LONGFELLOW'S WORK.

Globe, Volume XXI, Issue 1775, 28 October 1879, Page 2

LONGFELLOW'S WORK.

Tbo “Wreck of the Hesperus ” was written iu 1539, at midnight. A violent storm had occurred the night before, the distress and disasters at sea had been great, especially along the capes of the New England coast* The papers of the day were full of the news, of disaster. The poet was sitting alone in his study iate at night, when the vision, of the wrecked Hesperus came drifting on tho disturbed tides of thought into bis mind*. He went to bed, but could not sleep. He arose and wrote the poem, which cams into iris mind by whole stanzas, finishing them just as the old clock—the old clock on. the stairs—was striking three. Sir Walter Scott says that he was led to write the romance of “Kenilworth” because the first stanza of Mickle’s famous ballad of. " Cumnor Hall ” haunted him : : “ The dews of summer night did fall, The moon, sweet regent of the sky, Silvered the towers of Cnmnor Hall, And many an opJk, that grew thereby,’ * Longfellow says that ha was, fs he thicks, led to write the *■* Wreck of the Hesperus ’* because the w' o rds “Norman Woe,” which were associated, with tho disasters at sea, seemed to aim eo indescribably sad.