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Colonial Poetry
Vickie Ziegler, Penn State Medieval Studies
Program
The two poems below, one by Philip Freneau and the other
by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, present a positive affirmative
picture of the blacksmith, a picture that differs sharply from
medieval attitudes towards the smith, yet both writers go about their
descriptions in very different ways. Write
a short essay comparing and contrasting the ways in which each
poet reveals to us the goodness of the smith.
 Philip Freneau, "ELEGY on the Death of a BLACKSMITH" (1793)
Text
of Poem for Students  | Text
of Poem for Teachers
In spite of its title, this poem is meant
to be amusing through its use of plays on words. The teacher can adapt
the text to give as few or as many of the explanatory notes provided, asking
the students to explain the riddles in the text: i.e., how is it that
the blacksmith was a forger, but was never tried in court? Because
of the teasing, tongue-in-cheek quality of much of the poem, it is a good
vehicle to induce students to read poetry, as well as to understand why a
blacksmith was an important figure in colonial times.
Philip Freneau, sea captain, poet, newspaper editor, was a contemporary
of the great figures of colonial America and the American Revolution. Born
into a wealthy Huguenot trading family, his French Protestant ancestors came
to America in 1705 to New York. He went to the College of New Jersey,
which became Princeton University, in 1768, where, as is often the case with
students, learned a great deal outside of class, particularly since he met
young men from the other American colonies. He also had ready access
to the latest political broadsides and pamphlets, because the post road-a
sort of 18th century superhighway-went through Princeton; in addition, many
prominent politicians and public figures came to speak there.
What
would Philip Freneau have studied as a college undergraduate? Since
he would have learned Latin and Greek in secondary school, he continued reading
classical literature from the Roman Empire and ancient Greece as a freshman,
and would have continued these readings in his second and third years. In
his second year, he would have begun the study of philosophy and mathematics,
including natural philosophy and moral philosophy. He would have read major
British authors such as Shakespeare and Milton, as well as prominent French
writers and studied composition. Prayers and sermons were also
part of daily college life. There were no electives except French.
Such
an education sharpened young Philip’s mind and honed his latent literary
talents. Already in college, he began his first literary efforts in
a “paper war” between two clubs. Here we find the mixture
of satirical elements with both melancholy and good humor, traits
which appear in his later poetry. Soon after his graduation in 1771,
just a few years before the Declaration of Independence in 1776, his first
works about America appear, and then in 1775, poems on the events of the
American Revolution. At
this time, Freneau had left for the West Indies, where he carried
on the family tradition of trading, but he came back in 1778 and joined
the New Jersey Militi, where he stayed for 2 years.. In 1780, he was
imprisoned on a British prison ship in New York Harbor. After his release,
he began a lifelong involvement with newspapers, which he combined, as he
did throughout his life, with other occupations, such as working in the colonial
post office. Throughout his life, Freneau was a devoted anti-monarchist,
whether in regard to what he viewed as monarchial tendencies
in the early American governments, or in regard to reigning monarchs in Europe.
At the time he wrote this poem, Freneau was editor of the National Gazette
in Philadelphia. Unlike newspapers today, he presented original state documents,
which he printed in full before the editorials and essays that accompanied
them. His
paper was anti-Federalist,[1]
The
Democratic-Republican Party was founded by Thomas Jefferson and
James Madison during the First Party System. Its main purpose
was to oppose Hamilton’s
party; it supported states’ rights and the rights of the yeoman farmer. It
also opposed tariffs, military spending, a national debt and
a national bank, all policies associated with the Federalists. but
he included the documents of opponents as well as some opinion
pieces by them. He died
in 1832 at the age of 80.
Note: [1] The Federalist Party
was a political party formed by Alexander Hamilton during the First Party
System, [c. 1792-1820]. Supporters in Congress of Hamilton’s
fiscal policies also supported a strong national government, a more mercantile
and less agricultural exonomy, and a loose construction of the United States
Constitution. Their opposition was the Democratic-Republican Party
of Jefferson and Madison.
Discussion Questions
for discussion:
- What is the overall picture of the blacksmith given in this
poem (A: That of an honest, hardworking
man.
- How does the poet convey this picture? (A: He describes the work
of the blacksmith and contrasts it positively with destructive
social activities such as theft and forging)
- How does Freneau’s picture of the smith compare with that
of Longfellow? (A: Both describe the blacksmith in a positive
light)
 Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, "The Village Blacksmith" (1839)
Text
of Poem for Students | Text
of Poem for Teachers
This ballad was written
in the fall of 1839 and appeared in 1840 in the Knickerbocker magazine. The
inspiration for this poem is commonly believed to have come from the Cambridge
smithy which the poet passed every day as he walked to his position at Harvard
College, but Longfellow told his father he wrote it in memory of their seventeenth-century
ancestor, Stephen Longfellow, who was a blacksmith. The tree in question
was a horse-chestnut tree that was not far away from Longfellow’s home
in Cambridge. The poem was immensely popular and was routinely memorized
by American school children through the 1950's. One of the reasons
for its popularity is because of its sympathetic portrayal of
an unassuming but moral workman grieving for his wife and taking
joy from his work and his family.
Henry
Wadsworth Longfellow, one of the most famous American men of letters and
the most widely read poet of his time writing in English. Long, was lionized,
loved and respected during his lifetime [1807-1882]. Although his reputation
waned somewhat during the twentieth century, it has begun to revive in the
last decades. It is only a slight exaggeration to refer to Longfellow
as a recent major exhibition in his home state of Maine did, as the man who
invented America. His role as a nation builder has begun to be better
understood. He played a great role in the prominence of New England
as the bearer of Colonial American culture; one of his most famous poems, “The
Midnight Ride of Paul Revere”, in which the famed silversmith spreads
the word that the British are coming. In actual fact, many rode out
to spread the alarm, but Longfellow’s poem made him into a hero of
the Revolution. Longfellow wrote the poem on the eve of the Civil War
in 1860 as a plea for another great hero to come forth and keep the
nation from falling apart. Longfellow had a firm belief in the valuable
contributions of Western civilization and contributed much to the movement
of Colonial Revivalism that began in the late nineteenth century, a spirit
that became very much imbued with historic preservation. This movement
saved much of American history and is still popular today, linked as it is
with preservation of the environment.
Longfellow’s
interest in American history was no doubt greatly influenced by the chronicles
of his own Puritan ancestors, who came on both sides from England, the Longfellows
in 1651 and the Wadsworths, his mother’s family, in 1632. Born
in Portland, Maine, in 1897, he showed even as a young boy the affection
and charm that won him many admirers in later life, as well as the conscientiousness
and attention to duty that were hallmarks of his character. Entering Bowdoin
College near Portland in 1822, where he continued his interest in the study
of poetry. After a year at Harvard, he made his first trip to Europe
to study French and German. Such voyages were common among families
who could afford them at the time; the young student would spend months in
a given area, often attending lectures in the local university and hiring
private tutors. It was these experiences that gave him the background
he ultimately needed to obtain professorial rank , first at Bowdoin and then
at Harvard, where he introduced comparative literature as a field of study.
Note: [2] A ballad
is a poetic narrative in stanzas. The language is the language of the
common man; it is simple with few or no dependent clauses. Although
many ballads have stanzas of four lines with an abab rhyme scheme, Longfellow
departs from this format with only lines 2, 4,6, rhyming. It also differs
from the traditional ballad in that there is no element of superstition nor
is there the traditional dialogue. However, it still has the movement and
language of a ballad.
Questions for discussion:
- Is the picture of the blacksmith that Longfellow draws positive
or negative? How does the poet characterize him?
- The significance of
the description of the forging activities in the first part
of the poem only becomes clear near the end of the poem, with Longfellow’s reference to “the burning forge
of life”. Keeping
this last stanza in mind, what effect does Longfellow mean for
the detail about the work of the blacksmith in the first part.[forging
of character is a daily, life-long process that demands great
effort, as does the job of the smith]
- Why does the poet mention the family
of the blacksmith?[to round out the picture of a loving husband
and father]
NOTE ON “MAGIC LANTERN” SLIDES
“Magic Lantern” (“Laterna Magica”) slides were
a popular Victorian forerunner of the slide projector. Utilizing an
oil lamp and a lens, they projected light onto a screen, through a glass
plate, upon which an image had been painted. They were used for a variety
of purposes, ranging from entertainment to education and moral instruction.
Click the images below for full-size depictions:
   
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