believed was the source of art’s power.

By including the poem in a collection that decries how practically minded people are unable to recognize the beauty that surrounds them, Longfellow suggests that art is able to form social bonds by helping others recognize the beauty in the surrounding world. The poem subtly transforms the question of how a song connects friends to the nature of humanity as a whole: What is man without friends? What is man without art? Are we just automatons who, like the arrow, are useless unless we are properly guided? Or is there something more to life that can be shared and appreciated through friendship?

This is one of the central themes of American Romanticism, and Romanticism, as a whole. It is also one of the central problems of our own modern society. Without art, without beauty, without poetry, how can we ever truly appreciate the world or form true bonds with our fellow man? Art allows us to obtain a higher understanding and appreciation of nature and society. It allows us to appreciate our craftsmanship beyond its practical uses. It allows us to connect to our past and realize that we are all part of a common humanity.

Our loss of Longfellow as a pillar of our education and culture is the result of an obsession with pragmatic materialism removing our ability to appreciate beauty. His poetry is simple, straightforward, and beauty, and he is accessible to children and adults equally. He emphasizes a simple humanity that can hardly offend even the most obtuse of sensibilities.

We should not be the arrows, unbroken yet still useless. Instead, we should be the song, or the singers of song, which allows us to find friends and a true understanding of this life. If we fail to do this, then we lose out on so much of the world, and we only harm ourselves. Longfellow was able to get through a horrible time of his life because he could still recognize and appreciate nature’s beauty. If we are to lose that ability, then we wont be able to cope with the difficulties of our own life.