Longfellow's first draft of "Excelsior", now in the archives at Harvard University, notes that he finished the poem at three o'clock in the morning on September 28, 1841.Cahoon, Herbert; Lange, Thomas V.; Ryskamp, Charles (1977). American Literary Autographs, from Washington Irving to Henry James, Courier Dover Publications, 34. . The poem came to him as he was trying to sleep. "That voice kept ringing in my ears", as he wrote to his friend Samuel Gray Ward, which caused him to get up and write the poem immediately.Gale, Robert L (2003). A Henry Wadsworth Longfellow Companion, Westport, CT: Greenwood Press: 77.
