Old age hath yet his honor and his toil; One equal temper of heroic hearts, Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield. How old was Longfellow when he wrote this poem? What literary work did he do later? Do you think he followed his own exhortation? III. Study the poem in detail. Explain everything in the least difficult in diction and figures. The following notes may help you in some of the harder passages and some of the more obscure allusions. Lines 14, 15: Imperial and sovereign are suggested by the Cæsar of Gerome's picture. Line 30: The one teacher left was Professor A. S. Packard. Line 34: Dante; see Inferno XV, lines 82-87. His teacher was Brunetto Latini. Lines 52-59: St. Luke 19:12ff. Line 70: Aladdin's lamp, when rubbed, would call up a spirit, which would grant the wish of the possessor of the lamp. See The Arabian Nights. Fortunatus was a mediæval worthy, who possessed an enchanted purse that would never become empty. Line 75: St. Matthew 17:20. Line 78: Priam, King of Troy. See Iliad III, 145–155. Lines 88, 89: Greek heroes of the Trojan war, eagerly watched by the old Trojans because of their famous deeds. So the aged graduates of the college watch the present students. The simile "like grasshoppers" is Homer's. Line 90: I Kings 20:11. What warning and advice has Longfellow for the young men? Line 97: See Greek mythology for the story of Marsyas. Line 101: "Be bold," etc. See Spenser's Faery Queen, Book III, Canto XI, Stanza 54. Line 104: Hector, bravest of the Trojans, was slain in battle. The dandy Paris fled from his foe. Which do we honor more? Line 109: The names of deceased graduates are marked with asterisks in college catalogues. Line 165: Longfellow exhorts his classmates to turn from the past to the future. His exhortation forecasts the moral of the story that follows. Line 184: A clerk in the Middle Ages was a student. Line 220: The Gesta Romanorum was a set of short stories and anecdotes with morals. It was often used by the mediaval clergy as a store-house of illustrative material. This tale would have been appropriate as an illustration in a sermon on avarice. Line 235: Vanity means a desire to attract attention, to win admiration. Lines 240ff.: Cato was a Roman statesman and philosopher (second and third century B. C.). Sophocles was a Greek tragedian of the fifth century B. C. Simonides was a Greek poet of the seventh century B. C. Theophrastus was a disciple of Aristotle; his thirty short, lively character-sketches were models for the English sketches of the seventeenth century by Hall, Overbury, etc. Chaucer, the great English poet, died in 1400; his most famous work was The Canterbury Tales. Goethe, the German poet, lived from 1749 to 1832; his greatest work was Faust. Lines 278-280: See lines 241, 242, 246-7; Sophocles, Simonides, and Chaucer. Lines 282-285: Compare Browning's statement in Rabbi Ben Ezra, about the wisdom and experience of old age. IV. The poem is written in iambic pentameter, riming in couplets. Study it for elements producing melody and harmony. V. The anniversary service for which the poem was written was held in a church in Brunswick, Maine, where Bowdoin College is located. Of the class of 1825, which had numbered thirty-seven, thirteen were alive in 1875, and twelve were present in the church. The poet's voice was low and tremulous with feeling, but was distinctly heard in all parts of the room. The sight of the venerable poet surrounded by his equally aged classmates was most affecting. Imagine the scene. Put yourself in Longfellow's place the place of an old man revisiting the scenes of his youth. Think of the changes, of the losses that must have saddened him. Realize the poise of character of the man who could, under such overwhelming memories, determine to be strong to the end. Then read the poem as you think Longfellow read it at the fiftieth anniversary of his class. For a description of the reading at Bowdoin College, see Underwood's Longfellow, page 223. KERAMOS I. The title of this poem is from the Greek, and means "potter." The word ceramics, which we often see, is connected with it, and means "the art of pottery." About 1876 there was in America a great interest in the making and decoration of pottery. An excellent display of native pottery had been exhibited at the Centennial Exposition at Philadelphia (1876), and many books had been written about ceramics. One of these books, says the poet's brother, interested Longfellow in the history of ceramics, and inspired this poem. (See Life, Letters, and Journal, II, 460). "His memory recalled the old pottery, still standing in Portland, near Deering's Woods, where it had been a delight of his boyhood to stop and watch the bowl or pitcher of clay rise up under the workman's hand, as he stood at his wheel under the shadow of a thorn-tree. There, within doors, amid the shelves of pots and pans, he may have read the inscription upon a glazed tile: 'No handicraftman's art can with our art compare, We potters make our pots of what we potters are.'" Keramos was printed in Harper's Magazine for December, 1877. If possible, the class should consult this first edition for the beauty of the illustrations. II. Read the poem through carefully with the following outline: 1. Introduction - a picture of the potter at his work: lines 1-50. 2. Poem proper: while the potter whistles his interlude, the poet visits in imagination various lands in which. famous pottery is made or has been made: a. Holland: lines 51-86. g. Japan: lines 356-381. h. The poet discusses the relation of Art to Nature: lines 382-399. 3. Conclusion-the potter stops his work at the noon hour of rest (lines 400-411). The sight of the potter at work at his wheel starts the poet to thinking of what he knows of the history of ceramics. His meditation, or "vision," to which the potter's whistle makes the accompaniment, is occasionally interrupted by the potter's song. A stanza of the song marks the change from one country to another. III. The constant turning of the potter's wheel, the continual change in the shape of the clay in the potter's hands, remind the watching poet of the mutability of all things, material and spiritual. The stanzas of the potter's song supply the moral thought of the poem, and all discuss change and progress. Put them together into one song, and see how this thought holds them, as a thread holds a string of beads together. Even the two stanzas (4 and 6) in which another thought is prominent, begin with the inevitable A Potter at His Wheel |