In 1842 his Ballads and Other Poems, containing such favourites as The Wreck of the Hesperus and The Village Blacksmith, swept the nation. Although the sonnet Mezzo Cammin, written toward the end of that stay in Germany, laments how Half of my life is gone, and I have let / The years slip from me and have not fulfilled / The aspiration of my youth, to build / Some tower of song, he was entering into a vigorously productive period of his career. Haiku. General Peleg Wadsworth, built the house in 1785-1786, and the last person to live there was Anne Longfellow Pierce, Henry's younger sister. Elected to the Peucinian Society, he mixed with the academically ambitious students of the college (more serious than his brother or than classmates Nathaniel Hawthorne, Franklin Pierce, and Horatio Bridgeall belonging to the Athenean Society). Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (February 27, 1807 - March 24, 1882) was an American poet whose works include "Paul Revere's Ride", The Song of Hiawatha, and "Evangeline". While coping with private tragedy at home, he suffered the additional trauma of the Civil War. His 1868-1869 final visit to Europe, on which he was attended by a large family party, turned into a triumphal progression framed by honorary degrees awarded by Cambridge and Oxford universities. Even if time has proved him something less than the master poet he never claimed to be, Longfellow made pioneering contributions to American literary life by exemplifying the possibility of a successful authorial career, by linking American poetry to European traditions beyond England, and by developing a surprisingly wide readership for Romantic poetry. Longfellow met Boston industrialist Nathan Appleton and his family in the town of Thun, Switzerland, including his son Thomas Gold Appleton. Public speaking provided other outlets for Henrys artistic and rhetorical skills at Bowdoin: in his Junior Exhibition performance he anticipated The Song of Hiawatha (1855) by speaking as a North American Savage in a dialogue with an English settler, and his commencement address argued for redirection of national values in support of Our American Authors. For immediate publication, in three months beginning late in 1857 he composed the title poem for The Courtship of Miles Standish and Other Poems (1858). Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807 - 1882) was America's most beloved nineteenth-century poet, . Snow-Flakes. The trip began happily with a London visit and Longfellows introduction to Thomas Carlyle, whose excitement over Johann Wolfgang von Goethe and Friedrich Schiller heightened Longfellows interest in German Romanticism. Aside from two Phi Beta Kappa poemsthe first at Bowdoin in 1832 and the other the next year at Harvardthe poetry he was composing consisted chiefly of translations from Romance languages that he used in his classes and articles. The lady says she will not! Its appeal to the public was immediate. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. [141] As James Russell Lowell said, Longfellow had an "absolute sweetness, simplicity, and modesty". 1807-1882. [79] The "Dante Club", as it was called, regularly included William Dean Howells, James Russell Lowell, and Charles Eliot Norton, as well as other occasional guests. For this work Longfellow drew on European sources, chiefly Hartmann von Aues Der Arme Heinrich (circa 1191). Henry Wadsworth Longfellow was an American poet who used narrative poems to memorialize people and events in American history, including Paul Revere. For advice, he gathered weekly evening sessions of his Dante Club of writer-scholarsamong them James Russell Lowell, who had succeeded Longfellow as Smith Professor; Charles Eliot Norton, who eventually published his own prose translation of Dantes masterpiece; and William Dean Howells. More important, Longfellow turned back to poetry after that second European journey and found encouragement in the warm reception of a group of poems he classified loosely as psalms. Although he never received any money from Knickerbockers, where several of these poems first appeared, Longfellow discovered an appreciative public response to the sad wisdom he had distilled from the disappointments of life; sadness empowered him to speak comforting, encouraging words to the many readers who responded gratefully to A Psalm of Life, The Reaper and the Flowers, The Light of Stars, Footsteps of Angels, and Midnight Mass for the Dying Year. He collected these and other early poems in Voices of the Night, like Hyperion published in 1839, and followed up on that success with Ballads and Other Poems (1842), which featured short narrative poems such as The Skeleton in Armor and The Wreck of the Hesperus, a character sketch that he thought of as another psalm titled The Village Blacksmith, and a poem of Romantic inspiration, Excelsior. He was exploring American subject matter in many of these poemseven in The Skeleton in Armor, which drew an unexpected link between medieval Scandinavian war songs and New England antiquities. Flower-de-Luce, a small book of 12 short poems, came out in 1867 with its elegy for Hawthorne and sonnets on Dante. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (February 27, 1807 March 24, 1882) was an American poet and educator. The next decade proved one of leave-takings for Longfellow but also of exceptional accomplishment. When he was offered a professorship at Harvard, with another opportunity to go abroad, he accepted and set forth for Germany in 1835. Learn more about narrative poetry here. Bowdoin offers Longfellow a professorship of modern languages, provided that he prepare himself for the position with a period of European travel, a proposition he . [109] 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". [81] It went through four printings in its first year. He also left a loving family and grateful readers who have continued to honor him by erecting statues and naming parks and schools for him, Evangeline, and Hiawatha. It is thine. Born on February 27 46. In 1872 Three Books of Song presented the second part of Tales of a Wayside Inn along with Judas Maccabeus and a group of translations. He has been criticized for imitating European styles and writing poetry that was too sentimental. [87], On August 22, 1879, a female admirer traveled to Longfellow's house in Cambridge and, unaware to whom she was speaking, asked him: "Is this the house where Longfellow was born?" [65] Their daughter Fanny was born on April 7, 1847, and Dr. Nathan Cooley Keep administered ether to the mother as the first obstetric anesthetic in the United States. She married Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (poet, buried at this cem.) He was the first American to completely translate Dante Alighieri's Divine Comedy and was one of the fireside poets from New England. [83] He is buried with both of his wives at Mount Auburn Cemetery in Cambridge, Massachusetts. [16] When Longfellow graduated from Bowdoin, he was ranked fourth in the class and had been elected to Phi Beta Kappa. The famed poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow once penned the beautiful words, "Be still, sad heart! His father died in 1849, his brother Stephen in 1850, and his mother in 1851. Yet, Longfellow achieved perhaps his greatest popular success with Evangeline, A Tale of Acadie, a verse romance the geographic sweep of which across French and English America in the 18th century makes it a virtual epic, although in the sentimental mode and featuring a heroine notable for her humble, loving endurance rather than military prowess. Longfellow began publishing his poetry in 1839, including the collection Voices of the Night, his debut book of poetry. [53] In July 1839, he wrote to a friend: "Victory hangs doubtful. a Lady, on Being Asked my Reason for Quitting England in the Sprin 11. Why did Henry Wadsworth Longfellow write a Psalm of Life? Please select which sections you would like to print: Encyclopaedia Britannica's editors oversee subject areas in which they have extensive knowledge, whether from years of experience gained by working on that content or via study for an advanced degree. He graduated from Bowdoin College and became a professor there and, later, at Harvard College after studying in Europe. After a brief period of boarding on Professors Row in Cambridge, Longfellow found lodging in the Craigie mansion on Brattle Street, occupying the room that had once been George Washingtons headquarters. They write new content and verify and edit content received from contributors. The poem exalts and exocitizes Native Americans and assumes the obliteration of indigenous ways of life. He stifled the flames with his body, but she was badly burned. To a Child, one of the most popular poems of the book, expressed paternal tenderness toward his first son, while the sonnet Dante looked toward a later stage of literary productivity. Longfellow, born in Maine in 1807, became an epic poet of sorts for American history, writing about the American Revolution in the way bards of old wrote about conquests across Europe. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow [1807-1882] was probably the most influential American poet of the 19th Century. [100] He often used allegory in his work. In many ways Longfellow may be read as a friend of American multiculturalism even if Hiawatha ultimately exocitizes Native peoples and their culture. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow , Voices of the Night. 'Adieu, Adieu! Fill the Goblet Again 12. He was engaged in ambitious projects. Example filename evangeline_##_longfellow.mp3; Example ID3 V2 tags Title: ## - [Part number] Artist: Henry Wadsworth Longfellow Album: Evangeline [46] It is preserved today as the Longfellow HouseWashington's Headquarters National Historic Site. Longfellow had her body embalmed immediately and placed in a lead coffin inside an oak coffin, which was shipped to Mount Auburn Cemetery near Boston. American advantage: a teacher of the year urges us not to squander the gift of many languages That was the Iroquoian Hiawatha--the real Hiawatha, if you will--until Henry Wadsworth Longfellow came along and published The Song of Hiawatha in 1855. That ordeal touched his family directly in late 1862, when Charles Longfellow was wounded while fighting for the Union army; his father and brother made an anxious trip to Washington to escort him home. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (February 27, 1807 - March 24, 1882) was an American poet and educator. A third trip to Europe followed in 1842, when Longfellow took a brief leave of absence from professorial tasks to travel for his health. He wrote and edited textbooks, translated poetry and prose, and wrote essays on French, Spanish, and Italian literature, but he felt isolated. The world, he concluded with characteristic serenity, belongs to those who come the last, / They will find hope and strength as we have done.. Ultima Thule (1880), the title of which signaled his expectation that it would be his last collection, featured such lyrics as The Tide Rises, The Tide Falls (1879) and LEnvoi. His first major poetry collections were Voices of the Night (1839) and Ballads and Other Poems (1841). Resuming friendship with Fanny and Mary Appleton and their brother Tom, Longfellow was crushed by Fannys rejection of his 1837 marriage proposal. 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. It was probably the most celebrated American poem of the century. Richard Henry Stoddard summed up Longfellows contribution in an 1881 essay, pointing out how Longfellow remained true to himself and to his scholarly impulses by creating and satisfying a taste for a literature which did not exist in this country until he began to write. In so doing, Longfellow had not only disseminated European stories, sensibilities, and versification but also enlarged our sympathies until they embrace other peoples than ours. Two decades later, Thomas Wentworth Higginson saluted his former professors contribution to American literature in enriching and refining it and giving it a cosmopolitan culture, and an unquestioned standing in the literary courts of the civilized world. "[113], Longfellow's early collections Voices of the Night and Ballads and Other Poems made him instantly popular. [4] He was named after his mother's brother Henry Wadsworth, a Navy lieutenant who had died three years earlier at the Battle of Tripoli. -4 TALES OF A WAYSIDE INN. I'm gwine." In his own time one of Longfellows chief contributions to American literature was the encouragement he offered to aspiring writerswhether those Boston-Cambridge-Concord literati with whom he interacted through his various clubs or those such as Emily Dickinson, who responded gratefully to him from a distance as the champion of poetry in an otherwise prosaic American society, the Pegasus in the pound of Yankee bookstores. Volumes of selected poems emerged along with reprintings of earlier books and individual poems in varied formats and price ranges. was born at Portland, Maine, Feb. 27, 1807, and graduated at Bowdoin College, 1825. Both Craigie House in Cambridge and the beach home in Nahant, Massachusetts, where the Longfellows summered from the 1850s became centers of hospitality extended to American and European guestsmany of them literary figuresand Longfellows many admirers. 1864. [97], Longfellow often used didacticism in his poetry, but he focused on it less in his later years. Although the title character, the liberal-minded young minister of a rural New England church, is the central figure of a love triangle involving two close female friends, Cecilia Vaughan and Alice Archer, Longfellow probably took more interest in the schoolmaster, whose literary ambitions are continually frustrated by the press of teaching, fatherhood, and demands made on his time by an aspiring poetess. All day I am weary and sad". The poem was extensively reviewed, translated into German by Ferdinand Freiligrath in 1856, and set to music as well as featured in dramatic performances. Most of us only get one life. But when Henry was a senior at Bowdoin College at 19, the college established a chair of modern languages. In 1836, Longfellow moved to Cambridge, Massachusetts to teach foreign languages at Harvard College. Longfellow had become one of the first American celebrities and was popular in Europe. In 1854 he resigned his Harvard professorshippartly because of his eyesight, partly for relief from academic pressures and contention with the university corporation on behalf of his department, but probably most of all because he found he could support his household on the strength of his poetry and desired more opportunity for writing. Poems such as Paul Reveres Ride, Evangeline, A Tale of Acadie (1847), and A Psalm of Life were mainstays of primary and secondary school curricula, long remembered by generations of readers who studied them as children. Today, Longfellow's face and words still appear on a variety of consumer goods. [83] In 1874, Samuel 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. Now he plunged into work, translating at the rate of a canto a day. Other poems had local settingsfor example, The Bridge, which contrasted Longfellows newfound personal peace with the melancholy of his earlier years in a reflection on the bridge over the Charles River near his home. After her death, Longfellow had difficulty writing poetry for a time and focused on translating works from foreign languages. 8.8.8.8. How different is today's global economy from British poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's vision of productionnoble, lo- cal . Much of the charm of the poem lies in its evocation of place, from the pastoral Grand-Pr, where Benedict Bellefontaine, Evangelines father, dwelt on his goodly acres, through the bayous of Louisiana, where the Acadian blacksmith Basil Lajeunesse, Gabriels father, achieves new prosperity as a rancher, through the forests of French mission territory at the base of the Ozarks, where Evangeline ventures in seeking Gabriel, all the way to Philadelphia, where the aged heroine finds her lover dying in a hospital for plague victims and where they are buried together. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, a world renowned poet primarily known for his poem "The Courtship of Miles Standish," lived through many depressing situations. She died shortly after 10 the next morning, July 10, after requesting a cup of coffee. [142] In reality, his life was much more difficult than was assumed. Life and Fame. Tributes of many kinds testified to public affectionvisits to Craigie House by prominent literary and political figures and even the emperor of Brazil, public tributes, and escalating requests for autographs. In 1836 Longfellow returned to Harvard and settled in the famous Craigie House, which was later given to him as a wedding present when he remarried in 1843. I have aimed higher than this". Classic and contemporary poems for the holiday season. [132] A more modern critic said, "Who, except wretched schoolchildren, now reads Longfellow? Henry Wadsworth Longfellow - whose 200th birthday bicentennial is this month - has had four. Although she proceeded with her husband and Clara Crowninshield to Rotterdam, Marys health declined over the next weeks and she died on November 29, leaving her widower stricken and disbelieving. "[139] Author Nicholas A. 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