From his earliest youth, Longfellow had written verses of somewhat unusual merit for a boy, though remarkable rather for smoothness of rhythm than for depth or originality of thought. His modern language studies involved much translation, but his first book, "Hyperion," was not published until 1839. It attained a considerable vogue, but as nothing to the wide popularity of "Voices of the Night," which appeared the same year. Two years later appeared "Ballads and Other Poems," and the two collections established their author in the popular heart beyond possibility of assault. They contained "A Psalm of Life," "The Reaper and the Flowers," "The Village Blacksmith," and "Excelsior," which, however we may dispute their claims as poetry, have taken their place among the treasured household verse of the nation.
Four years later, in "The Belfry of Bruges and Other Poems," he added two more to this collection, "The Day is Done" and "The Bridge." The publication, in 1847, of "Evangeline" raised him to the zenith of his reputation. His subsequent work confirmed him in popular estimation as the greatest of American poets—"Hiawatha," "The Courtship of Miles Standish," and such shorter poems as "Resignation," "The Children's Hour," "Paul Revere's Ride," and "The Old Clock on the Stairs."
But, after all, Longfellow was not a really great poet. He lacked the strength of imagination, the sureness of insight and the delicacy of fancy necessary to great poetry. He was rather a sentimentalist to whom study and practice had given an exceptional command of rhythm. The prevailing note of his best-known lyrics is one of sentimental sorrow—the note which is of the very widest appeal. His public is largely the same public which weeps over the death of little Nell and loves to look at Landseer's "The Old Shepherd's Chief Mourner." Longfellow and Dickens and Landseer were all great artists and did admirable work, but scarcely the very highest work. But Longfellow's ballads "found an echo in the universal human heart," and won him an affection such as has been accorded no other modern poet. His place is by the hearth-side rather than on the mountain-top—by far the more comfortable and cheerful position of the two.
The year of Longfellow's birth witnessed that of another American poet, more virile, but of a narrower appeal—John Greenleaf Whittier. Whittier's birthplace was the old house at East Haverhill, Massachusetts, where many generations of his Quaker ancestors had dwelt. The family was poor, and the boy's life was a hard and cramped one, with few opportunities for schooling or culture; yet its very rigor made for character, and developed that courage and simplicity which were Whittier's noblest attributes.
What there was in the boy that moved him to write verse it would be difficult to say—some bent, some crotchet, which defies explanation. Certain it is that he did write; his sister sent some of his verses to a neighboring paper, and the result was a visit from its editor, William Lloyd Garrison, who encouraged the boy to get some further schooling, and afterwards helped him to secure a newspaper position in Boston. But his health failed him, and he returned to Haverhill, removing, in 1836, to Amesbury, where the remainder of his life was spent.
He had already become interested in politics, had joined the abolitionists, and was soon the most influential of the protestants against slavery. Into this battle he threw himself heart and soul. It is amusing to reflect that, though a Quaker and advocate of non-resistance, he probably did more to render the Civil War inevitable than any other one man. During the war, his lyrics aided the Northern cause; and as soon as it was over, he labored unceasingly to allay the evil passions which the contest had aroused. He lived to the ripe age of eighty-five, simply and bravely, and his career was from first to last consistent and inspiring, one of the sweetest and gentlest in history.
Although Whittier was endowed with a brighter spark of the divine fire than Longfellow, he himself was conscious that he did not possess
The seerlike power to show
The secrets of the heart and mind.
He was lacking, too, in intellectual equipment—in culture, in mastery of rhythm and diction, in felicitous phrasing. And yet, on at least two occasions, he rang sublimely true—in his denunciation of Webster, "Ichabod," and in his idyll of New England rural life, "Snow-Bound."
The third of these New England poets, and also the least important, is Oliver Wendell Holmes. Born at Cambridge, in the inner circle of New England aristocracy, educated at Harvard, and studying medicine in Boston and Paris, he practiced his profession for twelve years, until, in 1847, he was called to the chair of anatomy and physiology at Harvard, continuing in that position until 1882. He lived until 1894, the last survivor of the seven poets whom we have mentioned.