Was as a fire upon a hearth;
As pleasant songs, at morning sung,
The words that dropped from his sweet tongue
Strengthened our hearts, or—heard at night—
Made all our slumbers soft and light.”
[4.] Longfellow’s Style.—In one of his prose works, Longfellow himself says, “In character, in manners, in style, in all things, the
supreme excellence is simplicity.” This simplicity he steadily aimed at, and in almost all his writings reached; and the result is the sweet lucidity which is manifest in his best poems. His verse has been characterised as “simple, musical, sincere, sympathetic, clear as crystal, and pure as snow.” He has written in a great variety of measures—in more, perhaps, than have been employed by Tennyson himself. His “Evangeline” is written in a kind of dactylic hexameter, which does not always scan, but which is almost always musical and impressive—
“Fair was she and young, when in hope began the long journey;
Faded was she and old, when in disappointment it ended.”
The “Hiawatha,” again, is written in a trochaic measure—each verse containing four trochees—