Ballads and Other Poems (1841) was Longfellow's second collection. It brought together some of his most famous narrative and moral poems, among them The Wreck of the Hesperus, The Village Blacksmith, The Skeleton in Armor and Excelsior.
The book
Published in Cambridge, Massachusetts, in December 1841, the collection mixed ballads in the manner of old Scandinavian and German songs with short poems on everyday American life, and a few translations.
It confirmed the success of Voices of the Night, sold steadily for decades and was reprinted in many editions on both sides of the Atlantic.
The Village Blacksmith
The Village Blacksmith portrays a working man under a spreading chestnut tree, labouring all week, going to church on Sunday and mourning his late wife. The chestnut tree stood on Brattle Street in Cambridge, near Longfellow's house.
The poem became a school classic in America and Britain, a model of the dignity of honest work.
Ballads of the sea
The Wreck of the Hesperus tells of a skipper who takes his little daughter to sea and is lost in a storm off the coast of Massachusetts. Longfellow wrote it in one night in December 1839, after news of shipwrecks off Gloucester.
The Skeleton in Armor imagines a Viking warrior buried in New England, inspired by a skeleton dug up at Fall River and by an old stone tower in Newport, Rhode Island, then thought to be of Norse origin.
Anecdotes
Written at midnight
Longfellow noted in his diary on 30 December 1839 that, unable to sleep, he sat by the fire and The Wreck of the Hesperus came into his mind; he wrote it before going to bed, 'not by lines but by stanzas'.
The chestnut tree
The spreading chestnut tree of The Village Blacksmith was cut down in 1876 to widen the street. Cambridge children paid for an armchair made of its wood, which they gave to Longfellow in 1879.
Frequently asked questions
Which famous poems appear in Ballads and Other Poems?
The Skeleton in Armor, The Wreck of the Hesperus, The Village Blacksmith, Endymion, It Is Not Always May, The Rainy Day and Excelsior.
Was the village blacksmith a real person?
The poem was inspired by a smithy under a chestnut tree on Brattle Street in Cambridge, near Longfellow's home; the blacksmith himself is a general portrait.
When was the collection published?
In December 1841.