Henry Wadsworth Longfellow - The Village Blacksmith

 The Village Blacksmith

by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807-1882)

Under a spreading chestnut-tree

     ⁠The village smithy stands;

The smith, a mighty man is he,

     With large and sinewy hands,

And the muscles of his brawny arms

     Are strong as iron bands.

His hair is crisp, and black, and long;

     His face is like the tan;

His brow is wet with honest sweat,

     He earns whate'er he can,

And looks the whole world in the face,

     For he owes not any man.

Week in, week out, from morn till night,

     You can hear his bellows blow;

You can hear him swing his heavy sledge,

     With measured beat and slow,

Like a sexton ringing the village bell,

     When the evening sun is low.

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.

He goes on Sunday to the church,

     And sits among his boys;

He hears the parson pray and preach,

     He hears his daughter's voice

Singing in the village choir,

     And it makes his heart rejoice.

It sounds to him like her mother's voice

     Singing in Paradise!

He needs must think of her once more,

     How in the grave she lies;

And with his hard, rough hand he wipes

     A tear out of his eyes.

Toiling,—rejoicing,—sorrowing,

     Onward through life he goes;

Each morning sees some task begin,

     Each evening sees it close;

Something attempted, something done,

     Has earned a night's repose.

Thanks, thanks to thee, my worthy friend,

     For the lesson thou hast taught!

Thus at the flaming forge of life

     Our fortunes must be wrought;

Thus on its sounding anvil shaped

     Each burning deed and thought.

 “The Village Blacksmith” by Currier & Ives, 1968 via Amazon

In Context

by M.E. Bond

The Original Manuscript

“The Village Blacksmith” was first published in Knickerbocker magazine in November 1840. It appeared in a book of Longfellow’s collected poems the following year. 

Original draft of “The Village Blacksmith” via The Library of Congress: American Memory

The Library of Congress: American Memory record for the document states:

“This manuscript was donated to the Library of Congress in 1942 by collector Francis Joseph Hogan (1877-1944), a Washington, D.C., attorney. It is written in ink on two sides of one sheet, with the last stanza appearing on a segment of an additional sheet which had been lengthened to match the first, probably before donation. A Library of Congress conservator has identified the paper as wove cotton or linen, machine-made, by Ames Paper Company, Springfield, Massachusetts, whose embossing appears in the upper-left corner of both sheets.”

Who Was the Longfellow's Blacksmith?

In my research I came across two candidates for the blacksmith who inspired the poem. The first is Dexter Pratt, who lived and worked near Longfellow’s home in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Wikipedia backs this man, citing Literary Trail of Greater Boston (Houghton Mifflin, 2000).

However, in an obituary of April 7, 1910, The Daily Times calls Thaddeus W. Tyler the “original smithy.” (We’ll have to ignore the fact that the smithy was the building, while the man was called the smith.)

The Gulf Coast Blacksmith Association also states that Tyler was the inspiration behind the poem and provides a link to his obituary (this one from the Boulder Daily Herald).

So Who Was the Real “Village Blacksmith”?

In this debate I’ll have to side with Wikipedia because the Daily Herald obituary says that Tyler didn’t move to Massachusetts until 1844, four years after the poem was published. Moreover, another source (a record in the archives of the Maine Historical Society) calls Tyler “the apprentice of the ‘Village Blacksmith.’” Mystery solved.

The Original Tree

The “spreading chestnut tree” was also inspired by a real tree, which was cut down years later. On his 72nd birthday local children presented Longfellow with an armchair made of its wood. He then wrote them a poem, “From My Arm-Chair.”

Image via Cambridge Historical Society

Image via Gulf Coast Blacksmith Association

A Final Illustration

J. P. Davis & Speer illustration from ‘The Complete Poetical Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow with numerous illustrations.’ Boston : Houghton, Mifflin and Company; James R. Osgood and Company, 1880. p. 38 via Maine Historical Society

Sources

• The Cambridge Historical Society

• Gulf Coast Blacksmith Association

• Henry Wadsworth Longfellow by the Maine Historical Society

• The Library of Congress: American Memory