Under the spreading chestnut tree
The village smithy stands;
The smith a mighty man is he
With large and sinewy hands.
And the muscles of his brawny arms
Are strong as iron bands.

These lines open Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s poem “The Village Blacksmith,” a widely read piece from his mid‑career period that idealizes honest labor and community life. Longfellow (1807–1882), a Harvard professor and the most popular American poet of his day, often wrote accessible narrative and lyric poems that celebrated moral character and everyday virtues. The poem presents the blacksmith as a familiar village figure—physically powerful, steady, and respected—framed by the iconic “spreading chestnut tree.” In later years the poem became attached to Cambridge, Massachusetts lore; a chestnut tree associated with the poem was memorialized after it fell, reflecting how strongly the poem entered American cultural memory.

The passage establishes the blacksmith as an emblem of strength, dignity, and productive work. By placing the smith “under the spreading chestnut tree,” Longfellow gives him a rooted, almost pastoral setting, suggesting stability and belonging within the community. The emphasis on “large and sinewy hands” and arms “strong as iron bands” links the worker’s body to the materials he shapes, implying integrity: his character is as solid as his craft. The opening also sets up the poem’s broader contrast between outward physical power and inward moral worth, presenting labor not as mere toil but as a source of self-respect and social value.