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Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (27 February 1807 – 24 March 1882)
Henry Wadsworth was an American poet and educator whose works include
"Paul Revere's Ride", The Song of Hiawatha, and Evangeline. He was also the
first American to translate Dante Alighieri's The Divine Comedy and was one
of the five Fireside Poets.
Longfellow was born in Portland, Maine, then part of Massachusetts, and
studied at Bowdoin College. After spending time in Europe he became a
professor at Bowdoin and, later, at Harvard College. His first major poetry
collections were Voices of the Night (1839) and Ballads and Other Poems
(1841). Longfellow retired from teaching in 1854 to focus on his writing,
living the remainder of his life in Cambridge, Massachusetts, in a former
headquarters of George Washington. His first wife, Mary Potter, died in 1835
after a miscarriage. His second wife, Frances Appleton, died in 1861 after
sustaining burns from her dress catching fire. After her death, Longfellow
had difficulty writing poetry for a time and focused on his translation. He died
in 1882.
Longfellow 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.
Life and Work
Early Life and Education
Longfellow was born on February 27, 1807, to Stephen Longfellow and Zilpah
(Wadsworth) Longfellow in Portland, Maine, then a district of Massachusetts,
and he grew up in what is now known as the Wadsworth-Longfellow House.
His father was a lawyer, and his maternal grandfather, Peleg Wadsworth,
was a general in the American Revolutionary War and a Member of Congress.
He was named after his mother's brother Henry Wadsworth, a Navy
lieutenant who died only three years earlier at the Battle of Tripoli. Young
Longfellow was the second of eight children; his siblings were Stephen
(1805), Elizabeth (1808), Anne (1810), Alexander (1814), Mary (1816),
Ellen (1818), and Samuel (1819).
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow was enrolled in a dame school at the age of
three and by age six 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. He printed
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his first poem – a patriotic and historical four stanza poem called "The Battle
of Lovell's Pond" – in the Portland Gazette on November 17, 1820. He stayed
at the Portland Academy until the age of fourteen. He spent much of his
summers as a child at his grandfather Peleg's farm in the western Maine
town of Hiram.
In the fall of 1822, the 15-year old Longfellow enrolled at Bowdoin College in
Brunswick, Maine, alongside his brother Stephen. His grandfather was a
founder of the college and his father was a trustee. There, Longfellow met
Nathaniel Hawthorne, who would later become his lifelong friend. He boarded
with a clergyman for a time before rooming on the third floor of what is now
Maine Hall in 1823. 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. When Longfellow graduated from Bowdoin, he was ranked fourth in
the class, and had been elected to Phi Beta Kappa. He gave the student
commencement address.
European Tours and Professorships
After graduating in 1825, he was offered a job as professor of modern
languages at his alma mater. The story, possibly apocryphal, is that an
influential trustee, Benjamin Orr, had been so impressed by Longfellow's
translation of Horace that he was hired under the condition that he travel to
Europe to study French, Spanish, and Italian. Whatever the motivation, he
began his tour of Europe in May 1826 aboard the ship Cadmus. His time
abroad would last three years and cost his father $2,604.24. He traveled to
France, Spain, Italy, Germany, back to France, then England before returning
to the United States in mid-August 1829. While overseas, he learned French,
Spanish, Portuguese, and German, mostly without formal instruction. In
Madrid, he spent time with Washington
Irving and was particularly impressed by the author's work ethic. Irving
encouraged the young Longfellow to pursue writing. While in Spain,
Longfellow was saddened to learn his favorite sister, Elizabeth, had died of
tuberculosis at the age of 20 that May while he was abroad.
On August 27, 1829, he wrote to the president of Bowdoin that he was
turning down the professorship because he considered the $600 salary
"disproportionate to the duties required". The trustees raised his salary to
$800 with an additional $100 to serve as the college's librarian, a post which
required one hour of work per day. During his years teaching at the college,
he translated textbooks in French, Italian, and Spanish; his first published
book was in 1833, a translation of the poetry of medieval Spanish poet Jorge Manrique.
He also published a travel book, Outre-Mer: A Pilgrimage Beyond the Sea,
first published in serial form before a book edition was released in 1835.
Shortly after the book's publication, Longfellow attempted to join the literary
circle in New York and asked George Pope Morris for an editorial role at one
of Morris's publications.
Longfellow considered moving to New York after New York University
considered offering him a newly-created professorship of modern languages,
though there would be no salary. The professorship was not created and
Longfellow agreed to continue teaching at Bowdoin. It may have been joyless
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work. 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".
On September 14, 1831, Longfellow married Mary Storer Potter, a childhood
friend from Portland. The couple settled in Brunswick, though the two were
not happy there. Longfellow published several nonfiction and fiction prose
pieces inspired by Irving, including "The Indian Summer" and "The Bald
Eagle" in 1833.
In December 1834, Longfellow received a letter from Josiah Quincy III,
president of Harvard College, offering him the Smith Professorship of Modern
Languages position with the stipulation that he spend a year or so abroad.
There, he further studied German as well as Dutch, Danish, Swedish, Finnish,
and Icelandic. In October 1835, during the trip, his wife Mary had a
miscarriage about six months into her pregnancy. She did not recover and
died after several weeks of illness at the age of 22 on November 29, 1835.
Longfellow had her body embalmed immediately and placed into a lead coffin
inside an oak coffin which was then shipped to Mount Auburn Cemetery near
Boston. He was deeply saddened by her death, writing "One thought
occupies me night and day... She is dead—She is dead! All day I am weary
and sad". Three years later, he was inspired to write the poem "Footsteps of
Angels" about her. Several years later, he wrote the poem "Mezzo Cammin"
expressed his personal struggles in his middle years.
When he returned to the United States in 1836, Longfellow took up the
professorship at Harvard. He was required to live in Cambridge to be close to
the campus and rented rooms at the Craigie House in the spring of 1837,
now preserved as the Longfellow House–Washington's Headquarters National
Historic Site. The home, built in 1759, had once been the headquarters of
George Washington during the Siege of Boston beginning in July 1775.
Previous boarders also included Jared Sparks, Edward Everett, and Joseph
Emerson Worcester. Longfellow began publishing his poetry, including the
collection Voices of the Night in 1839. The bulk of Voices of the Night,
Longfellow's debut book of poetry, was translations though he also included
nine original poems and seven poems he had written as a teenager. Ballads
and Other Poems was published shortly thereafter in 1841 and included "The
Village Blacksmith" and "The Wreck of the Hesperus", which were instantly
popular. 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."
Courtship of Frances Appleton
Longfellow began courting Frances "Fanny" Appleton, the daughter of a
wealthy Boston industrialist, Nathan Appleton and sister of Thomas Gold
Appleton. At first, she was not interested but Longfellow was determined. In
July 1839, he wrote to a friend: "[V]ictory hangs doubtful. The lady says she
will not! I say she shall! It is not pride, but the madness of passion". His
friend George Stillman Hillard encouraged Longfellow in the pursuit: "I
delight to see you keeping up so stout a heart for the resolve to conquer is
half the battle in love as well as war". During the courtship, 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.
During his courtship, Longfellow continued writing and, in late 1839,
published Hyperion, a book in prose inspired by his trips abroad and his
unsuccessful courtship of Fanny Appleton. Amidst this, Longfellow fell into
"periods of neurotic depression with moments of panic" and took a six-month
leave of absence from Harvard to attend a health spa in the former
Marienberg Benedictine Convent at Boppard in Germany. After returning,
Longfellow published a play in 1842, The Spanish Student, reflecting his
memories from his time in Spain in the 1820s. There was some confusion
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over its original manuscript. After being printed in Graham's Magazine, its
editor Rufus Wilmot Griswold saved the manuscript from the trash.
Longfellow was surprised to hear that it had been saved, unusual for a
printing office, and asked to borrow it so that he could revise it, forgetting to
return it to Griswold. The often vindictive Griswold wrote an angry letter in
response.
A small collection, Poems on Slavery, was published in 1842 as Longfellow's
first public support of abolitionism. However, as Longfellow himself wrote,
the poems were "so mild that even a Slaveholder might read them without
losing his appetite for breakfast". A critic for The Dial agreed, calling it "the
thinnest of all Mr. Longfellow's thin books; spirited and polished like its
forerunners; but the topic would warrant a deeper tone". The New England
Anti-Slavery Association, however, was satisfied with the collection enough
to reprint it for further distribution.
On May 10, 1843, after seven years, Longfellow received a letter from Fanny
Appleton agreeing to marry him and, too restless to take a carriage, walked
90 minutes to meet her at her house. They were married shortly thereafter.
Nathan Appleton bought the Craigie House as a wedding present to the pair.
Longfellow would live there for the remainder of his life. His love for Fanny is
evident in the following lines from Longfellow's only love poem, the sonnet
"The Evening Star", which he wrote in October 1845: "O my beloved, my
sweet Hesperus! My morning and my evening star of love!" He once attended
a ball without her and noted, "The lights seemed dimmer, the music sadder,
the flowers fewer, and the women less fair."
He and Fanny had six children: Charles Appleton (1844–1893), Ernest
Wadsworth (1845–1921), Fanny (1847–1848), Alice Mary (1850–1928),
Edith (1853–1915), and Anne Allegra (1855–1934). Their second-youngest
daughter, Edith, married Richard Henry Dana III, son of the popular writer
Richard Henry Dana, Jr., author of Two Years Before the Mast. When the
younger Fanny was born on April 7, 1847, Dr. Nathan Cooley Keep
administered ether as the first obstetric anesthetic in the United States to
Fanny Longfellow. A few months later, on November 1, 1847, the poem
"Evangeline" was published for the first time. His literary income was
increasing considerably: in 1840, he had made $219 from his work but the
year 1850 brought him $1,900.
On June 14, 1853, Longfellow held a farewell dinner party at his Cambridge
home for his friend Nathaniel Hawthorne, who was preparing to move
overseas. Shortly thereafter in 1854, Longfellow retired from Harvard,
devoting himself entirely to writing. He was awarded an honorary doctorate
of Laws from Harvard in 1859.
Death of Frances
On July 9, 1861, a hot day, Fanny was putting locks of her children's hair
into an envelope and attempting to seal it with hot sealing wax while
Longfellow took a nap. Her dress suddenly caught fire, though it is unclear
exactly how; it may have been burning wax or a lighted candle which fell on
her dress. Longfellow, awakened from his nap, rushed to help her and threw
a rug over her, though it was too small. He stifled the flames with his body
as best he could, but she was already badly burned. Over a half a century
later, Longfellow's youngest daughter Annie explained the story differently,
claiming that there was no candle or wax but that the fire started from a
self-lighting match that had fallen on the floor. In both versions of the story,
however, Fanny was taken to her room to recover and a doctor was called.
She was in and out of consciousness throughout the night and was
administered ether. The next morning, July 10, 1861, she died shortly after
10 o'clock after requesting a cup of coffee. Longfellow, in trying to save her,
had burned himself badly enough that he was unable to attend her funeral.
His facial injuries caused him to stop shaving, thereafter wearing the beard
which has become his trademark.
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
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begged "not to be sent to an asylum" and noted that he was "inwardly
bleeding to death". He expressed his grief in the sonnet "The Cross of Snow"
(1879), which he wrote eighteen years later to commemorate her death:
Such is the cross I wear upon my breast
These eighteen years, through all the changing scenes
And seasons, changeless since the day she died.
Later Life and Death
Longfellow spent several years translating Dante Alighieri's
Divine Comedy. To aid him in perfecting the translation and reviewing proofs,
he invited friends to weekly meetings every Wednesday starting in 1864. The
"Dante Club", as it was called, regularly included William Dean Howells,
James Russell Lowell, Charles Eliot Norton and other occasional guests. The
full three-volume translation was published in the spring of 1867, though
Longfellow would continue to revise it, and it went through four printings in
its first year. By 1868, Longfellow's annual income was over $48,000. In
1874, Samuel Cutler Ward helped him sell the poem "The Hanging of the
Crane" to the New York Ledger for $3,000; it was the highest price ever paid
for a poem.
During the 1860s, Longfellow supported abolitionism and especially hoped
for reconciliation between the northern and southern states after the
American Civil War. He wrote in his journal in 1878: "I have only one desire;
and that is for harmony, and a frank and honest understanding between
North and South". Longfellow, despite his aversion to public speaking,
accepted an offer from Joshua Chamberlain to speak at his fiftieth reunion at
Bowdoin College; he read the poem "Morituri Salutamus" so quietly that few
could hear him. The next year, 1876, he declined an offer to be nominated
for the Board of Overseers at Harvard "for reasons very conclusive to my
own mind".
On August 22, 1879, a female admirer traveled to Longfellow's house in
Cambridge and, unaware to whom she was speaking, asked Longfellow: "Is
this the house where Longfellow was born?" Longfellow told her it was not.
The visitor then asked if he had died here. "Not yet", he replied. In March
1882, Longfellow went to bed with severe stomach pain. He endured the pain
for several days with the help of opium before he died surrounded by family
on Friday, March 24, 1882. He had been suffering from peritonitis. At the
time of his death, his estate was worth an estimated $356,320. He is buried
with both of his wives at Mount Auburn Cemetery in Cambridge,
Massachusetts. His last few years were spent translating the poetry of
Michelangelo; though Longfellow never considered it complete enough to be
published during his lifetime, a posthumous edition was collected in 1883.
Scholars generally regard the work as autobiographical, reflecting the
translator as an aging artist facing his impending death.
Writing
Style
Though much of his work is categorized as lyric poetry, Longfellow
experimented with many forms, including hexameter and free verse. His
published poetry shows great versatility, using anapestic and trochaic forms,
blank verse, heroic couplets, ballads and sonnets. Typically, Longfellow
would carefully consider the subject of his poetic ideas for a long time before
deciding on the right metrical form for it. 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".
As a very private man, Longfellow did not often add autobiographical
elements to his poetry. Two notable exceptions are dedicated to the death of
members of his family. "Resignation", written as a response to the death of
his daughter Fanny in 1848, does not use first-person pronouns and is
instead a generalized poem of mourning. The death of his second wife
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Frances, as biographer Charles Calhoun wrote, deeply affected Longfellow
personally but "seemed not to touch his poetry, at least directly". His
memorial poem to her, a sonnet called "The Cross of Snow", was not
published in his lifetime.
Longfellow often used didacticism in his poetry, though he focused on it less
in his later years. Much of his poetry imparts cultural and moral values,
particularly focused on promoting life as being more than material pursuits.
Longfellow also often used allegory in his work. In "Nature", for example,
death is depicted as bedtime for a cranky child. Many of the metaphors he
used in his poetry as well as subject matter came from legends, mythology,
and literature. He was inspired, for example, by Norse mythology for "The
Skeleton in Armor" and by Finnish legends for The Song of Hiawatha. In fact,
Longfellow rarely wrote on current subjects and seemed detached from
contemporary American concerns. Even so, Longfellow, like many during this
period, called for the development of high quality American literature. In
Kavanagh, a character says:
We want a national literature commensurate with our mountains and rivers...
We want a national epic that shall correspond to the size of the country... We
want a national drama in which scope shall be given to our gigantic ideas and
to the unparalleled activity of our people... In a word, we want a national
literature altogether shaggy and unshorn, that shall shake the earth, like a
herd of buffaloes thundering over the prairies.
He was also important as a translator; his translation of Dante became a
required possession for those who wanted to be a part of high culture. He
also encouraged and supported other translators. In 1845, he published The
Poets and Poetry of Europe, an 800-page compilation of translations made by
other writers, including many by his friend and colleague Cornelius Conway
Felton. Longfellow intended the anthology "to bring together, into a compact
and convenient form, as large an amount as possible of those English
translations which are scattered through many volumes, and are not
accessible to the general reader". In honor of Longfellow's role with
translations, Harvard established the Longfellow Institute in 1994, dedicated
to literature written in the United States in languages other than English.
In 1874, Longfellow oversaw a 31-volume anthology called Poems of Places,
which collected poems representing several geographical locations, including
European, Asian, and Arabian countries. Emerson was disappointed and
reportedly told Longfellow: "The world is expecting better things of you than
this... You are wasting time that should be bestowed upon original
production". In preparing the volume, Longfellow hired Katherine Sherwood
Bonner as an amanuensis.
Critical Response
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 two decades of his life, he often
received requests for autographs from strangers, which he always sent. John
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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 one of those exceptions. 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".
Legacy
Longfellow was the most popular poet of his day and is generally regarded as
the most distinguished poet the country 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". 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.
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
second wife. Longfellow was very quiet, reserved, and private; in later years,
he was known for being unsocial and avoided leaving home. He had become
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one of the first American celebrities 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. In 1884, Longfellow became the first
non-British writer for whom a commemorative sculpted bust was placed in
Poet's Corner of Westminster Abbey in London; he remains the only
American poet represented with a bust. More recently, he was honored in
March 2007 when the United States Postal Service made a stamp
commemorating him. A number of schools are named after him in various
states as well. Neil Diamond's 1974 hit song, "Longfellow Serenade", is a
reference to the poet. He is a protagonist in Matthew Pearl's murder mystery
The Dante Club (2003).
Longfellow's popularity rapidly declined, beginning shortly after his death and
into the twentieth century as academics began to appreciate poets like Walt
Whitman, Edwin
Arlington Robinson, and Robert Frost. In the
twentieth 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 "Longfellow was
minor and derivative in every way throughout his career... nothing more
than a hack imitator of the English Romantics."
Works:
Outre-Mer: A Pilgrimage Beyond the Sea (Travelogue) (1835)
Hyperion, a Romance (1839)
The Spanish Student. A Play in Three Acts (1843)
Evangeline: A Tale of Acadie (epic poem) (1847)
Kavanagh: A Tale (1849)
The Golden Legend (poem) (1851)
The Song of Hiawatha (epic poem) (1855)
The New England Tragedies (1868)
The Divine Tragedy (1871)
Christus: A Mystery (1872)
Aftermath (poem) (1873)
The Arrow and the Song (poem)
Poetry Collections
See also Category: Poetry by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Voices of the Night (1839)
Ballads and Other Poems (1841)
Poems on Slavery (1842)
The Belfry of Bruges and Other Poems (1845)
Birds of Passage (1845)
The Seaside and the Fireside (1850)
The Courtship of Miles Standish and Other Poems (1858)
Tales of a Wayside Inn (1863)
Household Poems (1865)
Flower-de-Luce (1867)
Three Books of Song (1872)
The Masque of Pandora and Other Poems (1875)
Kéramos and Other Poems (1878)
Ultima Thule (1880)
In the Harbor (1882)
Michel Angelo: A Fragment (incomplete; published posthumously)
Translations
Coplas de Don Jorge Manrique (Translation from Spanish) (1833)
Dante's Divine Comedy (Translation) (1867)
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Anthologies
Poets and Poetry of Europe (Translations) (1844)
The Waif (1845)
Poems of Places (1874)
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A Ballad Of The French Fleet. (Birds Of Passage. Flight The Fifth)
A fleet with flags arrayed
Sailed from the port of Brest,
And the Admiral's ship displayed
The signal: 'Steer southwest.'
For this Admiral D'Anville
Had sworn by cross and crown
To ravage with fire and steel
Our helpless Boston Town.
There were rumors in the street,
In the houses there was fear
Of the coming of the fleet,
And the danger hovering near.
And while from mouth to mouth
Spread the tidings of dismay,
I stood in the Old South,
Saying humbly: 'Let us pray!
'O Lord! we would not advise;
But if in thy Providence
A tempest should arise
To drive the French fleet hence,
And scatter it far and wide,
Or sink it in the sea,
We should be satisfied,
And thine the glory be.'
This was the prayer I made,
For my soul was all on flame,
And even as I prayed
The answering tempest came;
It came with a mighty power,
Shaking the windows and walls,
And tolling the bell in the tower,
As it tolls at funerals.
The lightning suddenly
Unsheathed its flaming sword,
And I cried: 'Stand still, and see
The salvation of the Lord!'
The heavens were black with cloud,
The sea was white with hail,
And ever more fierce and loud
Blew the October gale.
The fleet it overtook,
And the broad sails in the van
Like the tents of Cushan shook,
Or the curtains of Midian.
Down on the reeling decks
Crashed the o'erwhelming seas;
Ah, never were there wrecks
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A Psalm of Life - H. W. Longfellow (Powerful Life Poetry)
The Day is Done by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow | Powerful Life Poetry
The life of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Live Without Regret - My Lost Youth by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow | Powerful Life Poetry
Who was Henry Wadsworth Longfellow?
Henry W. Longfellow: At Home and in Print
The Rainy Day - H. W. Longfellow (Powerful Life Poetry)
Christmas Bells: a poem by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
All f**ked up up, but stay consistent. | Success Motivation | Study Motivation
The Village Blacksmith Poem (Video) by Henry W. Longfellow
The Day Is Done - Henry W. Longfellow (Powerful Life Poetry)
The Song of Hiawatha by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow - FULL Audio Book
A Psalm of Life - Henry Wadsworth Longfellow | Powerful Life Poetry
How Henry Wadsworth Longfellow Turned His Pain Into Poetry Magic! - Fascinating People
The Sound Of The Sea - Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (Inspirational Poetry)
The Arrow and the Song - Henry Wadsworth Longfellow poem reading | Jordan Harling Reads
Paul Revere's Ride - Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (Performed By Rick Taylor)
Caitlin Botros: "A Psalm of Life" by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
The Day is Done - Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (Popular Poems)
The Life of Henry Wadsworth and Fanny Appleton Longfellow
Henry Wadsworth longfellow biography
Longfellow's Christmas - Edward K. Herrmann and The Tabernacle Choir
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow - 'Psalm of Life'
The Arrow and the Song by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow - Poems for Kids, FreeSchool
Christmas Bells (Henry Wadsworth Longfellow)
Excelsior by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow poetry reading
The Arrow and the Song by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow - I Shot an Arrow into the Air
The Tide Rises, The Tide Falls by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
"The Children's Hour" by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (read by Tom O'Bedlam)
"The Day is Done" by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (read by Tom O'Bedlam)
I Heard the Bells on Christmas Day, by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, performed by Casting Crowns
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow - The Republic
The Children's Hour by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow poetry reading
01. CE 201 - A Psalm of Life by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
"The Tide Rises, the Tide Falls" by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
I Heard the Bells on Christmas Day by Henry W. Longfellow
Haunted Houses - Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
The Arrow and the Song by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, poetry reading
Excelsior by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow | Ep #104
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow "Paul Revere's Ride" Poem animation
The Ladder of St Augustine by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow | Read by Simerjeet Singh
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow - The Slave's Dream
"A Psalm of Life" by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (read by Tom O'Bedlam)
Aftermath - Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
The Rainy Day by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow - Poetry Reading
THE VILLAGE BLACKSMITH | Henry Wadsworth Longfellow | Classic Poetry Readings
"A Psalm of Life" by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow: A Psalm of Life - Powerful Life Poetry
Psalm of Life - H. W. Longfellow (by Paul Scofield)
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow - Autumn