HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807-1882) was a native of Maine and a graduate of Bowdoin College, in the same class with Nathaniel Hawthorne. Longfellow came of early New England ancestry, his mother being a daughter of General Wadsworth of the Revolutionary War.
After his graduation from college he spent several years abroad and upon his return to America held professorships first in Bowdoin and later in Harvard College. When he moved to Cambridge and began his active work at Harvard, he took up his residence in the historic Craigie House, overlooking the Charles River-a house in which Washington had been quartered for some months when in 1775 he took command of the Continental army.
Longfellow is the poet who has spoken most sincerely and sympathetically to the hearts of the common people and to children. His style is notable for its simplicity and grace. His Hiawatha is a national poem that records the picturesque traditions of the American Indian. Its charm and melody are the delight of all children, and in years to come, when the race which it describes has utterly disappeared, we shall value at even higher worth these stories of the romantic past of America and of the brave people who inhabited these mountains and plains before the white man came.
Besides Indian stories, Longfellow wrote many narratives in verse dealing with old legends of America. "The Skeleton in Armor" is an example of the legends about European explorers who came here before the days of Columbus. Evangehne and The Courtship of Miles Standish are longer poems which find their subjects in early colonial history. He wrote also of legends of Europe, and was well acquainted with stories and romances of older civilizations than ours. Equally well-known poems, of a different type, are those in which household joys and sorrows give the theme. Longfellow is the poet of the home-life, of simple hopes, of true religious faith. His spirit was the Spirit of a child, affectionate, loyal, eager for romance and knightly adventure. He is the "Children's Poet," as the poem "The Children's Hour" helps to show. There were sorrows as well as joys in his life, and this is why we go to him in trouble and why so many people know his poems by heart. Sorrow never took away his faith or made him bitter. He is genial and kindly, the friend—of all Americans everywhere.
THE ARROW AND THE SONG
I shot an arrow into the air;
It Fell to earth, I knew not where;
For, so swiftly it flew, the sight
Could not follow it in its flight.
I breathed a Song into the air;
It fell to earth, I knew not where;
For who has sight so keen and strong
That it can follow the flight of Song?
Long, long afterwards, in an oak
I found the arrow, still unbroke;
And the song, from beginning to end,
I found again in the heart of a friend.