Never shall be the loss

Restored, till Helios

Hath purified them with his heavenly fires; Then what was lost is won,

And the new life begun,

Kindled with nobler passions and desires.

THE HANGING OF THE CRANE

"One morning in the spring of 1867," writes Mr. T. B. Aldrich, "Mr. Longfellow came to the little home in Pinckney Street, [Boston,] where we had set up housekeeping in the light of our honeymoon. As we lingered a moment at the dining-room door, Mr. Longfellow turning to me said, 'Ah, Mr. Aldrich, your small round table will not always be closed. By and by you will find new young faces clustering about it; as years go on, leaf after leaf will be added until the time comes when the young guests will take flight, one by one, to build nests of their own elsewhere. Gradually the long table will shrink to a circle again, leaving two old people sitting there alone together. This is the story of life, the sweet and pathetic poem of the fireside. Make an idyl of it. I give the idea to you.' Several months afterward, I received a note from Mr. Longfellow in which he expressed a desire to use this motif in case I had done nothing in the matter. The theme was one peculiarly adapted to his sympathetic handling, and out of it grew The Hanging of the Crane." Just when the poem was written does not appear, but its first publication was in the New York Ledger, March 28, 1874. Mr. Longfellow's old friend, Mr. Sam. Ward, had heard the poem, and offered to secure it for Mr. Robert Bonner, the proprietor of the Ledger, "touched," as he wrote to Mr. Longfellow, "by your kindness to poor and haunted by the idea of increasing handsomely your noble charity fund." Mr. Bonner paid the poet the sum of three thousand dollars for this poem.

I.

THE lights are out, and gone are all the guests
That thronging came with merriment and jests
To celebrate the Hanging of the Crane
In the new house, into the night are gone;
But still the fire upon the hearth burns on,
And I alone remain.

O fortunate, O happy day,

When a new household finds its place
Among the myriad homes of earth,
Like a new star just sprung to birth,
And rolled on its harmonious way
Into the boundless realms of space!

So said the guests in speech and song,
As in the chimney, burning bright,
We hung the iron crane to-night,
And merry was the feast and long.

II.

And now I sit and muse on what may be,
And in my vision see, or seem to see,

Through floating vapors interfused with light,
Shapes indeterminate, that gleam and fade,
As shadows passing into deeper shade
Sink and elude the sight.

For two alone, there in the hall,
Is spread the table round and small;
Upon the polished silver shine
The evening lamps, but, more divine,
The light of love shines over all;
Of love, that says not mine and thine,
But ours, for ours is thine and mine.

They want no guests, to come between
Their tender glances like a screen,
And tell them tales of land and sea,
And whatsoever may betide

The great, forgotten world outside

They want no guests; they needs must be Each other's own best company.

III.

The picture fades; as at a village fair
A showman's views, dissolving into air,

Again appear transfigured on the screen, So in my fancy this; and now once more, In part transfigured, through the open door Appears the selfsame scene.

Seated, I see the two again,
But not alone; they entertain
A little angel unaware,

With face as round as is the moon,
A royal guest with flaxen hair,
Who, throned upon his lofty chair,
Drums on the table with his spoon,
Then drops it careless on the floor,
To grasp at things unseen before.

Are these celestial manners? these

The ways that win, the arts that please?

Ah yes; consider well the guest,

And whatsoe'er he does seems best;

He ruleth by the right divine

Of helplessness, so lately born

In purple chambers of the morn,

As sovereign over thee and thine.
He speaketh not; and yet there lies
A conversation in his eyes;
The golden silence of the Greek,
The gravest wisdom of the wise,

Not spoken in language, but in looks
More legible than printed books,
As if he could but would not speak.
And now, O monarch absolute,
Thy power is put to proof; for, lo !
Resistless, fathomless, and slow,
The nurse comes rustling like the sea,
And pushes back thy chair and thee,
And so good night to King Canute.

IV.

As one who walking in a forest sees
A lovely landscape through the parted trees,
Then sees it not, for boughs that intervene;
Or as we see the moon sometimes revealed
Through drifting clouds, and then again conceale.
So I behold the scene.

There are two guests at table now;
The king, deposed and older grown,
No longer occupies the throne, -
The crown is on his sister's brow;
A Princess from the Fairy Isles,
The very pattern girl of girls,
All covered and embowered in curls,
Rose-tinted from the Isle of Flowers,
And sailing with soft, silken sails
From far-off Dreamland into ours.
Above their bowls with rims of blue
Four azure eyes of deeper hue
Are looking, dreamy with delight;
Limpid as planets that emerge
Above the ocean's rounded verge,