One of his poems which has been the delight of children and grown people alike is the “Village Blacksmith,” the first half of which is a description that many a boy might feel as if he could have written himself—­if he only had the poet’s command of words and rhymes, and the poet’s genius!  Is not this one of the proofs of a good poem, that it haunts us until it seems as if it had almost grown out of our own mind?  How life-like the picture is!—­

  “And children coming home from school
     Look in at the open door;
   They love to see the flaming forge,
     And hear the bellows roar,
   And catch the burning sparks that fly
     Like chaff from a threshing-floor.”

No wonder the Cambridge children, when the old chestnut-tree that overhung the smithy was cut down, had a memento shaped into a chair from its boughs, to present to him who had made it an immortal tree in his verse!  It bore flower and fruit for them a second time in his acknowledgment of the gift; for he told them how—­

  “There, by the blacksmith’s forge, beside the street
     Its blossoms, white and sweet,
   Enticed the bees, until it seemed alive,
     And murmured like a hive.

  “And when the wind of autumn, with a shout
     Tossed its great arms about,
   The shining chestnuts, bursting from the sheath,
     Dropped to the ground beneath.”

In its own wild, winsome way, the song of “Hiawatha’s Childhood” is one of the prettiest fancies in poetry.  It is a dream of babyhood in the “forest primeval,” with Nature for nurse and teacher; and it makes us feel as if—­were the poet’s idea only a possibility—­it might have been very pleasant to be a savage baby, although we consider it so much better to be civilized.

How Longfellow loved the very little ones can be seen in such verses as the “Hanging of the Crane,” and in those earlier lines “To a Child,” where the baby on his mother’s knee gazes at the painted tiles, shakes his “coral rattle with the silver bells,” or escapes through the open door into the old halls where once

  “The Father of his country dwelt.”

Those verses give us a charming glimpse of the home-life in the historic mansion which is now so rich with poetic, as well as patriotic associations.

How beautiful it was to be let in to that twilight library scene described in the “Children’s Hour”: 

  “A sudden rush from the stair-way,
     A sudden raid from the hall! 
   By three doors left unguarded,
     They enter my castle wall!

  “They climb up into my turret,
     O’er the arms and back of my chair;
   If I try to escape, they surround me;
     They seem to be everywhere.”

Afterward, when sorrow and loss had come to the happy home, in the sudden removal of the mother of those merry children, the father who loved them so had a sadder song for them, as he looked onward into their orphaned lives: