"All This Beauty, All This Grace": Longfellow's "The Building of the Ship" and Alexander Slidell Mackenzie's "Ship"

Abstract

IMMEDIATELY after its publication in Seaside and Fireside (November 1849), Longfellow's poem The Building of Ship'l was hailed for its patriotic, Unionist sentiment. In Faneuil Hall schoolchildren chanted Ship of State passage under title Ode Union.2 Longfellow's diary records Fanny Kemble's recitation of entire poem before an enthusiastic Boston audience of more than three thousand: she stood platform, book in hand, trembling, palpitating and weeping, and giving every word its true weight and emphasis (p. 241). Samuel Longfellow thought it was to be suspected that vast multitude was stirred its depths not so much by artistic completeness of rendition, as by impassioned burst with which poem closes, and which fell upon no listless ears in deep agitation of eventful year 1850 (p. 241). poem that moved Abraham Lincoln tears3 became an instant classic, a treasure be memorized by generations of American schoolchildren, and probably the most influential poem of period. Looking back in 1902, Thomas Wentworth Higginson was convinced that the concluding appeal Union had a distinct bearing on conflicts of time.4