[41] He was deeply saddened by her death and wrote: "One thought occupies me night and dayShe is dead She is dead! She was in and out of consciousness throughout the night and was administered ether. Let us know if you have suggestions to improve this article (requires login). Though its account of Reveres ride is historically inaccurate, the poem created an American legend. [125] 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". [136] Many of his works helped shape the American character and its legacy, particularly with the poem "Paul Revere's Ride". Answer and Explanation: Henry Wadsworth Longfellow had six children. [35] The couple settled in Brunswick, but the two were not happy there. [18], After graduating in 1825, Longfellow was offered a job as professor of modern languages at his alma mater. Page III CONTENTS. [50] He became part of the local social scene, creating a group of friends who called themselves the Five of Clubs. The Song of Hiawatha is an 1855 epic poem in trochaic tetrameter by . 10. While coping with private tragedy at home, he suffered the additional trauma of the Civil War. Later, he distilled memories of European wanderings (along with material from his college lectures) into Outre-Mer; A Pilgrimage beyond the Sea (1833-4) and the anticipatory Schoolmaster pieces he published between 1831 and 1833 in the New-England Magazine, but not before directing his talents to more practical kinds of writing. A sociable man known for his graciously winning manners, Longfellow took pleasure in associations with other literary figures through the Saturday Club, founded about 1855 for monthly dinner meetings, and the Atlantic Club, which brought together contributors to the Atlantic Monthly after its launching in 1857. The lady says she will not! 07 Nov 1786 in Pittsfield, MA, d. 10 Feb 1822. Post by libraryanne February 6th, 2011, 2:42 pm. The stimulus Henry Longfellow found there came less from classes or the library (open one hour a day and allowing students only limited borrowing privileges) than from literary societies. Although many of the poems had been written and even published separately beforehand, they were loosely held together in this book by the fiction of an assemblage of friends entertaining each other by storytelling at a Sudbury, Massachusetts, inn. Scholars generally regard the work as autobiographical, reflecting the translator as an aging artist facing his impending death. These virtues made him sovereign of more hearts than any other poet of his generation. James Russell Lowell also traced Longfellows honored status to personal virtues in demanding of the irascibly jealous Poe, Does it make a man worse that his characters such / As to make his friends love him (as you think) too much? His father, Stephen Longfellow, was an attorney and a Harvard graduate active in public affairs. [5] He was the second of eight children. He possessed great metrical skill, but he failed to capture the American spirit like his great contemporary Walt Whitman, and his work generally lacked emotional depth and imaginative power. He followed this work with two fragmentary dramatic poems, Judas Maccabaeus and Michael Angelo. But his genius was not dramatic, as he had demonstrated earlier in The Spanish Student (1843). 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. [93] Typically, he would carefully consider the subject of his poetic ideas for a long time before deciding on the right metrical form for it. [126] At Longfellow's funeral, his friend Ralph Waldo Emerson called him "a sweet and beautiful soul". This harsh critical assessment, which tried to reduce him to the status of a mere hearthside rhymer, was perhaps as unbalanced as the adulation he had received during his lifetime. Among his most significant works are "A Psalm of Life" (1839), "The Village Blacksmith" (1842), "Paul Revere's Ride" (1861), and the book-length poems Evangeline (1847) and Song of Hiawatha (1855). He was honored in March 2007 when the United States Postal Service issued a stamp commemorating him. 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. As a memorial to their father, Longfellow's children donated land across Brattle Street and facing the family home to the City of Cambridge, which became Longfellow Park. Longfellow was born on February 27, 1807, to Stephen Longfellow and Zilpah (Wadsworth) Longfellow in Portland, Maine,[1] then a district of Massachusetts. Poet. Learn more about narrative poetry here. Lewiss first love was poetry, and it enabled him to write the prose for which he is remembered. Fanny is also credited with directly inspiring two poems that emerged from their wedding trip The Arsenal at Springfield, the peace poem she requested, and The Old Clock on the Stairs; both poems appeared in The Belfry of Bruges and Other Poems (1845; copyright 1846). A monument featuring a bas relief of Miles Standish, Sadalphon, the Village Blacksmith, the Spanish Student, Evangeline, and Hiawatha, characters from Longfellows works, was dedicated in October 1914. What type of household did Longfellow grow up in? Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. In essence, they needed to sell the tea to somebody, fast. Of the lyrics Longfellow composed during that period, My Lost Youth is a memorable example of the poets reflection on his personal past. Although Longfellow introduced a love story in his account of Hiawathas wooing of Minnehaha, their marriage, and her death, for the most part he assembled legends he found in Schoolcrafts many books to exalt his Ojibway hero as a leader of supernatural birth (son of the West Wind, Mudjekeewis, and of Wenonah, whose mother, Nokomis, had fallen from the heavens) who leads his people in ways of peace. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow was one of the most widely known and best-loved American poets of the 19th century. American poet and educator. [11] He studied at the Portland Academy until age 14. [89] He had been suffering from peritonitis. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's "The Midnight Ride of Paul Revere" and Samuel Taylor Coleridge's "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner" exemplify this form. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow/Prini. Longfellows goal in this second European journey was to acquaint himself with Scandinavian languages while strengthening his command of German language and literature. He suffered from neuralgia, which caused him constant pain, and he had poor eyesight. His works are still regularly anthologised after nearly a century and a half. Their second-youngest daughter was Edith who married Richard Henry Dana III, son of Richard Henry Dana, Jr. who wrote Two Years Before the Mast. At college he was attracted especially to Sir Walter Scotts romances and Washington Irvings Sketch Book, and his verses appeared in national magazines. Still committed to the native writers of the United States, he wrote a July 1837 review in praise of Hawthornes Twice-Told Tales (1837) even as he turned his own ambitions back toward the writing of poetry. In 1831, he married Mary Potter, and they went on an extended tour of Europe. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow wrote, "Music is the universal language of mankind.". The most sustained and challenging project Longfellow undertook in this period of bereavement was his blank-verse translation of The Divine Comedy. Maybe Longfellow exaggerated the heroic story of Paul Revere. 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". Cookouts, fireworks, and history lessons recounted in poems, articles, and audio. [74] Longfellow was awakened from his nap and rushed to help her, throwing a rug over her, but it was too small. [82] By 1868, Longfellow's annual income was over $48,000. 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. In 1839 he published Voices of the Night, which contained the poems Hymn to the Night, The Psalm of Life, and The Light of the Stars and achieved immediate popularity. [83] He is buried with both of his wives at Mount Auburn Cemetery in Cambridge, Massachusetts. [48] Ballads and Other Poems was published in 1841[49] and included "The Village Blacksmith" and "The Wreck of the Hesperus", which were instantly popular. [37], In December 1834, Longfellow received a letter from Josiah Quincy III, president of Harvard College, offering him the Smith Professorship of Modern Languages with the stipulation that he spend a year or so abroad. "[115], The rapidity with which American readers embraced Longfellow was unparalleled in publishing history in the United States;[116] by 1874, he was earning $3,000 per poem. In Germany, Longfellow formed a close friendship with the poet Ferdinand Freiligrath, and in England he deepened an earlier acquaintance with Charles Dickens. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. Fate, however, intervened to protect him from the bar. The first poem, Paul Reveres Ride, became a national favourite. [105], He was important as a translator; his translation of Dante became a required possession for those who wanted to be a part of high culture. Both the poem and its singsong metre have been frequent objects of parody. 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. The moralism of his poetry came to seem offensive and even ridiculous as critics attacked his mixed metaphors as evidence of muddled thinking. Longfellow met Boston industrialist Nathan Appleton and his family in the town of Thun, Switzerland, including his son Thomas Gold Appleton. Need a transcript of this episode? Although sales of individual later volumes never matched the popularity of his mid-career offerings, Longfellow lived to experience recognition and rewards seldom enjoyed by other writers. 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