Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, by Ernest Wadsworth Longfellow (1845-1921), 1886. Courtesy Wikimedia Commons.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Born	February 27, 1807(1807-Template:MONTHNUMBER-27) Portland, Maine, U.S.
Died	March 24, 1882(1882-Template:MONTHNUMBER-24) (aged 75) Cambridge, Massachusetts, U.S.
Occupation	poet, academic
Literary movement	Romanticism, Fireside Poets

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (February 27, 1807 - March 24, 1882) was an American poet and academic, a member of the Fireside Poets.

Life

Overview

Longfellow was born at Portland, Maine, the son of Stephen Longfellow, a lawyer. From childhood he cared little for games, but was always devoted to reading. In 1822 he was sent to Bowdoin College, of which his father was a Trustee, and after graduating was appointed to a new Chair of Modern Languages, which the college had decided to establish, and with the view of more completely qualifying him for his duties, he was sent to Europe for a 3 years' course of study. He accordingly went to France, Spain, and Italy. Returning in 1829 he commenced his professional duties, writing also in the North American Review. In 1831 he entered into his 1st marriage, and in 1833 he published his 1st books, a translation from the Spanish, followed by part 1 of Outre Mer, an account of his travels. At the end of the year Longfellow was invited to become Professor of Modern Languages at Harvard, an offer which he gladly accepted. He paid a 2nd visit to Europe accompanied by his wife, who, however, died at Amsterdam. He returned to his duties in 1836, and in 1839 appeared Voices of the Night, containing the "Psalm of Life" and "Excelsior," which had extraordinary popularity, and gave him a place in the affections of his countrymen which he held until his death. The same year saw the publication of Hyperion. His next work was Ballads, and other poems, containing "The Wreck of the Hesperus" and "The Village Blacksmith." In 1843 he remarried, and in the same year appeared The Spanish Student, a drama. The Belfry of Bruges and Evangeline (1847), generally considered his masterpiece, followed. In 1849 he published Kavanagh, a novel which added nothing to his reputation, and in 1851 The Seaside and the Fireside, and The Golden Legend. Having now a sufficient and secure income from his writings, he resigned his professorship, and devoted himself entirely to literature. Hiawatha appeared in 1855, and The Courtship of Miles Standish in 1858. In 1861 he lost his wife under tragic circumstances, a blow which told heavily upon him. His last works were a translation of Dante's Divina Commedia, Tales of a Wayside Inn, The New England Tragedies, and The Divine Tragedy, the last 2 of which he combined with The Golden Legend into a trilogy, which he named Christus. In 1868 he paid a last visit to England, where he was received with the highest honor. Later works were Three Books of Song, Aftermath, and Ultima Thule. He died on March 14, 1882.

Family

Longfellow's birthplace in Portland, Maine, circa 1910. The house was demolished in 1955. Courtesy Wikimedia Commons.

Longfellow was born on February 27, 1807, at Portland, Maine. His ancestor, William Longfellow, had immigrated to Newbury, Massachusetts, in 1676, from Yorkshire, England. His father was Stephen Longfellow, a lawyer and United States congressman, and his mother, Zilpha (Wadsworth), a descendant of John Alden and of “Priscilla, the Puritan maiden.”

His brother, Rev. Samuel Longfellow, was a minister of the Unitarian Church.

Youth and education

Henry's boyhood was spent mostly in his native town, which he never ceased to love, and whose beautiful surroundings and quiet, pure life he has described in his poem “My Lost Youth.” Here he grew up in the midst of majestic peace, which was but once broken, and that by an event which made a deep impression on him—the war of 1812. He never forgot

    “the sea-fight far away.
  How it thundered o’er the tide,
And the dead captains as they lay
In their graves o’erlooking the tranquil bay,
  Where they in battle died.”

The “tranquil bay” is Casco Bay, amnng the most beautiful in the world, studded with bold, green islands, well fitted to be the Hesperides of a poet’s boyish dreams.

Longfellow was enrolled in a dame school at the age of 3, and by age 6 was enrolled at the private Portland Academy. In his years there, he earned a reputation as being very studious and became fluent in Latin. His mother encouraged his enthusiasm for reading and learning, introducing him to Robinson Crusoe and Don Quixote. At age 13 he had his earliest publication – a patriotic and historical 4-stanza poem called "The Battle of Lovell's Pond" – in the Portland Gazette of November 17, 1820.

At the age of 15 Longfellow entered Bowdoin College at Brunswick, a town situated near the romantic falls of the Androscoggin river, about 25 miles from Portland, and in a region full of Indian scenery and legend. His grandfather was a founder of the college and his father was a trustee. There he had among his classfellows Nathaniel Hawthorne, George B. Cheever and J.S.C. Abbott. He joined the Peucinian Society, a group of students with Federalist leanings.

In his senior year, Longfellow wrote to his father about his aspirations:

I will not disguise it in the least... the fact is, I most eagerly aspire after future eminence in literature, my whole soul burns most ardently after it, and every earthly thought centres in it... I am almost confident in believing, that if I can ever rise in the world it must be by the exercise of my talents in the wide field of literature.

He pursued his literary goals by submitting poetry and prose to various newspapers and magazines, partly due to encouragement from a professor named Thomas Cogswell Upham. Between January 1824 and his graduation in 1825, he had published nearly 40 minor poems. About 24 of them appeared in the short-lived Boston periodical The United States Literary Gazette, which are interesting for 2 reasons — (1) as showing the poet’s early, book-mediated sympathy with nature and legendary heroisms, and (2) as being almost entirely free from that supernatural view of nature which his subsequent residence in Europe imparted to him.

He graduated in 1825, at the age of 18, with honours, among others that of writing the “class poem” —taking 4th place in a class of 38. He gave the student commencement address.

Professor and writer

Shortly after his graduation, Longfellow received an offer of a professorship of modern languages at Bowdoin College.

In order the better to qualify himself for this appointment, he went to Europe (May 15th, 1826) and spent 3 years and a half travelling in France, Italy, Spain, Germany, Holland and England, learning languages, for which he had unusual talent, and drinking in the spirit of the history and life of these countries. The effect of Longfellow’s visit was 2-fold: it widened his sympathies, gave him confidence in himself and supplied him with many poetical themes; and it traditionalized his mind, colored for him the pure light of nature and rendered him in some measure unfit to feel or express the spirit of American nature and life.

He returned to America in 1829, and remained 6 years at Bowdoin College (1829–1835), during which he published various text-books for the study of modern languages. In his 24th year (1831) he married Mary Story Potter, 1 of his “early loves.” In 1833 he made a series of translations from Spanish, with an essay on the moral and devotional poetry of Spain, and these were incorporated in 1835 in Outre-mer: a Pilgrimage beyond the Sea.

Nevertheless, he did not enjoy his time at Bowdoin, especially correcting exams and papers. He wrote, "I hate the sight of pen, ink, and paper... I do not believe that I was born for such a lot. I have aimed higher than this".

In 1835 Longfellow was chosen to succeed George Ticknor as professor of modern languages and belles-lettres in Harvard University. On receiving this appointment, he paid a 2nd visit of some 15 months to Europe, this time devoting special attention to the Scandinavian countries and Switzerland. During this visit he lost his wife, who died at Rotterdam, on November 29, 1835.

On his return to America in December 1836, Longfellow took up his residence in Cambridge, and began to lecture at Harvard and to write. In his new home he found himself amid surroundings entirely congenial to him. Its spaciousness and free rural aspect, its old graveyards and towering elms, its great university, its cultivated society and its vicinity to humane, substantial, busy Boston, were all attractions for such a man.

Longfellow also became part of the local social scene, creating a group of friends who called themselves the Five of Clubs. Members included Cornelius Conway Felton, George Stillman Hillard, and Charles Sumner, the latter of whom would become Longfellow's closest friend over the next 30 years. As a professor, Longfellow was well liked, though he disliked being "constantly a playmate for boys" rather than "stretching out and grappling with men's minds."

In 1837-1838 several essays of Longfellow’s appeared in the North American Review, and in 1839 he published Hyperion: a Romance, and his debut collection of original poetry, entitled Voices of the Night. Hyperion, a poetical account of his travels, had, at the time of its publication, an immense popularity, due mainly to its sentimental romanticism.

Longfellow in the 1840's. Portrait by Charles Loring Elliott (1812-1868). Courtesy Wikimedia Commons.

In 1842 Longfellow published a small volume of Ballads and other Poems. In the same year he paid a 3rd brief visit to Europe, spending the summer on the Rhine. During his return-passage across the Atlantic he wrote his Poems on Slavery (1842), with a dedication to Channing. These poems went far to wake in the youth of New England a sense of the great national wrong, and to prepare them for that bitter struggle in which it was wiped out at the expense of the lives of so many of them.

In 1843 he married again, his wife being Frances Elizabeth Appleton of Boston, a daughter of Nathan Appleton (a founder of Lowell), and a sister of Thomas G. Appleton, himself no mean poet. As a wedding present, Nathan Appleton bought the couple the Craigie House, an old “revolutionary house,” built about the beginning of the 18th century, and occupied by General Washington in 1776, where Longfellow had formerly been a lodger. This quaint old wooden house, in the midst of a large garden full of splendid elms, continued to be his chief residence till the day of his death.

Of the lectures on Dante which he delivered about this time, James Russell Lowell says: “These lectures, illustrated by admirable translations, are remembered with grateful pleasure by many who were thus led to learn the full significance of the great Christian poet.” Indeed, as a professor, Longfellow was eminently successful.

Shortly after the Poems on Slavery, there appeared in 1843 a more ambitious work, The Spanish Student, a Play in Three Acts, a kind of sentimental “Morality,” with no special merit but good intention. If published nowadays it would hardly attract notice; but in those gushing, emotion-craving times it had considerable popularity, and helped to increase the poet’s now rapidly widening fame.

A huge collection of translations of foreign poetry edited by him, and entitled The Poets and Poetry of Europe, appeared in 1845, and, in 1846, a few minor poems — songs and sonnets — under the title The Belfry of Bruges. In 1847 he published at Boston the greatest of all his works, Evangeline, a Tale of Acadie.

In 1849 Longfellow published a novel of no great merit, Kavanagh, and also a volume of poems entitled The Seaside and the Fireside, a title which has reference to his 2 homes, the seaside one on the charming peninsula of Nahant, the fireside one in Cambridge. In 1851 appeared The Golden Legend, a long lyric drama based upon Hartmann von Aue’s beautiful story of self-sacrifice, Der arme Heinrich.

Full-time writer

Longfellow in the 1850's. Courtesy Wikimedia Commons.

In 1854 Longfellow resigned his professorship. In the following year he gave to the world the Indian Edda, The Song of Hiawatha. In 1858 appeared The Courtship of Miles Standish, based on a charming incident in the early history of the Plymouth colony, and, along with it, a number of minor poems, included under the modest title, Birds of Passage. Among these is “My Lost Youth.”

2 events then occurred which served to cast a gloom over the poet’s life and to interrupt his activity,—the outbreak of the Civil War, and the tragic fate of his wife, who, having accidentally allowed her dress to catch fire, was burnt to death in her own house in 1861. Devastated by her death, he never fully recovered and occasionally resorted to laudanum and ether to deal with it. He worried he would go insane and begged "not to be sent to an asylum" and noted that he was "inwardly bleeding to death". It was long before he recovered from the shock caused by this terrible event, and in his subsequent published poems he never ventured even to allude to it.

When he did in some measure find himself again, he gave to the world his charming Tales of a Wayside Inn (1863), and in 1865 his Household Poems. Among the latter is a poem entitled “The Children’s Hour,” which affords a glance into the home life of the widowed poet, who had been left with 5 children —2 sons, Ernest and Charles, and 3 daughters,

“Grave Alice, and laughing Allegra,

And Edith with golden hair.”

A small volume entitled Flower de Luce (1867) contains, among other fine things, the beautiful “threnos” on the burial of Hawthorne, and “The Bells of Lynn.”

Once more the poet sought refuge in medieval life by completing his translation of the Divina Commedia, parts of which he had rendered into English as much as 30 years before. This work appeared in 1867, and gave a great impulse to the study of Dante in America. It is a masterpiece of literal translation. Next came the New England Tragedies (1868) and The Divine Tragedy (1871), which found no large public.

In 1868–1869 the poet visited Europe, and was everywhere received with the greatest honor.

Character

Longfellow in 1868. Photo by Julia Margaret Cameron (1815-1879). Courtesy Wikimedia Commons.

In person, Longfellow was rather below middle height, broad shouldered and well built. His head and face were extremely handsome, his forehead broad and high, his eyes full of clear, warming fire, his nose straight and graceful, his chin and lips rich and full of feeling as those of the Praxitelean Hermes, and his voice low, melodious and full of tender cadences. His hair, originally dark, became, in his later years, silvery white, and its wavy locks combined with those of his flowing beard to give him that leonine appearance so familiar through his later portraits. Charles Kingsley said of Longfellow’s face that it was the most beautiful human face he had ever seen.

In Longfellow, the poet was the flower and fruit of the man. His nature was essentially poetic, and his life the greatest of his poems. Those who knew only the poems he wrote could form but a faint notion of the harmony, the sweetness, the manliness and the tenderness of that which he lived.

He was a man of noble and chivalrous character. A man in intellect and courage, yet without conceit or bravado; a woman in sensibility and tenderness, yet without shrinking or weakness; a saint in purity of life and devotion of heart, yet without asceticism or religiosity; a knight-errant in hatred of wrong and contempt of baseness, yet without self-righteousness or cynicism; a prince in dignity and courtesy, yet without formality or condescension; a poet in thought and feeling, yet without jealousy or affectation; a scholar in tastes and habits, yet without aloofness or bookishness; a dutiful son, a loving husband, a judicious father, a trusty friend, a useful citizen and an enthusiastic patriot,— he united in his strong, transparent humanity almost every virtue under heaven. A thoroughly healthy, well-balanced, harmonious nature, accepting life as it came, with all its joys and sorrows, and living it beautifully and hopefully, without canker and without uncharity. No man ever lived more completely in the light than Henry Wadsworth Longfellow.

Over the years, Longfellow's personality has become part of his reputation. He has been presented as a gentle, placid, poetic soul: an image perpetuated by his brother Samuel Longfellow, who wrote an early biography which specifically emphasized these points. As James Russell Lowell said, Longfellow had an "absolute sweetness, simplicity, and modesty". At Longfellow's funeral, his friend Ralph Waldo Emerson called him "a sweet and beautiful soul". In reality, Longfellow's life was much more difficult than was assumed. He suffered from neuralgia, which caused him constant pain, and he also had poor eyesight. He wrote to friend Charles Sumner: "I do not believe anyone can be perfectly well, who has a brain and a heart". He had difficulty coping with the death of his 2nd wife. Longfellow was very quiet, reserved, and private; in later years, he was known for being unsocial and avoided leaving home.

Perhaps the most remarkable traits in Longfellow’s character were his accessibility and his charity. Though a great worker, he seemed always to have time for anything he was asked to do. He was never too busy to see a caller, to answer a letter, or to assist, by word or deed, any one that needed assistance. His courtesy to all visitors, even to strangers and children who called to look at him, or who, not venturing to call, hung about his garden-gate in order to catch a glimpse of him, was almost a marvel. He always took it for granted that they had come to see Washington’s study, and, accordingly, took the greatest interest in showing them that. On August 22, 1879, a female admirer traveled to his house and, unaware to whom she was speaking, asked him: "Is this the house where Longfellow was born?" Longfellow told her it was not. The visitor then asked if he had died there. "Not yet", he replied.

He never, as long as he could write, was known to refuse his autograph, and so far was he from trying to protect himself from intruders that he rarely drew the blinds of his study windows at night, though that study was on the ground floor and faced the street. His acts of charity, though performed in secret, were neither few nor small. Of him it may be said with perfect truth, “He went about doing good”; and not with his money merely, but also with his presence and his encouragement. To how many sad hearts did he come like an angel, with the rich tones of his voice waking harmonics of hope, where before there had been despair and silence? How many young literary people, disappointed at the unsuccess of their earliest attempts, did he comfort and spur on to renewed and higher efforts! How careful he was to quench no smoking flax! How utterly free he was from jealousy or revengefulness! While poor, morbid Edgar Allan Poe was writing violent and scurrilous articles upon him, accusing him of plagiarism and other literary misdemeanors, he was delivering enthusiastic lectures to his classes on Poe’s poetry.

His charity was unbounded. Once, when Thomas Davidson proposed to the president of the Harvard University Visiting Committee that Longfellow should be placed on that committee, the president replied: “What would be the use? Longfellow could never be brought to find fault with anybody or anything.” And it was true. His whole life was bathed in that sympathy, that love which suffers long and envies not, which forgives unto 70 times 7 times, and as many more if need be. Even in his last years, when loss of friends and continual physical pain made life somewhat “cold, and dark and dreary” for him, he never complained, lamented or blamed the arrangements of nature, and the only way in which it was possible to know that he suffered was through his ever-increasing delight in the health and strength of younger men. His whole nature was summed up in the lines of his favourite poet:—

Luce intellettual, piena d’amore,

Amor di vero ben, pien di letizia,

Letizia che trascende ogni dolzore.”

Later years

In 1872 appeared Three Books of Song, containing translated as well as original pieces, in 1873 Aftermath and in 1875 The Mask of Pandora, and other poems. Among these “other poems” were “The Hanging of the Crane,” “Morituri Salutamus” and “A Book of Sonnets.” In the “Book of Sonnets” are some of the finest things he ever wrote, especially the 5 sonnets entitled “Three Friends of Mine.” These “three friends” were Cornelius Felton, Louis Agassiz and Charles Sumner, whom he calls

“The noble three,

Who half my life were more than friends to me.”

The loss of Agassiz was a blow from which he never entirely recovered; and, when Sumner also left him, he wrote:—

“Thou hast but taken thy lamp and gone to bed;

⁠I stay a little longer, as one stays

⁠To cover up the embers that still burn.”

He did stay a little longer; but the embers that still burnt in him refused to be covered up. He would fain have ceased writing, and used to say, “It’s a great thing to know when to stop”; but he could not stop, and did not stop, till the last. He continued to publish from time to time, in the magazines, poems which showed a clearness of vision and a perfection of workmanship such as he never had equalled at any period of his life. Indeed it may be said that his finest poems were his last. Of these a small collection appeared under the title of Keramos, and other Poems (1878). Besides these, in the years 1875–1878 he edited a collection of Poems of Places in 31 small volumes.

In 1880 appeared Ultima Thule, meant to be his last work, and it was nearly so. In October 1881 he wrote a touching sonnet on the death of President Garfield, and in January 1882, when the hand of death was already upon him, his poem, Hermes Trismegistus, in which he gives utterance, in language as rich as that of the early gods, to that strange feeling of awe without fear, and hope without form, with which every man of spotless life and upright intellect withdraws from the phenomena of time to the realities of eternity.

In the last years of his life he suffered a great deal from rheumatism, and was, as he sometimes cheerfully said, “never free from pain.” Still he remained as sunny and genial as ever, looking from his Cambridge study windows across the Brighton meadows to the Brookline hills, or enjoying the “free wild winds of the Atlantic,” and listening to “The Bells of Lynn” in his Nahant home. He still continued to receive all visitors, and to take occasional runs up to Castine and Portland, the homes of his family.

About the beginning of 1882, however, a serious change took place in his condition. Dizziness and want of strength confined him to his room for some time, and, although after some weeks he partially recovered, his elasticity and powers were gone. On March 19 he was seized with what proved to be peritonitis, and he died on March 24. The poet was buried 2 days afterwards near his “three friends” in Mount Auburn cemetery. The regret for his loss was universal; for no modern man was ever better loved or better deserved to be loved.

Writing

Longfellow lacked the intensity of feeling and power of imagination to make him a great poet; but few poets have appealed to a wider circle of readers. If he never soars to the heights or sounds the deeps of feeling he touches the heart by appealing to universal and deep-seated affections. He predominantly wrote lyric poems which are known for their musicality, and which often presented stories of mythology and legend. He became the most popular American poet of his day and also had success overseas. He has been criticized, however, for imitating European styles and writing specifically for the masses. His works include "Paul Revere's Ride", The Song of Hiawatha, and Evangeline.

Much of his work is recognized for its melody-like musicality. As he says, "what a writer asks of his reader is not so much to like as to listen".

At present few persons beyond their teens would care to read Hyperion (1839) through, so unnatural and stilted is its language, so thin its material and so consciously mediated its sentiment. Nevertheless it has a certain historical importance, for 2 reasons: (1) because it marks that period in Longfellow’s career when, though he had left nature, he had not yet found art; and (2) because it opened the sluices through which the flood of German sentimental poetry flowed into the United States.

Voices of the Night (1839) contains 2 of his best minor poems, “A Psalm of Life” and “Footsteps of Angels.”

Ballads, and other poems (1842) contains some of his most popular pieces, e.g. “The Skeleton in Armour,” “The Wreck of the Hesperus,” “The Village Blacksmith,” “To a Child,” “The Bridge,” “Excelsior.”

Evangeline, a Tale of Acadie (1847) was, in some degree, an imitation of Goethe’s Hermann and Dorothea, and its plot, which was derived from Hawthorne’s American Note-Books, is even simpler than that of the German poem, not to say much more touching. At the violent removal by the British government of a colony of French settlers from Acadie (Nova Scotia) in 1755, a young couple, on the very day of their wedding, were separated and carried in different directions, so that they lost all trace of each other. The poem describes the wanderings of the bride in search of her lover, and her final discovery of him as an old man on his death-bed, in a public hospital which she had entered as a nurse. Slight as the story is, it is worked out into one of the most affecting poems in the language, and gives to literature a most perfect type of womanhood and of “affection that hopes and endures and is patient.” Though written in a meter deemed foreign to English ears, the poem immediately attained a wide popularity, which it has never lost, and secured to the Dactylic hexameter a recognized place among English meters.

A poem in his 1849 collection The Seaside and the Fireside (1849), “Resignation,” has taken a permanent place in literature; another, “Hymn for my Brother’s Ordination,” shows plainly the nature of the poet’s Christianity.

Next to Evangeline, The Golden Legend (1851) is both the best and the most popular of the poet’s longer works, and contains many passages of great beauty.

The Song of Hiawatha (1855) was a conscious imitation, both in subject and meter, of the Finnish epic, the Kalevala, with which he had become acquainted during his 2nd visit to Europe. The meter is monotonous and easily ridiculed, but it suits the subject, and the poem is very popular.

The Mask of Pandora (1875) is a proof of that growing appreciation of pagan naturalism which marked the poet’s later years. Though not a great poem, it is full of beautiful passages, many of which point to the riddle of life as yet unsolved, a conviction which grew ever more and more upon the poet, as the ebulliency of romanticism gave way to the calm of classic feeling.

Critical introduction

by Thomas A. Davidson

Longfellow’s genius, in its choice of subjects, always oscillated between America and Europe, between the colonial period of American history and the Middle and Romantic Ages of European feeling. When tired of the broad daylight of American activity, he sought refuge and rest in the dim twilight of medieval legend and German sentiment.

His sojourn in Europe fell exactly in the time when, in England, the reaction against the sentimental atheism of Shelley, the pagan sensitivity of Keats, and the sublime, Satanic outcastness of Byron was at its height; when, in the Catholic countries, the negative exaggerations of the French Revolution were inducing a counter current of positive faith, which threw men into the arms of a half-sentimental, half-aesthetic medievalism; and when, in Germany, the aristocratic paganism of Goethe was being swept aside by that tide of dutiful, romantic patriotism which flooded the country, as soon as it began to feel that it still existed after being run over by Napoleon’s war-chariot.

What he would have been as a poet, if, instead of visiting Europe in early life and drinking in the spirit of the middle ages under the shadows of cathedral towers, he had, like Whittier, grown old amid American scenery and life, we can only guess from his earlier poems, which are as naturalistic, fresh and unmystical as could be desired; but certain it is that, from his long familiarity with the medieval view of nature, and its semi-pagan offspring, the romantic view, he was brought, for the greater part of his life, to look upon the world of men and things either as the middle scene of a miracle play, with a heaven of rewarding happiness above and a purgatory of purifying pain below, or else as a garment concealing, while it revealed, spiritual forms of unfathomed mystery. During this time he could hear “the trailing garments of the night sweep through her marble halls,” and see “the stars come out to listen to the music of the seas.” Later on, as he approached his 2nd youth (he was spared a 2nd childhood), he tended to a more pagan view. About the time when he was writing The Mask of Pandora, he could see “in the sunset Jason’s fleece of gold,” and hear “the waves of the distracted sea piteously calling and lamenting” his lost friend. But through all the periods of his life his view of the world was essentially religious and subjective, and, consequently, his manner of dealing with it hymnal or lyric. This fact, even more than his merits as an artist, serves to account for his immense popularity. Too well-informed, too appreciative and too modest to deem himself the peer of the “grand old masters,” or one of “those far stars that come in sight once in a century,” he made it his aim to write something that should “make a purer faith and manhood shine in the untutored heart,” and to do this in the way that should best reach that heart. This aim determined at once his choice of subjects and his mode of treating them.

The subjects of Longfellow’s poetry are, for the most part, aspects of nature as influencing human feeling, either directly or through historical association, the tender or pathetic sides and incidents of life, or heroic deeds preserved in legend or history. He had a special fondness for records of human devotion and self-sacrifice, whether they were monkish legends, Indian tales, Norse drápas or bits of American history. His mode of treatment is subjective and lyric. No matter what form his works assume – whether the epic, as in Evangeline, The Courtship of Miles Standish and Hiawatha; the dramatic, as in The Spanish Student, The Golden Legend and The Mask of Pandora; or the didactic, as in The Psalm of Life and many of the minor poems – they are all subjective. This is not the highest praise that can be given to works of art; but it implies less dispraise in Longfellow’s case than in almost any other, by reason of his noble subjectivity.

If we look in Longfellow’s poetry for originality of thought, profound psychological analysis, or new insights into nature, we shall be disappointed. Though very far from being hampered by any dogmatic philosophical or religious system of the past, his mind, until near the end, found sufficient satisfaction in the Christian view of life to make it indifferent to the restless, inquiring spirit of the present, and disinclined to play with any more recent solution of life’s problems. He had no sympathy with either scepticism or formal dogmatism, and no need to hazard rash guesses respecting man’s destiny. He disliked the psychological school of art, believing it to be essentially morbid and unhealthy.

He had no sympathy with the tendency represented by George Eliot, or with any attempt to be analytic in art. He held art to be essentially synthetic, creative and manifesting, not analytic, destructive or questioning. Hence he never strove to draw from nature some new secret, or to show in her relations never discovered before. His aim was to impress upon her familiar facts and aspects the seal of his own gracious nature.

Critical reputation

Longfellow's early collections, Voices of the Night and Ballads and other poems, made him instantly popular. The New-Yorker called him "one of the very few in our time who has successfully aimed in putting poetry to its best and sweetest uses".The Southern Literary Messenger immediately put Longfellow "among the first of our American poets". Poet John Greenleaf Whittier said that Longfellow's poetry illustrated "the careful moulding by which art attains the graceful ease and chaste simplicity of nature". Longfellow's friend Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. wrote of him as "our chief singer" and one who "wins and warms... kindles, softens, cheers [and] calms the wildest woe and stays the bitterest tears!"

The rapidity with which American readers embraced Longfellow was unparalleled in publishing history in the United States; by 1874, he was earning $3,000 per poem. His popularity spread throughout Europe as well and his poetry was translated during his lifetime into Italian, French, German, and other languages. As scholar Bliss Perry later wrote, Longfellow was so highly praised that criticizing him was a criminal act like "carrying a rifle into a national park". In the last 2 decades of his life, he often received requests for autographs from strangers, which he always sent. John Greenleaf Whittier suggested it was this massive correspondence that led to Longfellow's death, writing: "My friend Longfellow was driven to death by these incessant demands".

Contemporary writer Edgar Allan Poe wrote to Longfellow in May 1841 of his "fervent admiration which [your] genius has inspired in me" and later called him "unquestionably the best poet in America". However, after Poe's reputation as a critic increased, he publicly accused Longfellow of plagiarism in what has been since termed by Poe biographers as "The Longfellow War". His assessment was that Longfellow was "a determined imitator and a dextrous adapter of the ideas of other people", specifically Alfred, Lord Tennyson. His accusations may have been a publicity stunt to boost readership of the Broadway Journal, for which he was the editor at the time. Longfellow did not respond publicly, but, after Poe's death, he wrote: "The harshness of his criticisms I have never attributed to anything but the irritation of a sensitive nature chafed by some indefinite sense of wrong".

Margaret Fuller judged him "artificial and imitative" and lacking force. Poet Walt Whitman also considered Longfellow an imitator of European forms, though he praised his ability to reach a popular audience as "the expressor of common themes - of the little songs of the masses". He added, "Longfellow was no revolutionarie: never traveled new paths: of course never broke new paths." Lewis Mumford said that Longfellow could be completely removed from the history of literature without much effect. Towards the end of his life, contemporaries considered him more of a children's poet as many of his readers were children. A contemporary reviewer noted in 1848 that Longfellow was creating a "Goody two-shoes kind of literature... slipshod, sentimental stories told in the style of the nursery, beginning in nothing and ending in nothing". A more modern critic said, "Who, except wretched schoolchildren, now reads Longfellow?"

A London critic in the London Quarterly Review, however, condemned all American poetry, saying, "with two or three exceptions, there is not a poet of mark in the whole union" but singled out Longfellow as an exception. As an editor of the Boston Evening Transcript wrote in 1846, "Whatever the miserable envy of trashy criticism may write against Longfellow, one thing is most certain, no American poet is more read".

Over time, Longfellow's popularity declined, beginning shortly after his death and into the 20th century as academics began to appreciate poets like Walt Whitman, Edwin Arlington Robinson, and Robert Frost. In the 20th century, literary scholar Kermit Vanderbilt noted, "Increasingly rare is the scholar who braves ridicule to justify the art of Longfellow's popular rhymings." 20th century poet Lewis Putnam Turco concluded that "Longfellow was minor and derivative in every way throughout his career... nothing more than a hack imitator of the English Romantics."

Recognition

The first Longfellow stamp was issued in the Famous Americans Series of 1940, in Portland, Maine on February 16, 1940. Courtesy Wikimedia Commons.

Longfellow was the most popular poet of his day and is generally regarded as the most distinguished poet the United States had produced. As a friend once wrote to him, "no other poet was so fully recognized in his lifetime". Many of his works helped shape the American character and its legacy, particularly with the poem "Paul Revere's Ride".

Longfellow was made an LL.D. of Bowdoin College in 1828, at the age of 21, of Harvard in 1859, and of Cambridge (England) in 1868; and a D.C.L. of Oxford in 1869.

In 1873 he was elected a member of the Russian Academy of Science, and in 1877 of the Spanish Academy.

He was such an admired figure in the United States during his life that his 70th birthday in 1877 took on the air of a national holiday, with parades, speeches, and the reading of his poetry.

He had become an American celebrity and was also popular in Europe. It was reported that 10,000 copies of The Courtship of Miles Standish sold in London in a single day.

Children adored him and, when the "spreading chestnut-tree" mentioned in the poem "The Village Blacksmith" was cut down, the children of Cambridge had the tree converted into an armchair which they presented to the poet.

A commmemorative marble bust of Longfellow was unveiled in Poets' Corner, Westminster Abbey in London, in 1884. He remains the only American poet represented with a bust.

His poem "My Lost Youth" was included in the Oxford Book of English Verse, 1250-1900.

More recently, he was honored in March 2007 when the United States Postal Service made a stamp commemorating him.

During his courtship of Fanny Appleton, Longfellow frequently walked from Cambridge to the Appleton home in Beacon Hill in Boston by crossing the Boston Bridge. That bridge was replaced in 1906 by a new bridge, which was later renamed the Longfellow Bridge.

A number of schools are named after him in various states as well.

In popular culture

Neil Diamond's 1974 hit song, "Longfellow Serenade", is a reference to the poet.

Longfellow is a protagonist in Matthew Pearl's murder mystery The Dante Club (2003).

Publications

Poetry

• Voices of the Night. Cambridge, MA: John Owen, 1839.
• Poems on Slavery. Cambridge, MA: John Owen, 1842.
• Ballads, and other poems. Cambridge, MA.: John Owen, 1842.
• The Belfry of Bruges, and other poems. Cambridge, MA: John Owen, 1845.
• Evangeline, A tale of Acadie. Boston: William D. Ticknor, 1847; London: Kent & Richards, 1848.
• Kavanagh, A Tale. Boston: Ticknor, Reed & Fields, 1849.
• The Seaside and the Fireside. Liverpool: John Walker / London: David Bogue; Hamilton, Adams; John Johnstone / Edinburgh: Oliver & Boyd; John Johnstone / Dublin: J. M'Glashan, 1849; Boston: Ticknor, Reed & Fields, 1850.
• Voices of the Night, and other poems. Boston: Ticknor & Fields, 1852. (includes Voices of the Night, Poems on slavery, and The Seaside and the Fireside)
• The Song of Hiawatha. London: David Bogue, 1855; Boston: Ticknor & Fields, 1855.
• Poems. (2 volumes), Boston: Ticknor & Fields, 1857.
• The Courtship of Miles Standish and other poems. London: Kent, 1858; Boston: Ticknor & Fields, 1858.
• Tales of a Wayside Inn. London: Routledge, Warne & Routledge, 1863; Boston: Ticknor & Fields, 1863
• Flower-de-Luce. London: Routledge & Sons, 1867; Boston: Ticknor & Fields, 1867.
• The New England Tragedies (I. John Endicott. II. Giles Corey of the Salem Farms). Boston: Ticknor & Fields, 1868; London: Routledge, 1868
• The Divine Tragedy. Boston: Osgood, 1871
• Christus: A ,ystery. (3 volumes), Boston: Osgood, 1872. (includes The Divine Tragedy, The Golden Legend, and The New England Tragedies).
• Three Books of Song. Boston: Osgood, 1872; London: Routledge, 1872.
• Aftermath. Boston: Osgood, 1873; London: Routledge, 1873.
• The Hanging of the Crane. Boston: Osgood, 1874; London: Routledge, 1874.
• The Masque of Pandora, and other poems. Boston: Osgood, 1875; London: Routledge, 1875.
• Kéramos, and other poems. Boston: Houghton, Osgood, 1878; London: Routledge, 1878.
• Early Poems (edited by Richard Herne Shepherd). London: Pickering, 1878.
• Ultima Thule. London: Routledge, 1880; Boston: Houghton, Mifflin, 1880.
• In the Harbor: Ultima Thule, Part II. Boston: Houghton, Mifflin, 1882; London: Routledge, 1882.
• Michael Angelo. Boston: Houghton, Mifflin, 1883; London: Routledge, 1883.
• Complete Poetical Works, Cambridge Edition (edited by Horace E. Scudder). Boston: Houghton, Mifflin, 1893.
  • also published as Poetical Works (with introduction by George Monteiro). Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1975.

Plays

• The Spanish Student: A play, in three acts. Cambridge, MA: John Owen, 1843.
• The Golden Legend. Boston: Ticknor, Reed & Fields, 1851; London: David Bogue, 1851

Novel

• Hyperion: A romance. New York: Samuel Colman, 1839; revised edition, Boston: Fields, Osgood, 1869.

Non-fiction

• Outre-Mer; A pilgrimage beyond the sea (2 volumes). Volume 1, Boston: Hilliard, Gray, 1833; Volume 2, Boston: Lilly, Wait, 1834. Enlarged edition, New York: Harper, 1835; London: Bentley, 1835.

Collected editions

• Prose Works. (2 volumes), Boston: Ticknor & Fields, 1857.
• Writings (edited by Horace E. Scudder). (11 volumes), Boston: Houghton, Mifflin (Riverside Edition), 1886).
  • also printed in Standard Library Edition with Life, by Samuel Longfellow. (14 volumes), Boston: Houghton, Mifflin, 1891.

Translated

• Charles Francois Lhomond, Elements of French Grammar and French Exercises. Portland, ME: Samuel Colman / Brunswick, NJ: Griffin's Press, 1830.
• Coplas de Don Jorge Manrique. Boston: Allen & Ticknor, 1833.
• The Divine Comedy of Dante Alighieri. (3 volumes), Boston: Ticknor & Fields, 1865-1867; revised, 1867. London: Routledge, 1867.

Edited

• Manuel de Proverbes Dramatiques. Portland, ME: Samuel Colman / Brunswick, NJ: Griffin's Press, 1830.
• Novelas Españolas: El Serrano de las Alpujarras; y el Cuadro Misterioso. Portland, ME: Samuel Colman / Brunswick, NJ: Griffin's Press, 1830.
• Oliver Goldsmith, Le Ministre de Wakefield (translated by T.F.G. Hennequin, edited by Longfellow). Boston: Gray & Bowen, 1831.
• Syllabus de la Grammaire Italienne. Boston: Gray & Bowen, 1832.
• Saggi de' Novellieri Italiani d'Ogni Secolo. Boston: Gray & Bowen, 1832.
• The Waif: A Collection of Poems. Cambridge, MA: John Owen, 1845.
• The Poets and Poetry of Europe. Philadelphia: Carey & Hart, 1845. Revised and enlarged, Philadelphia: Porter & Coates, 1871.
• The Estray: A Collection of Poems. Boston: Ticknor, 1846.
• Poems of Places. Volumes 1-19 Boston: Osgood, 1876-1877; Volumes 20-31, Boston: Houghton, Osgood, 1878-1879.

Except where noted, bibliographical information courtesy the Poetry Foundation.

Poems by Longfellow

"Paul Revere's Ride" by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

The Arrow and the Song by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow - Poems for Kids, FreeSchool

"The Children's Hour" poem by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807–1882)

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow "The Day is Done" Poem animation-0

1. Christmas Bells
2. A Psalm of Life

See also

• The Fireside poets
• List of U.S. poets
• Translators of Dante

References

• Arvin, Newton. Longfellow: His Life and Work. Boston: Little, Brown, 1963.
• Bayless, Joy. Rufus Wilmot Griswold: Poe's Literary Executor. Nashville: Vanderbilt University Press, 1943.
• Brooks, Van Wyck. The Flowering of New England. New York: E. P. Dutton and Company, Inc., 1952.
• Calhoun, Charles C. Longfellow: A Rediscovered Life. Boston: Beacon Press, 2004.
•  Davidson, Thomas A. (1911). "Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth". In Chisholm, Hugh. Encyclopædia Britannica. 16 (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. pp. 977-980. . Wikisource, Web, May 30, 2022.
• Gioia, Dana. "Longfellow in the Aftermath of Modernism". The Columbia History of American Poetry, edited by Jay Parini. Columbia University Press, 1993.
• Irmscher, Christoph. Longfellow Redux. University of Illinois, 2006.
• McFarland, Philip. Hawthorne in Concord. New York: Grove Press, 2004.
• Silverman, Kenneth. Edgar A. Poe: Mournful and Never-ending Remembrance. New York: Harper Perennial, 1991.
• Thompson, Lawrance. Young Longfellow (1807-1843). New York: Macmillan, 1938.
• Wagenknecht, Edward. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow: Portrait of an American Humanist. New York: Oxford University Press, 1966.
• Williams, Cecil B. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. New York: Twayne, 1964.
• Sullivan, Wilson. New England Men of Letters. New York: Macmillan, 1972.

External links

Poems

• "My Lost Youth"
• "Possibilities"
• 8 poems by Longfellow: "Midnight Mass for the Dying Year," "Autumn," "Haunted Houses," "It Is Not Always May," "The Harvest Moon," "Snow-flakes," "Afternoon in February," "Christmas Bells"
• Henry Wadsworth Longfellow profile & 17 poems at the Academy of American Poets
• Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth (1807-1882) (35 poems) at Representative Poetry Online
• Henry Wadsworth Longfellow 1807-1882 at the Poetry Foundation
• Hanry Wadsworth Longfellow at PoemHunter (532 poems)

Audio / video

• Henry Wadsworth Longfellow at YouTube
• Henry Wadsworth Longfellow on LibriVox.
• Audio - Hear the Village Blacksmith

Books

• Complete Poetical Works
• Works by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow at Project Gutenberg - Plain text and HTML
• Works by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow at Internet Archive - Scanned books, many illustrated and original editions
• Longfellow's Translation of Dante rendered side by side with that of Cary and Norton
• Henry Wadsworth Longfellow at Amazon.com

About

• Henry Wadsworth Longfellow at NNDB
• Henry Wadsworth Longfellow Biography - Auburn University
• Maine Historical Society Searchable poem text database, biographical data, lesson plans
• Public Poet, Private Man: Henry Wadsworth Longfellow at 200 Online exhibition featuring material from the collection of Longfellow's papers at the Houghton Library
• "Longfellow's poems" by Edgar Allan Poe & Thomas Dunn English
• Longfellow National Historic Site in Cambridge, Massachusetts
• Wadsworth-Longfellow House in Portland, Maine

 This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain, the 1911 Edition of the Encyclopædia Britannica.. Original article is at Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth