showed the manuscript of "The Building of the Ship" to his coterie of friendly critics. This time, they expressed unease over the coda--the 26-line ending--that described the demise of ships as he had heard it from childhood, "Wrecked upon some treacherous rock, Or rotting in some noisesome dock . . ."It took a few weeks for Longfellow to accept the criticism, which he had sought from a wide group that recommended making the ending a paean to the nation in its difficult time.
from Village Soup: Longfellow the patriot trumped Longfellow the poet
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