The Village Blacksmith

The poem “The Village Blacksmith” was written by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. The poem was first published in 1840. The main character is a blacksmith who lives in a small village.

This poem is a mix between a lyrical and narrative poem. The first three and the last two paragraphs are more like a lyrical poem, and don’t follow any kind of story. These paragraphs describe what the blacksmith’s work is like. Two of the paragraphs, the fifth and the sixth, are more like a narrative poem. They actually have some kind of story in them that describes the blacksmith’s feelings. The fourth paragraph though, is a mix between the other two kinds of paragraphs in the poem. It is lyrical, but it has a very small narrative element which is the children stopping on their way home from school to watch the blacksmith.

There are many characters in this poem, but not all of them are there physically. They include the blacksmith, his sons, his daughter, his wife, other children, and the narrator. For most of the poem the narrator is describing to the reader what the blacksmith’s life is like. But during the last paragraph the narrator thanks the blacksmith for what he has taught him.

The poet uses many rhymes along with easy and hard to rhyme words such as sinewy and brawny, and hard and rough. Most stanzas use the rhyme scheme a,b,c,b,d,b, and all of the stanzas are six lines long.

 The blacksmith has big rough hands, is very strong, and has long black hair. He works all day, all week, just to feed his family. But he doesn’t owe anybody any money. When he went to church. His daughter’s singing made him happy and sad, because it reminded him of his wife, who had died previously.

This poem is one of my favourites that I’ve read so far because it’s easy to understand and is interesting. I think that the meaning of the poem is that you can’t have a full happy life without any hard work.