Excelsior (Longfellow)
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Excelsior is a brief poem written and published in 1841 by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. The famous Sam Loyd chess problem, Excelsior, was named after this poem.
The poem describes a young man passing through a town bearing the banner "Excelsior" (translated from Latin as "ever higher", also loosely but more widely as "onward and upward"), ignoring all warnings, climbing higher until inevitably, "lifeless, but beautiful" he is found by the "faithful hound" half-buried in the snow, "still clasping in his hands of ice that banner with the strange device, Excelsior!"
The poem was a staple of American readers for many years, and A Plea for Old Cap Collier by Irvin S. Cobb, satirized it. His description is partly based on an illustration used in the readers. The words quoted are Longfellow's:
- The shades of night were falling fast,
- As through an Alpine village passed
- A youth, who bore, 'mid snow and ice,
- A banner with the strange device,
- Excelsior!
The title of Excelsior was reportedly inspired by the state seal of New York, which bears the Latin motto Excelsior. Longfellow had seen it earlier on a scrap of newspaper.[1] Longfellow's first draft, now in the Harvard University Library, notes that he finished the poem at three o'clock in the morning on September 28, 1841.[2]
James Thurber (1894-1961) illustrated the poem in The Thurber Carnival 1945.
[edit] Notes
- ^ Calhoun, Charles C. (2005). Longfellow: A Rediscovered Life, Beacon Press, 140. ISBN 0-8070-7039-4.
- ^ Cahoon, Herbert; Lange, Thomas V.; Ryskamp, Charles (1977). American Literary Autographs, from Washington Irving to Henry James, Courier Dover Publications, 34. ISBN 0-486-23548-3.
[edit] External links
- Cobb page 17 of the Project Gutenberg edition of A Plea for Old Cap Collier
