The Arsenal at Springfield: Longfellow’s Pacifist Organ of War

Inspiration and Composition. Longfellow credited a conversation with his bride, Frances Appleton, as his inspiration for this poem. On their wedding trip, the couple visited the U.S. Arsenal at Springfield, Massachusetts, along with Charles Sumner, the poet’s most politically active and reform-minded friend. In this storehouse of weaponry, Fanny commented to her husband that the array of metal gun barrels reminded her of a vast organ likely to produce “mournful music.” That simile, along with Sumner’s argument that governmental resources would be better spent on education than war preparations, guided Longfellow’s thoughts as he composed this poem. Another factor in his thinking may have been apprehension that his country would reproduce the tragic history of European wars that he knew about from his continental travels and remembered while writing poems he grouped with this one in The Belfry of Bruges and Other Poems.

The Organ Image and Pacifist Vision. The organ image begins in the first stanza with the poet’s attention to the “silent pipes” of the warehoused firearms in time of peace. Images of sound dominate the following quatrains as he anticipates “What loud lament and dismal Miserere / Will mingle with their awful symphonies.” “Miserere” (“Have mercy”) calls to mind Gregorian chants of European Catholic tradition, while “symphonies” represent that Continent’s classical and romantic music. Choral music and its echoes move the imagery closer to the United States in the 1840s, though most imagery throughout this poem relates sounds to violence throughout the world—sounds the poet condemns for overpowering “Nature’s sweet and kindly voices.” His hope, in this distinctly pacifist poem, is for a peaceful future when sounds of discord yield to “holy melodies of love.”

Social Critique and Prophetic Hope. Stanzas 9 and 10 pick up on Sumner’s critique of distorted priorities that favor military spending over investment in social development. Were half the resources spent on manufacturing and storing weapons invested to “redeem the human mind from error, / There were no need of arsenals or forts.” By imagining citizens who valued contributions to the public good over fighting and nations that were honored for maintaining peace rather than making war, Longfellow envisaged a better future for humanity and a world more consonant with Christ’s saving mission.

Poetic Musicality and Formal Design. Longfellow’s use of poetry’s musical resources reinforces this poem’s theme and dominant image pattern. Variants in iambic pentameter rhythm lend emphasis to opening words in several lines, while the additional unstressed half-foot that typically ends the first and third lines of each stanza contributes to the poem’s quieting effect as force yields to peace. Even the prolonged vowel tones and multisyllabic words Longfellow favored in phrases like “The diapason of the cannonade” reinforced the tone of measured hopefulness appropriate to a poem envisaging conversion of weapons into books and musical instruments.

For Discussion or Writing.
1. Analyze patterns of imagery in this poem by identifying and discussing images of harsh or frightening sounds. How do those relate to images you find of melodic sound? From what parts of the world and what times in history did Longfellow take his examples of sounds?

2. How does Longfellow’s poem compare with Julia Ward Howe’s “The Battle Hymn of the Republic” in its tone, imagery, and assumptions about religious justifications for war?

3. Does Longfellow’s simile likening guns to an organ serve as effectively today as it did in the 1840s? If so, how would you adapt his imagery to fit modern weapons? If not, what other figure of speech might you suggest for armaments used in recent wars?

Longfellow’s "The Jewish Cemetery at Newport" Analysis

Biographical Context and Travel Inspiration. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow derived the inspiration for "The Jewish Cemetery at Newport" (1852) from his personal travels during a summer 1852 vacation to Newport, Rhode Island. Visiting the historic Jewish burying ground, the poet recognized a striking historical connection between his memories of European cities and this New England coastal setting. Dedicated in the eighteenth century alongside the historic Touro Synagogue, the cemetery served as the burial site for the city's Sephardic Jewish population. Finding this offshoot of European Jewish heritage in a New England port town closely resembling his native Portland, Maine, Longfellow focused the poem on historical continuities, cultural transitions, and societal displacement. He structured his reflections through a delicate pattern of imagistic, thematic, and tonal contrasts.

Structural Contrasts and Thematic Dialectics. The foundational contrast of the poem juxtaposes foreign cultural history against familiar American surroundings: "How strange it seems! These Hebrews in their graves, / Close by the street of this fair seaport town". The opening stanza contrasts the stasis of the graveyard with the bustling maritime activity of Newport and the tidal rhythms of the Atlantic Ocean. Longfellow draws explicit parallels across multiple thematic dimensions:

· Foreign versus familiar: The presence of ancient Sephardic lineage within a contemporary New England town.

· Temporal and geographic migrations: The oceanic voyage of the refugees recalls the biblical exodus led by Moses, while foreshadowing the "long, mysterious Exodus of Death".

· Cultural and religious dualities: Contrasts between European and Anglo-American traditions, as well as Judaism and Christianity.

· Biblical resonance: Old Testament names resonate throughout the text, reminding readers of a shared Judeo-Christian heritage interpreted differently by each faith.

Historical Displacement and Tonal Ambiguity. The Hebrew immigrants depicted in the poem fled historical persecution in Spain, seeking refuge in a colonial seaport prior to the American Revolution. Although Newport grew into a bustling city within a nation founded on principles of human equality, Longfellow presents the Jewish community as a people without an active future in the town. Because no active Jewish congregation remained during his visit, the community had to be reconstructed through poetic imagination, maintained only by an unseen hand tending the burial grounds. Tonal contrasts alternate between pathos and peace, despair and respect, reflecting the author's outrage at historical intolerance alongside gratitude for the tranquility achieved by the deceased. However, the poet's attribution of faith in immortality reflects Christian theological concepts rather than Jewish doctrine, ultimately consigning the historical community to a graveyard of "dead nations" read backward like the Hebrew alphabet.

Themes of Human Brotherhood and Inclusivity. Despite its melancholy conclusions, "The Jewish Cemetery at Newport" demonstrates Longfellow's characteristic empathy, dignity, and commitment to universal tolerance. These central motifs recur throughout his literary career when examining religious persecution and cultural marginalization:

· Puritan oppression: Historical critiques of New England Puritan persecution directed against Quakers.

· Colonial displacements: Depictions of English-American Protestant displacement of French Catholic populations in Evangeline.

· Semitic and Islamic lore: Integration of Jewish history in dramatic works like Judas Maccabaeus and narrative tales such as "The Legend of Rabbi Ben Levi" spoken by the Spanish Jew in Tales of a Wayside Inn.

· Universalistic trajectory: Final works up to "The Bells of San Blas" project a historical progression away from religious division and violence toward global peace and pluralism.

Prompts for Academic Discussion and Seminar Analysis. To analyze the poetic methods, biblical symbolism, and nineteenth-century racial theories present in the text, consider the following research questions:

1st analysis point: Discuss Longfellow's use of Old Testament biblical allusions, specifically the reference to wandering Jews as "these Ishmaels and Hagars of mankind" (line 32). Examine how this specific typology functions within the broader argument of the poem.

2nd analysis point: Analyze how Longfellow's depiction of Jewish people as a group consigned to the historical past reflects nineteenth-century cultural concepts of vanishing populations.

3rd analysis point: Compare this depiction of historical displacement with romantic representations of Native Americans in contemporary nineteenth-century literature, including James Fenimore Cooper's The Pioneers and The Last of the Mohicans, William Cullen Bryant's "The Prairies," and Lydia Sigourney's "Indian Names".