IT was the schooner Hesperus, That sailed the wintry sea;

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 daughter,

And do not tremble so;

1 Longfellow wrote in his Journal on December 17, 1833: News of shipwrecks horrible on the coast. Twenty bodies washed ashore near Gloucester, one lashed to a piece of the wreck. There is a reef called Norman's Woe where many of these took place; among others the schooner Hesperus. Also the Sea-flower on Black Rock. I must write a ballad upon this.'

The ballad was actually written twelve days later, on the night of December 29: 'I wrote last evening a notice of Allston's poems. After which I sat till twelve o'clock by my fire, smoking, when suddenly it came into my mind to write the "Ballad of the Schooner Hesperus; " which I accordingly did. Then I went to bed, but could not sleep. New thoughts were running in my mind, and I got up to add them to the ballad. It was three by the clock. I then went to bed and fell asleep. I feel pleased with the ballad. It hardly cost me an effort. It did not come into my mind by lines but by stanzas.' (Journal, December 30.)

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?' 'Tis 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.

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thinking of a series of ballads or a romantic poem on the deeds of the first bold viking who crossed to this western world, with storm-spirits and devil-machinery under water. New England ballads I have long thought of. This seems to be an introduction. I will dream more of this.'

A few months later, returning to Cambridge from Newport, where he had doubtless seen the Round Tower,' he passed through Fall River just after the skeleton in armor had been unearthed. These two things fitted in with his previous conception, and on May 24, 1839, he speaks of his plan for a heroic poem on the Discovery of America by the Northmen, in which the Round Tower at Newport and the Skeleton in Armor have a part to play.' In a letter to his father, of December 13, 1840, after the ballad was written, he speaks of having himself seen the skeleton: I suppose it to be the remains of one of the old Northern sea rovers who came to this country in the tenth century. Of course I make the tradition myself.'

For a full account of the finding of the skeleton, see the American Monthly Magazine of January, 1836, from which the following description is taken:

In digging down a hill near the village, a large mass of earth slid off, leaving in the bank and partially uncovered a human skull, which on examination was found to belong to a body buried in a sitting posture; the head being about one foot below what had been for many years the surface of the ground. The surrounding earth was carefully removed, and the body found to be enveloped in a covering of coarse bark of a dark color. Within this envelope were found the remains of another of coarse cloth, made of fine bark, and about the texture of a Manilla coffee bag. On the breast was a plate of brass, thirteen inches long, six broad at the upper end, and five in the lower. This plate appears to have been cast, and is from one eighth to three thirtyseconds of an inch in thickness. It is so much corroded that whether or not anything was engraved upon it has not yet been ascertained. It is oval in form, the edges being irregular, apparently made so by corrosion. Below the breastplate, and entirely encircling the body, was a belt composed of brass tubes, each four and a half inches in length, and three sixteenths of an inch in diameter, arranged longitudinally and close together, the length of the tube being the width of the belt. The tubes are of thin brass, cast upon hollow reeds, and were fastened together by pieces of sinew. Near the right knee was a quiver of arrows. The arrows are of brass, thin, flat, and triangular in shape, with a round hole cut through near the base. The shaft was fastened to the head by inserting the latter in an opening at the end of the wood and then tying with a sinew through the round hole, a mode of constructing the weapon never practised by the Indians, not even with their arrows of thin shell. Parts of the shaft still remain on some of them. When first discovered, the arrows were in a sort of quiver of bark, which fell to pieces when exposed to the air.'

Poe calls The Skeleton in Armor' 'a pure and perfect thesis artistically treated.' See his review of Longfellow's Ballads and Other Poems, April, 1842, in the Virginia Edition of his Works, vol. xi.