With suavity equal to his own
The governor lent a patient ear
To the speech evasive and high-flown,
In which he endeavored to make clear
That colonial laws were too severe
When applied to a gallant cavalier,
A gentleman born, and so well known,
And accustomed to move in a higher sphere.

All this the Puritan governor heard,
And deigned in answer never a word ;
But in summary manner shipped away,
In a vessel that sailed from Salem bay,
This splendid and famous cavalier,
With his Rupert hat and his popery,
To Merry England over the sea,
As being unmeet to inhabit here.

Thus endeth the Rhyme of Sir Christopher,
Knight of the Holy Sepulchre,
The first who furnished this barren land
With apples of Sodom and ropes of sand.

FINALE.

Written February 27, 1873.

THESE are the tales those merry guests
Told to each other, well or ill;
Like summer birds that lift their crests
Above the borders of their nests
And twitter, and again are still.

These are the tales, or new or old,
In idle moments idly told ;
Flowers of the field with petals thin,
Lilies that neither toil nor spin,
And tufts of wayside weeds and gorse
Hung in the parlor of the inn
Beneath the sign of the Red Horse.

And still, reluctant to retire,
The friends sat talking by the fire
And watched the smouldering embers burn
To ashes, and flash up again
Into a momentary glow,
Lingering like them when forced to go,
And going when they would remain;
For on the morrow they must turn
Their faces homeward, and the pain
Of parting touched with its unrest
A tender nerve in every breast.

But sleep at last the victory won ;
They must be stirring with the sun,
And drowsily good night they said,
And went still gossiping to bed,
And left the parlor wrapped in gloom.
The only live thing in the room
Was the old clock, that in its pace
Kept time with the revolving spheres
And constellations in their flight,
And struck with its uplifted mace
The dark, unconscious hours of night,
To senseless and unlistening ears.

Uprose the sun ; and every guest,
Uprisen, was soon equipped and dressed
For journeying home and city-ward ;
The old stage-coach was at the door,
With horses harnessed, long before
The sunshine reached the withered sward
Beneath the oaks, whose branches boar
Murmured : “ Farewell forevermore.”

66

u Farewell !” the portly Landlord cried;
“ Farewell!” the parting guests replied,

But little thought that nevermore
Their feet would pass that threshold o'er;
That nevermore together there
Would they assemble, free from care,
To hear the oaks' mysterious roar,
And breathe the wholesome country air.

Where are they now? What lands and skies
Paint pictures in their friendly eyes ?
What hope deludes, what promise cheers,
What pleasant voices fill their ears?
Two are beyond the salt sea waves,
And three already in their graves.
Perchance the living still may

look
Into the pages of this book,
And see the days of long ago
Floating and fleeting to and fro,
As in the well-remembered brook
They saw the inverted landscape gleam,
And their own faces like a dream
Look up upon them from below.

a

NOTES

be.

Page 15.

As ancient is this hostelry
As
апу

in the land may [The inscription on the old tavern sign, D. H. 1686, indicated probably the name of D. Howe, first landlord of the Wayside Inn, and a further inscription on the sign gave E. H. (Ezekiel Howe), 1746, and A. Howe, 1796.] Page 17.

Writ near a century ago
By the great Major Molineaux

Whom Hawthorne has immortal made. (The lines are as follows : –

What do you think?

Here is good drink,
Perhaps you may not know it;

If not in haste,

Do stop and taste !

You merry folk will show it. On another pane appears the Major's name, Wm. Molineux Jr. Esq., and the date, June 24, 1774. The allusion is to Hawthorne's tale, My Kinsman, Major Molineux. Hawthorne, writing to Mr. Longfellow after the publication of the Tales, says, “It gratifies my mind to find my own name shining in your verse, even as if I had been gazing up at the moon and detected my own features in its profile."]

Page 25. The midnight ride of Paul Revere.

[It is possible that Mr. Longfellow derived the story from Paul Revere's account of the incident in a letter to Dr. Jeremy Belknap, printed in Mass. His. Coll. v. Mr. Frothingham, in his Siege of Boston, pp. 57–59, gives the story mainly according to a memorandum of Richard Devens, Revere's friend and associate. The publication of Mr. Long

a

fellow's poem called out a protracted discussion both as to the church from which the signals were hung, and as to the friend who hung the lanterns. The subject is discussed and authorities cited in Memorial History of Boston, III. 101.]

Page 32 THE FALCON OF SER FEDERIGO.

[The story is found in the Decameron, Fifth day, ninth tale. As Boccaccio, however, was not the first to tell it, so Mr. Longfellow is not the only one after him to repeat it. So remote a source as Pantschatantra (Benfey, II. 247) contains it, and La Fontaine includes it in his Contes et Nouvelles under the title of Le Faucon. Tennyson has treated the subject dramatically in The Falcon. See also Delisle de la Drévetière, who turned Boccaccio's story into a comedy in three acts.]

Page 42. THE LEGEND OF RABBI BEN LEVI.

[Varnhagen refers to three several sources of this legend in the books Col Bo, Ben Sira, and Ketuboth, but it is most likely that Mr. Longfellow was indebted for the story to his friend Emmanuel Vitalis Scherb.]

Page 46. KING ROBERT OF SICILY.

[This story is one of very wide distribution. It is given in Gesta Romanorum as the story of Jovinian. Frere in his Old Deccan Days, or Hindoo Fairy Legends current in Southern India, recites it in the form of The Wanderings of Vicram Maharajah. Varnhagen pursues the legend through a great variety of forms. Leigh Hunt, among moderns, has told the story in A Jar of Honey from Mt. Hybla, from which source Mr. Longfellow seems to have drawn. Dante refers to the King in Paradiso, Canto VIII.]

Page 120. THE BIRDS OF KILLINGWORTH.

[Killingworth in Connecticut was named from the English town Kenilworth in Warwickshire, and had the same orthography in the early records, but was afterwards corrupted into its present form. Sixty or seventy years ago, according to Mr. Henry Hull, writing from personal recollection, “the men of the northern part of the town did yearly in the spring choose two leaders, and then the two sides were formed : the side that got beaten should pay the bills. Their special game was the hawk, the owl, the crow, the blackbird, and any