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INTRODUCTION xxi
xxxiii
by Longfellow while he was in Sweden. The pages of the
important poems of Tegner, Frithiofs Saga, Axel, Svea,
and Nattvardsharnen, have enough pencillings in the
margins to show that Longfellow read them carefully in the
original. The Nattvardsharnen is especially marked up.
On the first page of the poem he has written in pencil,
"Dates of Translation, Oct. 27,1841," and beneath, in
the margin at the end of the ninth line,"Oct. 28." Then
the following uninterrupted stages in the translating are
noted in pencil: at the end of the thirty-fifth line,"Oct.
29," twenty-five lines more and the date " Oct. 30," ten
lines more "Oct. 31," thirty-five lines farther "Nov. 1,"
then seven lines and "Nov. 2," seventy lines "Nov. 3,"
forty-three lines "Nov. 4," seventy-five lines "Nov. 5,"
with the final fifty-one lines for November 6. On the last
day he wrote to Ward: "It is Saturday night,and eight by
the village clock. I have just finished the translation of the
’Children of the Lord’s Supper;’ and with the very ink
that wrote the last words of it, I commence this letter to
you. . . . The poem is indeed very beautiful; and in parts
so touching that more than once in translating it I was
blinded with tears. Perhaps my weakness makes the poem
strong. You shall soon judge; for, as I told you in my last,
this poem goes into the forthcoming volume." In spite of
his excellent translation and his success in handling the
difficult new metre, the hexameter, Longfellow was
attacked with a sort of stage fright while the translation was
in press; but he was prevailed upon by Ward not to recall
the sheets, and the poem appeared in the first edition of
Ballads and Other Poems.
In 1845, four years later, Longfellow composed
Evangeline. Immediately the remark was passed among critics,
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