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y^HIS Edition of The Village Blacksmith is published by special 
 
 ARRANGEMENT WITH MESSRS. HOUGHTON, MiFFLIN & Co. . THE AUTHORIZED 
 
 publishers of Mr. Longfellow's Works. 
 
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 '77/6' S7nith, a mighty man is he:' 
 
The Village Blacksmith 
 
 HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW 
 
 ILLUSTRATED 
 
 NEW YORK 
 
 E. P. BUTTON & COMPANY 
 
 31 West Twenty-third Street 
 

 %s 
 
 Copyright, iSSj, 
 By E. P. DuTTON AND Company. 
 
 '^-okU 
 
 *ROCKWE LL 5> Li^^te!^ |C H U R C H I LL^i 
 
T^RUE poet is also true priest. He takes of 
 earth's commonest things, the plain bread and 
 water of every-day toil and trial, and, having laid 
 loving, reverent hands upon them, he delivers them 
 unto us enriched with a new grace, a diviner virtue. 
 It is the sacrament of thought. 
 
 Half a century ago — and until within a few 
 years — a blacksmith's shop, of the old New Eng- 
 land village type, stood in Brattle street, Cambridge, 
 not far from Longfellow's home. Hundreds of 
 passers-by glanced at the low roof, the overhang- 
 ing boughs, the grimy smith at his forge, the 
 gazing children at the door, and went their way 
 without giving them a second thought. Not so 
 the poet. Where others saw but the veriest com- 
 
INTR OD UC TION. 
 
 monplacc he discovered fit material for tuneful 
 song, — love, sorrow, the patience of hope, the 
 strength of dut\', all the beauty and tragedy of 
 earnest human living. And though smith and 
 smithy, the sheltering tree, the loitering children, 
 poet and passers-by, alike are gone, the song 
 lives on. Its pictures fade not; its lessons grow 
 not old ; it will but become the more precious as 
 the times and customs which it commemorates 
 slide farther back into the past, and differ more 
 widely from those of to-day. 
 
 W. M. L. J. 
 
ILLUSTRATIONS 
 
 DRAWN AND ENGRAVED UNDER THE SUPERVISION OF 
 
 GEORGE T. ANDREW. 
 
 ARTISTS, 
 
 Edmund H. Garrett, Jessie Curtis Shepherd, 
 
 Frank T. Merrill, Miss E. S. Tucker, 
 
 Chas. Copeland, F. B. Schell, 
 
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 T TNDER 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 strone as iron bands. 
 
His hair is crisp, and black, and loni;", 
 
 His face is like the tan ; 
 His brow is wet with honest sweat. 
 
 He earns whate'er he can, 
 And looks the whole workl in the face. 
 
 For he owes not an)' man. 
 
 Week in, week out, from morn till night 
 
 You can hear his bellows blow ; 
 You can hear him swint; his hea\-\' sledge, 
 
With measured beat and slow, 
 Like a sexton I'inging 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 threshins" floor. 
 
He goes on Sunday to the church, 
 
And sits among his boys ; 
 He hears the parson pray and preach, 
 
Singing in the village choir, 
 
 And it makes his heart rejoice. 
 
 L 
 
\ 
 
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 hes ; 
 And with his hard, rough hand he wipes 
 
 A tear out of his eyes. 
 
Toiling, — rejoicing, — sorrowing. 
 Onward through hfe 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 flamhig forge of hfe 
 Our fortunes must be wrought ; 
 
 Thus on its sounding anvil shaped 
 Each burnincf deed and thought! 
 
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