Excelsior (Longfellow)

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Longfellow's poem was originally printed in the 1841 edition of Ballads and Other Poems, which also included other well-known poems such as The Wreck of the Hesperus

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] "Excelsior" was printed in Supplement to the Courant (Connecticut Courant- Vol. VII No. 2, January 22, 1841). Information taken from actual newspaper supplement. Correction: Vol. VII No. 1 and No.2 of Jan 8th and 22nd were issued with wrong year of 1841 on Masthead of Courant Supplement. This being a common printer error. Date of Sept 28, 1841 stands as listed.

James Thurber (1894-1961) illustrated the poem in The Thurber Carnival in 1945.

There is a Lancashire version or parody, Uppards, written by Marriott Edgar one hundred years later in 1941.

[edit] Notes

1. ^ Calhoun, Charles C. (2005). Longfellow: A Rediscovered Life, Beacon Press, 140. ISBN 0-8070-7039-4.
2. ^ 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

Wikisource has original text related to this article:

Excelsior

• [1] Thomas R. Lounsbury, ed. (1838–1915). Yale Book of American Verse. 1912.
• [2] Cobb, Irvin S., "A Plea for Old Cap Collier," George H. Doran Company, New York. 1921 (see 40-49) Clean copy, PDF, pp. 40-50