By Gustav Pfizer by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

It’s Longfellow's English translation of a poem by the German Romantic poet Gustav Pfizer. Longfellow was a prolific translator who frequently published translated poems alongside his original pieces. The emotional choices in the English version — including the word order, rhythm, and emphasis on specific images — reflect Longfellow’s style, even though the original idea belongs to Pfizer.

The poem intentionally leaves this point open to interpretation. The speaker mentions he 'dreams' of having had a wife and child, hinting that they might be figments of his imagination. However, he wakes up with two actual locks of hair — one brown and one blond — that have crossed over from the dream world into reality. The poem doesn’t provide clarity on this, and that lingering uncertainty is key to its impact. It’s designed to make you feel uneasy.

It’s a simile that likens the speaker's wandering lifestyle to that of a Bedouin nomad who quickly sets up a tent in one spot before moving on. This imagery was popular in 19th-century European Romantic poetry, symbolizing freedom and lack of roots. It portrays the speaker as someone without a permanent home or family, making the longing for a domestic life feel even more bittersweet.

The sight of the mother's brown hair evokes a grief so intense that the speaker feels a desire to escape life altogether. The poem has been leading up to this moment — the carefree wanderer was merely a facade hiding deep loss. The final line completely removes that facade. It's not about making a plan to end things, but rather an expression of grief so profound that simply existing feels too much to bear.

Brown hair belongs to the mother, and blond hair to the child. This color difference gives each lock its own identity and keeps the grief from feeling abstract—every strand connects to a specific person. Blond hair on a child evokes a classic Romantic image of innocence, while the mother’s brown hair carries a more grounded, adult significance. This contrast reflects the two distinct losses that the speaker is grappling with.

The poem adopts a ballad-like stanza structure: four lines with alternating iambic tetrameter and iambic trimeter, following an ABAB rhyme scheme. This mirrors the classic format of traditional English or Scottish ballads. The simplicity and song-like quality of the form prevent the emotion from becoming overly dramatic—this restraint intensifies the impact of the final confession of wanting to die.

Longfellow experienced the profound loss of two wives. His first wife, Mary, passed away after a miscarriage in 1835, and his second wife, Frances, tragically died in 1861 when her dress caught fire. Throughout his career, he translated numerous works of German Romantic poetry, and themes of grief and loss clearly struck a personal chord with him. Selecting this specific poem—focused on a man haunted by the deaths of his wife and child—wasn't just an academic choice; it was deeply personal.

It refers to a child dying. "Dropt asleep" softens the reality of death by likening it to simply falling asleep, which was a common way to describe a child's death in 19th-century poetry. The tenderness of the phrase makes it even more poignant—the contrast between the gentle language and the harsh truth adds to the stanza's emotional impact.