Poem of the Month: December 2023
The Wreck Of The Hesperus, by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, LBC Poetry Series #2305
December: Winter in the northern hemisphere, where The Latent Book Club finds itself this year. The season conjures up wonderful imagery: mulled wine, roaring fires, walks through frozen landscape. Join us, as we take a look at a wintery, and chilling tale, in Longfellow’s The Wreck Of The Hesperus.
The Wreck Of The Hesperus, by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807-1882)
It was the schooner Hesperus, That sailed the wintry sea; And the skipper had taken his little daughtèr, To bear him company. Blue were her eyes as the fairy-flax, Her cheeks like the dawn of day, And her bosom white as the hawthorn buds, That ope in the month of May. The skipper he stood beside the helm, His pipe was in his mouth, And he watched how the veering flaw did blow The smoke now West, now South. Then up and spake an old Sailòr, Had sailed to the Spanish Main, "I pray thee, put into yonder port, For I fear a hurricane. "Last night, the moon had a golden ring, And to-night no moon we see!" The skipper, he blew a whiff from his pipe, And a scornful laugh laughed he. Colder and louder blew the wind, A gale from the Northeast, The snow fell hissing in the brine, And the billows frothed like yeast. Down came the storm, and smote amain The vessel in its strength; She shuddered and paused, like a frighted steed, Then leaped her cable's length. "Come hither! come hither! my little daughtèr, And do not tremble so; For I can weather the roughest gale That ever wind did blow." He wrapped her warm in his seaman's coat Against the stinging blast; He cut a rope from a broken spar, And bound her to the mast. "O father! I hear the church-bells ring, Oh say, what may it be?" "'T is a fog-bell on a rock-bound coast!" — And he steered for the open sea. "O father! I hear the sound of guns, Oh say, what may it be?" "Some ship in distress, that cannot live In such an angry sea!" "O father! I see a gleaming light, Oh say, what may it be?" But the father answered never a word, A frozen corpse was he. Lashed to the helm, all stiff and stark, With his face turned to the skies, The lantern gleamed through the gleaming snow On his fixed and glassy eyes. Then the maiden clasped her hands and prayed That savèd she might be; And she thought of Christ, who stilled the wave On the Lake of Galilee. And fast through the midnight dark and drear, Through the whistling sleet and snow, Like a sheeted ghost, the vessel swept Tow'rds the reef of Norman's Woe. And ever the fitful gusts between A sound came from the land; It was the sound of the trampling surf On the rocks and the hard sea-sand. The breakers were right beneath her bows, She drifted a dreary wreck, And a whooping billow swept the crew Like icicles from her deck. She struck where the white and fleecy waves Looked soft as carded wool, But the cruel rocks, they gored her side Like the horns of an angry bull. Her rattling shrouds, all sheathed in ice, With the masts went by the board; Like a vessel of glass, she stove and sank, Ho! ho! the breakers roared! At daybreak, on the bleak sea-beach, A fisherman stood aghast, To see the form of a maiden fair, Lashed close to a drifting mast. The salt sea was frozen on her breast, The salt tears in her eyes; And he saw her hair, like the brown sea-weed, On the billows fall and rise. Such was the wreck of the Hesperus, In the midnight and the snow! Christ save us all from a death like this, On the reef of Norman's Woe!
Latent Book Club Analysis
Ah, Winter. The season, and particularly Christmas, has a wonderful literary tradition: that of the ghost story.
Examples abound, most notable perhaps is The Turn of the Screw, by Henry James. This month, we take a look at a seasonal classic: a Chilling Tale often referenced (Notably in PG Wodehouse’s Jeeves and Wooster Series), in Longfellow’s The Wreck Of The Hesperus.
One of the great things about Longfellow, is he is so accessible as a reader. Not for nothing was he one of the most read poets of his day, and remains one of the most popular American poets even now.
Longfellow’s not just there for the imagery or sophisticated wordplay. He’s telling you a story to which we can all relate. The arrogant haughtiness of the ‘I-know-best’ captain. The hubris that comes from such attitudes. And the concomitant tragedy. These are tales as old as they come, but brought to life palpably, even viscerally in this wonderful poem.
The poem itself is a narrative, which uses a third person omniscient storyteller. Such a narrator is natural, and helps us to get into the action quickly by cataloguing brief biographical details (‘the skipper had taken his little daughter’).
There is some decidedly thirsty imagery which we daresay was designed to heighten the tragedy in the reader’s mind at the time the poem was written, but now comes off as a tad excessive, particularly in the context of the captain’s relationship with his daughter: ‘And her bosom white as the hawthorn buds, That ope in the month of May.’
Can you also detect a whiff of a contemporary here? Edgar Allen Poe never met Longfellow, they only exchanged one correspondence. But Poe became quite a vocal critic of Longfellow’s work in his lifetime. The rivalry, so general narative goes was borne out of Poe’s comparative lack of success duing his own lifetime (how fortunes can reverse in death; Poe is now one of the most widely known American poets and authors). Longfellow for his part, would go on to be magnanimous about Poe’s achievements, including after his death. How interesting then, that the line ‘And fast through the midnight dark and drear, Through the whistling sleet and snow’ features in this poem. It is highly redolent of Poe’s classic The Raven: ‘Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered, weak and weary…’ Was that just a contemporary idiom? Or did these two share more of an affinity than one might realise at first blush?
The Rhyme scheme the poem adopts is interesting because it although it keeps a speedy rhythmical pace nicely, and indeed, draws you in to very nearly a gallop it almost doesn’t work. It is ABCB; which means two of the lines in each stanza are left unrhymed entirely, and are left unresolved throughout the poem. If anything the rhyme scheme serves to accentuate the haughty attitude of the captain: pressing on regardless.
The captain lashes his daughter to the mast for her protection. But all this serves to do is heighten the tragedy, as she gets to witness first her father freeze to death ‘But the father answered never a word, A frozen corpse was he.’; the crew get swept overboard ‘And a whooping billow swept the crew Like icicles from her deck.’, before she meets her own untimely demise.
And the tragedy rounds the poem out. The next day a fisherman find’s the captain’s daughter: the salt frozen on her (once promising) breast, still lashed to the now ruined mast, around Norman’s woe: an poignantly named reef at Cape Ann in Gloucester, Massachusetts, which has claimed several wrecks. Evidently, Longfellow was inspired by several real events to write the poem, which amalgamates them, and the Great Blizzard of 1839 as a pastiche into one fictional narrative.
So there you have it. A chilling tale for a cold month (in the northern hemisphere at least). A suitable ghost story for the season, encompassing as they often do, a cautionary moral tale, with a frightening narrative. The Wreck Of The Hesperus completes this with aplomb, retelling an age old tale: the dangers of recklessness; the importance of humility; and caution against being too self-assured.
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