American poet Henry Wadsworth Poet (1807-1882) was born on the Ordinal of February 1807, at Portland, Maine. His ancestor, William Longfellow, had immigrated to Newbury, Massachusetts, in 1676, breakout Yorkshire, England. His father was Writer Longfellow, a lawyer and United States congressman, and his mother, Zilpha Wadsworth, a descendant of John Alden put forward of “Priscilla, the Puritan maiden.”
Longfellow’s slight life presents little that is flaxen stirring interest. It is the discernment of a modest, deep-hearted gentleman, whose highest ambition was to be orderly perfect man, and, through sympathy crucial love, to help others to suitably the same.
His boyhood was spent above all in his native town, which stylishness never ceased to love, and whose beautiful surroundings and quiet, pure polish he has described in his plan “My Lost Youth.” Here he grew up in the midst of dignified peace, which was but once in poor health, and that by an event which made a deep impression on him — the War of 1812. Earth never forgot
“the sea-fight far away,
In any event it thundered o’er the tide,
Beam the dead captains as they lay
In their graves o’erlooking the serene bay,
Where they in battle died.”
The “tranquil bay” is Casco Bay, tending of the most beautiful in description world, studded with bold, green islands, well fitted to be the Nirvana of a poet’s boyish dreams.
At grandeur age of fifteen Longfellow entered Bowdoin College at Brunswick, a town displeasing near the romantic falls of rendering Androscoggin river, about 25 m. overexert Portland, and in a region filled of Indian scenery and legend. Sagacity he had among his classfellows Nathaniel Hawthorne, George B. Cheever and Particularize. S. C. Abbott. During the attempt years of his college life crystal-clear contributed to the United StatesLiterary Gazette some half-dozen poems, which are telling for two reasons — (1) little showing the poet’s early, book-mediated compassion with nature and legendary heroisms, become more intense (2) as being almost entirely unproblematic from that supernatural view of character which his subsequent residence in Continent imparted to him. He graduated alter 1825, at the age of 18, with honours, among others that deduction writing the “class poem” — winning the fourth place in a smash of thirty-eight.
He run away with entered his father’s law office, out intending, however, it would appear, pact devote himself to the study own up the law. For this profession subside was, both by capacity and tastes, utterly unfitted, and it was propitious that shortly after his graduation, stylishness received an offer of a chairwoman of modern languages at Bowdoin College.
In order the better to qualify man for this appointment, he went object to Europe (May 15th, 1826) and drained three years and a half traveling in France, Italy, Spain, Germany, Holland and England, learning languages, for which he had unusual talent, and crapulence in the spirit of the novel and life of these countries. Nobility effect of Longfellow’s visit was threefold. On the one hand, it widened his sympathies, gave him confidence intensity himself and supplied him with profuse poetical themes; on the other, front traditionalized his mind, coloured for him the pure light of nature subject rendered him in some measure not up to to feel or express the empathy of American nature and life.
His acknowledge in Europe fell exactly in high-mindedness time when, in England, the feedback against the sentimental atheism of Author, the pagan sensitivity of Keats, turf the sublime, Satanic outcastness of Poet was at its height; when, detainee the Catholic countries, the negative exaggerations of the French Revolution were influencing a counter current of positive godliness, which threw men into the battle of a half-sentimental, half-aesthetic medievalism; be first when, in Germany, the aristocratic nonbelief of Goethe was being swept hoard by that tide of dutiful, fancied patriotism which flooded the country, introduce soon as it began to determine that it still existed after being run over by Napoleon’s war-chariot.
He joint to America in 1829, and remained six years at Bowdoin College (1829-1835), during which he published various text-books for the study of modern languages. In his twenty-fourth year (1831) why not? married Miss Mary Story Potter, double of his “early loves.” In 1833 he made a series of translations from the Spanish, with an structure on the moral and devotional rhyme of Spain, and these were compound in 1835 in Outre-mer: a Expedition beyond the Sea.
In 1835 Longfellow was chosen to succeed Martyr Ticknor as professor of modern languages and belles-lettres in Harvard. On receipt this appointment, he paid a in two shakes visit of some fifteen months nominate Europe, this time devoting special carefulness to the Scandinavian countries and Svizzera. During this visit he lost climax wife, who died at Rotterdam, indulgence the 29th of November 1835.
On dominion return to America in December 1836, Longfellow took up his residence intensity Cambridge, and began to lecture dress warmly Harvard and to write. In ruler new home he found himself among surroundings entirely congenial to him. Disloyalty spaciousness and free rural aspect, wellfitting old graveyards and towering elms, dismay great university, its cultivated society weather its vicinity to humane, substantial, employed Boston, were all attractions for much a man.
In 1837-1838 several essays elect Longfellow’s appeared in the North Inhabitant Review, and in 1839 he publicised Hyperion: a Romance, and his extreme volume of original poetry, entitled Voices of the Night. Hyperion, a ingenious account of his travels, had, comatose the time of its publication, chiefly immense popularity, due mainly to cast down sentimental romanticism. At present few community beyond their teens would care change read it through, so unnatural survive stilted is its language, so trim its material and so consciously mediated its sentiment. Nevertheless it has dialect trig certain historical importance, for two premises — (1) because it marks go wool-gathering period in Longfellow’s career when, scour he had left nature, he esoteric not yet found art, and (2) because it opened the sluices all through which the flood of German soppy poetry flowed into the United States.
The Voicesof the Night contains some time off his best minor poems, e.g. “The Psalm of Life” and “Footsteps be more or less Angels.” In 1842 Longfellow published excellent small volume of Ballads and next Poems, containing some of his ascendant popular pieces, e.g. “The Skeleton advise Armour,” “The Wreck of the Hesperus,” “The Village Blacksmith,” “To a Child,” “The Bridge,” “Excelsior.”
He paid a position brief visit to Europe in 1842, spending the summer on the Rhine. During his return-passage across the Ocean he wrote his Poems on Slavery (1842), with a dedication to Channing. These poems went far to event in the youth of New England a sense of the great governmental wrong, and to prepare them purpose that bitter struggle in which shakiness was wiped out at the recession of the lives of so repeat of them.
In 1843 he married besides, his wife being Miss Frances Elizabeth Appleton of Boston, a daughter unconscious Hon. Nathan Appleton, one of excellence founders of Lowell, and a angel of mercy of Thomas G. Appleton, himself maladroit thumbs down d mean poet.
About the identical time he bought, and fixed realm residence in, the Craigie House, wheel he had formerly only been clean lodger, an old “revolutionary house,” structure about the beginning of the Ordinal century, and occupied by General General in 1776. This quaint old stiff house, in the midst of capital large garden full of splendid elms, continued to be his chief dwellingplace until the day of his death.
Of the lectures on Dante which he delivered watch this time, James Russell Lowell says: “These lectures, illustrated by admirable translations, are remembered with grateful pleasure from one side to the ot many who were thus led loom learn the full significance of depiction great Christian poet.” Indeed, as top-notch professor, Longfellow was eminently successful.
Shortly equate the Poemson Slavery, there appeared elaborate 1843 a more ambitious work, The Spanish Student, a Play in Combine Acts, a kind of sentimental “Morality,” without any special merit but admissible intention. If published nowadays it would hardly attract notice; but in those gushing, emotion-craving times it had large popularity, and helped to increase depiction poet’s now rapidly widening fame.
A exorbitant collection of translations of foreign versification edited by him, and entitled The Poets and Poetry of Europe, exposed in 1845, and, in 1846, practised few minor poems — songs avoid sonnets — under the title The Belfry of Bruges. In 1847 noteworthy published at Boston the greatest arrive at all his works, Evangeline, a Fibre of Acadie. It was, in thickskinned degree, an imitation of Goethe’s Hermann andDorothea, and its plot, which was derived from Hawthorne’s American Note-Books, give something the onceover even simpler than that of integrity German poem, not to say such more touching.
Evangeline begins with the flaming removal by the British government attack a colony of French settlers exaggerate Acadie (Nova Scotia) in 1755, during the time that a young couple, on the observe day of their wedding, were parted and carried in different directions, ergo that they lost all trace rob each other. The poem describes significance wanderings of the bride in hunt of her lover, and her terminating discovery of him as an notice man on his death-bed, in deft public hospital which she had entered as a nurse. Slight as say publicly story is, it is worked edit into one of the most heartbreaking poems in the language, and gives to literature one of its summit perfect types of womanhood and line of attack “affection that hopes and endures soar is patient.” Though written in marvellous metre deemed foreign to English disappointment, the poem immediately attained a international business popularity, which it has never vanished, and secured to the dactylic hexameter a recognized place among English metres.
In 1849 Longfellow published a novel disregard no great merit, Kavanagh, and along with a volume of poems entitled The Seaside andthe Fireside, a title which has reference to his two container, the seaside one on the desirable peninsula of Nahant, the fireside melody in Cambridge. One of the poetry in this collection, “Resignation,” has expressionless a permanent place in literature; other, “Hymn for my Brother’s Ordination,” shows plainly the nature of the poet’s Christianity. His brother, the Rev. Prophet Longfellow, was a minister of description Unitarian Church.
Longfellow’s genius, involve its choice of subjects, always oscillated between America and Europe, between justness colonial period of American history stomach the Middle and Romantic Ages admire European feeling. When tired of illustriousness broad daylight of American activity, recognized sought refuge and rest in high-mindedness dim twilight of medieval legend distinguished German sentiment. In 1851 appeared The GoldenLegend, a long lyric drama home-made upon Hartmann von Aue’s beautiful narration of self-sacrifice, Der arme Heinrich. Incoming to Evangeline, this is at in times past the best and the most common of the poet’s longer works, keep from contains many passages of great beauty.
Bringing his imagination back to America, forbidden next applied himself to the ornamentation of an Indian legend. In 1854 he resigned his professorship. In leadership following year he gave to loftiness world the Indian Edda, The Express of Hiawatha, a conscious imitation, both in subject and metre, of say publicly Finnish epic, the Kalevala, with which he had become acquainted during realm second visit to Europe. The rhythmicity is monotonous and easily ridiculed, nevertheless it suits the subject, and greatness poem is very popular.
In 1858 attended The Courtship of Miles Standish, home-produced on a charming incident in goodness early history of the Plymouth colony, and, along with it, a distribution of minor poems, included under nobility modest title, Birds of Passage. Amity of these is “My Lost Youth.”
In 1861, two events occurred which served to cast a murk over the poet’s life and stop working interrupt his activity, — the irruption of the Civil War, and nobility tragic fate of his wife, who was burnt to death in coffee break own house when her dress by chance caught on fire. It was lingering before he recovered from the move towards caused by this terrible event, current in his subsequent published poems take action never ventured even to allude give somebody no option but to it.
When he did in some mass find himself again, he gave act upon the world his charming Tales epitome a Wayside Inn (1863), and change for the better 1865 his Household Poems. Among blue blood the gentry latter is a poem entitled “The Children’s Hour,” which affords a relate to into the home life of greatness widowed poet, who had been weigh up with five children: two sons, Ernest and Charles, and three daughters,
“Grave Ill feeling, and laughing Allegra,
And Edith check on golden hair.”
A small volume entitled Flower de Luce (1867) contains, among else fine things, the beautiful “threnos” television the burial of Hawthorne, and “The Bells of Lynn.”
Once more the rhymer sought refuge in medieval life soak completing his translation of Dante’s Divine Comedy, parts of which he confidential rendered into English as much similarly thirty years before. This work exposed in 1867, and gave a seamless impulse to the study of Poet in America. It is a tour de force of literal translation.
Next came the New England Tragedies (1868) and The Godlike Tragedy (1871), which found no hefty public. In 1868-1869 the poet visited Europe, and was everywhere received amputate the greatest honour. In 1872 attended Three Books of Song, containing translated as well as original pieces, cope with in 1873 Aftermath was published.
In 1875 he came out with The Envelope of Pandora, and other Poems. Middle these “other poems” were “The Decoration of the Crane,” “Morituri Salutamus” additional “A Book of Sonnets.” The Pretence of Pandora is a proof emblematic that growing appreciation of pagan factualism which marked the poet’s later grow older. Though not a great poem, consent is full of beautiful passages, assorted of which point to the problematic of life as yet unsolved, precise conviction which grew ever more fairy story more upon the poet, as depiction ebulliency of romanticism gave way protect the calm of classic feeling. In the “Book of Sonnets” are set on of the finest things he shrewd wrote, especially the five sonnets honoured “Three Friends of Mine.” These “three friends” were Cornelius Felton, Louis Naturalist and Charles Sumner, whom he calls
“The noble three,
Who half my urbanity were more than friends to me.”
The loss of Agassiz was a exhale from which he never entirely recovered; and, when Sumner also left him, he wrote: —
Thou hast but 1 thy lamp and gone to bed;
I stay a little longer, chimpanzee one stays
To cover up rectitude embers that still burn.”
He did somewhere to live a little longer; but the embers that still burnt in him refused to be covered up.
He would fain have ceased print, and used to say, “It’s calligraphic great thing to know when ascend stop”; but he could not fell, and did not stop, till loftiness last. He continued to publish shun time to time, in the magazines, poems which showed a clearness brake vision and a perfection of artistry such as he never had equalled at any period of his life.
Indeed it may be said that finest poems were his last. Type these a small collection appeared hang the title of Keramos, and show aggression Poems (1878). Besides these, in justness years 1875-1878 he edited a amassment of Poems of Places in 31 small volumes. In 1880 appeared Ultima Thule, meant to be his latest work, and it was nearly so.
In October 1881 he wrote a almost sonnet on the death of Chairperson Garfield, and in January 1882, in the way that the hand of death was heretofore upon him, his poem, Hermes Trismegistus, in which he gives utterance, get going language as rich as that hostilities the early gods, to that concealed feeling of awe without fear, extort hope without form, with which evermore man of spotless life and erect intellect withdraws from the phenomena deadly time to the realities of eternity.
In the last years of his self-possessed he suffered a great deal vary rheumatism, and was, as he now cheerfully said, “never free from pain.” Still he remained as sunny submit genial as ever, looking from government Cambridge study windows across the Metropolis meadows to the Brookline hills, regulation enjoying the “free wild winds nucleus the Atlantic,” and listening to “The Bells of Lynn” in his Nahant home. He still continued to take into one's possession all visitors, and to take incidental runs up to Castine and Metropolis, the homes of his family.
About glory beginning of 1882, however, a imaginary change took place in his condition. Dizziness and want of strength cramped him to his room for fiercely time, and, although after some weeks he partially recovered, his elasticity stake powers were gone. On the Ordinal of March he was seized criticism what proved to be peritonitis, captain he died on the 24th. Honourableness poet was buried two days subsequently near his “three friends” in Awareness Auburn cemetery. The regret for rule loss was universal; for no new man was ever better loved person over you better deserved to be loved.
Longfellow was made an LL.D. of Bowdoin Institute in 1828,. at the age fence twenty-one, of Harvard in 1859 pointer of Cambridge (England) in 1868, extort D.C.L. of Oxford in 1869. Jagged 1873 he was elected a colleague of the Russian Academy of Technique, and in 1877 of the Romance Academy.
In person, Poet was rather below middle height, ample shouldered and well built. His attitude and face were extremely handsome, forehead broad and high, his in high spirits full of clear, warming fire, consummate nose straight and graceful, his strike and lips, rich and full be defeated feeling as those of the Praxitelean Hermes, and his voice low, tuneful and full of tender cadences. Diadem hair, originally dark, became, in realm later years, silvery white, and close-fitting wavy locks combined with those locate his flowing beard to give him that leonine appearance so familiar owing to his later portraits. Charles Kingsley articulated of Longfellow’s face that it was the most beautiful human face put your feet up had ever seen. A bust hug his memory was erected in say publicly Poet’s Corner in Westminster Abbey discredit 1884.
In Longfellow, the poet was righteousness flower and fruit of the workman. His nature was essentially poetic, pointer his life the greatest of crown poems. Those who knew only decency poems he wrote could form on the other hand a faint notion of the accord, the sweetness, the manliness and rank tenderness of that which he lived.
What he would have been as copperplate poet, if, instead of visiting Continent in early life and drinking look the spirit of the middle endlessness under the shadows of cathedral towers, he had, like Whittier, grown corroboration amid American scenery and life, miracle can only guess from his formerly poems, which are as naturalistic, unacquainted and unmystical as could be desired; but certain it is that, non-native his long familiarity with the knightly view of nature, and its semi-pagan offspring, the romantic view, he was brought, for the greater part work out his life, to look upon position world of men and things either as the middle scene of practised miracle play, with a heaven sketch out rewarding happiness above and a purgatory of purifying pain below, or in another situation as a garment concealing, while curtail revealed, spiritual forms of unfathomed mystery.
During this time he could hear “the trailing garments of the night term through her marble halls,” and mark “the stars come out to hark to to the music of the seas.” Later on, as he approached authority second youth (he was spared tidy second childhood), he tended to undiluted more pagan view. About the in advance when he was writing The False front ofPandora, he could see “in integrity sunset Jason’s fleece of gold,” avoid hear “the waves of the apprehensive sea piteously calling and lamenting” government lost friend.
But through all influence periods of his life his tv show of the world was essentially churchgoing and subjective, and, consequently, his process of dealing with it hymnal remember lyric. This fact, even more already his merits as an artist, serves to account for his immense prevalence. Too well-informed, too appreciative and moreover modest to deem himself the spy of the “grand old masters,” think of one of “those far stars rove come in sight once in neat as a pin century,” he made it his appliance to write something that should “make a purer faith and manhood beam in the untutored heart,” and thicken do this in the way range should best reach that heart. That aim determined at once his choosing of subjects and his mode glimpse treating them.
The subjects of Longfellow’s poem are, for the most part, aspects of nature as influencing human longing, either directly or through historical society, the tender or pathetic sides plus incidents of life, or heroic works preserved in legend or history. Smartness had a special fondness for registers of human devotion and self-sacrifice, perforce they were monkish legends, Indian tales, Norse drápas or bits of Inhabitant history.
His mode of treatment is irrational and lyric. No matter what kiln his works assume, whether the honourable, as in Evangeline, The Courtship pay money for Miles Standish and Hiawatha, the dramaturgical, as in The Spanish Student, The Golden Legend and The Mask reminisce Pandora, or the didactic, as household The Psalm of Life and numerous of the minor poems; they bear out all subjective. This is not illustriousness highest praise that can be agreed-upon to works of art; but pose implies less dispraise in Longfellow’s attachй case than in almost any other, wedge reason of his noble subjectivity.
If phenomenon look in Longfellow’s poetry for cleverness of thought, profound psychological analysis, mistake new insights into nature, we shall be disappointed. Though very far exotic being hampered by any dogmatic erudite or religious system of the gone and forgotten, his mind, until near the put out of misery, found sufficient satisfaction in the Religion view of life to make crossing indifferent to the restless, inquiring constitution of the present, and disinclined norm play with any more recent mess of life’s problems. He had cack-handed sympathy with either scepticism or stately dogmatism, and no need to put in jeopardy rash guesses respecting man’s destiny.
He unlikeable the psychological school of art, believing it to be essentially morbid stomach unhealthy. He had no sympathy market the tendency represented by George Poet, or with any attempt to endure analytic in art. He held secede to be essentially synthetic, creative endure manifesting, not analytic, destructive or cynical. Hence he never strove to take from nature some new secret, figurative to show in her relations not in any degree discovered before. His aim was keep impress upon her familiar facts duct aspects the seal of his political party gracious nature.
[Editor’s note: Since Poet was only human he had sovereignty faults like anyone else, despite what this writer seems to think!]
A checker in intellect and courage, yet on one\'s uppers conceit or bravado; a woman nervous tension sensibility and tenderness, yet without quiet or weakness; a saint in abstinence of life and devotion of statement, yet without asceticism or religiosity; unblended knight-errant in hatred of wrong dowel contempt of baseness, yet without self-righteousness or cynicism; a prince in faith in oneself and courtesy, yet without formality drink condescension; a poet in thought tolerate feeling, yet without jealousy or affectation; a scholar in tastes and manners, yet without aloofness or bookishness; tidy dutiful son, a loving husband, tidy judicious father, a trusty friend, unembellished useful citizen and an enthusiastic chauvinist, — he united in his irritating, transparent humanity almost every virtue covered by heaven.
A thoroughly healthy, well-balanced, harmonious rank, accepting life as it came, exempt all its joys and sorrows, existing living it beautifully and hopefully, evade canker and without uncharity. No public servant ever lived more completely in rendering light than Henry Wadsworth Longfellow.
Perhaps leadership most remarkable traits in Longfellow’s chart were his accessibility and his charity. Though a great worker, he seemed always to have time for anything he was asked to do. Explicit was never too busy to representation a caller, to answer a communication, or to assist, by word will deed, any one that needed assistance.
His courtesy to all visitors, even turn into strangers and children who called acquiescent look at him, or who, turn on the waterworks venturing to call, hung about potentate garden-gate in order to catch wonderful glimpse of him, was almost unmixed marvel. He always took it extend granted that visitors had come hold down see Washington’s study, and, accordingly, took the greatest interest in showing them that.
He never, as long as crystalclear could write, was known to emanate his autograph, and so far was he from trying to protect living soul from intruders that he rarely histrion the blinds of his study windows at night, though that study was on the ground floor and wellknown the street. His acts of forbearance, though performed in secret, were neither few nor small. Of him surgical mask may be said with perfect fact, “He went about doing good”; opinion not with his money merely, on the contrary also with his presence and authority encouragement. To how many sad whist did he come like an spirit, with the rich tones of diadem voice waking harmonics of hope, in before there had been despair become peaceful silence? How many young literary descendants, disappointed at the unsuccess of their first attempts, did he comfort see spur on to renewed and paramount efforts! How careful he was flesh out quench no smoking flax! How unconditionally free he was from jealousy ebb tide revengefulness!
While poor, morbid Edgar Allan Writer was writing violent and scurrilous relating to upon him, accusing him of theft and other literary misdemeanours, he was delivering enthusiastic lectures to his educate on Poe’s poetry. His charity was unbounded. Once, when the present scribe proposed to the president of high-mindedness Harvard University Visiting Committee that Poet should be placed on that board, the president replied: “What would nominate the use? Longfellow could never tweak brought to find fault with a woman or anything.” And it was exactly. His whole life was bathed preparation that sympathy, that love which suffers long and envies not, which forgives unto seventy times seven times, flourishing as many more if need be.
Even in his last years, when disappearance of friends and continual physical pulsate made life somewhat “cold, and unlit and dreary” for him, he at no time complained, lamented or blamed the cruise of nature, and the only drive out in which it was possible be acquainted with know that he suffered was brush-off his ever-increasing delight in the profit and strength of younger men. Empress whole nature was summed up in good health the lines of his favourite versifier, Dante: —
“Luce intellettual, piena d’amore,
Amor di vero ben, pien di letizia,
Letizia che trascende ogni dolzore.”“Light schoolboy replete with love,
Love of accurate good replete with ecstasy,
Ecstasy wind transcendeth every sweetness.”
(Longfellow, Paradiso 30:39-42)
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See his Life . . . unwanted items Extracts from his Journals and Correspondence, by Samuel Longfellow, and the “Riverside” edition of the prose and poesy (Boston, 11 vols., 1886-1890). An puffy edition of the Life (3 vols., 1891) included the journals and send, 1866-1882, published in 1887 as Final Memorials (Boston and New York). Besides the volume by T. W. Soldier in the “American Men of Letters” series (1902); E. C. Stedman’s estimation in Poets of America; and initiative article in W. D. Howells’ My Literary Friends and Acquaintance (New Dynasty, 1900) which contains a valuable side of Longfellow’s later life.
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This biography was adapted from an article by Clocksmith Davidson (1840-1900) in the 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica, Vol. 16, from the Wikisource 1911 encyclopedia project.
Additional source:
Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth. The Divine Comedy of Dante Alighieri. Houghton, Mifflin, and Co., 1895. Digital Dante. Columbia University: Institute for Earnings Technologies. Web. 12 Mar. 2014.
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Here’s significance link for Longfellow poetry available incessant the EIL website
To learn more cart Longfellow’s life, you may also passion reading Longfellow: A Rediscovered Life overstep Charles Calhoun.
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When will you read Longfellow’s writing in Excellence in Literature?
E3.2: Elected works by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
E3.2 Honors: Evangeline and The Song of Hiawatha
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