years, through all the changing scenes
And seasons, changeless since the day she died.

July 10, 1879.

{80 _Life_, ii. 262, 263, 265, 266, 268.}

{81 _Harvard College Papers_ [MS.], 2d ser. xx. 345.}

{82 _Ib._ 347.}

{83 _Harvard College Papers_ [MS.], 2d ser. xxi. 249.}

{84 _Harvard College Papers_ [MS.], 2d ser. xxi. 249.}

{85 _Life_, ii. 248.}

CHAPTER XVIII

BIRDS OF PASSAGE

Longfellow had always a ready faculty for grouping his shorter poems in
volumes, and had a series continuing indefinitely under the name of
"Birds of Passage," which in successive "flights" were combined with
longer works. The first was contained in the volume called "The
Courtship of Miles Standish" (1858); the second in "Tales of a Wayside
Inn" (1863); flight the third appeared in connection with "Aftermath"
(1873); flight the fourth in "Masque of Pandora and Other Poems" (1875),
and flight the fifth in "Keramos and Other Poems" (1878). These short
poems stand representative of his middle life, as "Voices of the Night"
and "Ballads" did for the earlier; and while the maturer works have not,
as a whole, the fervor and freshness of the first, they have more
average skill of execution.

The "Tales of a Wayside Inn" was the final grouping of several stories
which had accumulated upon him, large and small, and finally demanded a
title-page in common. Some of them had been published before and were
grouped into a volume in 1863, which, making itself popular, was
followed by two more volumes, finally united into one. We have what is
not usually the case, the poet's own account of them, he having written
thus to a correspondent in England: "'The Wayside Inn' has more
foundation in fact than you may suppose. The town of Sudbury is about
twenty miles from Cambridge. Some two hundred years ago, an English
family by the name of Howe built there a country house, which has
remained in the family down to the present time, the last of the race
dying but two years ago. Losing their fortune, they became innkeepers;
and for a century the Red-Horse Inn has flourished, going down from
father to son. The place is just as I have described it, though no
longer an inn. All this will account for the landlord's coat-of-arms,
and his being a justice of the peace, and his being known as 'the
Squire,'--things that must sound strange in English ears. All the
characters are real. The musician is Ole Bull; the Spanish Jew, Israel
Edrehi, whom