"Lives of great men all remind us,"
can be repeated by many who know but little poetry, and these very stanzas, as well as many others like them, have affected the lives of large numbers of people. Those born a generation ago not infrequently say that the following stanza from The Ladder of St. Augustine (1850) has been the stepping-stone to their success in life:—
"The heights by great men reached and kept
Were not attained by sudden flight,
But they, while their companions slept,
Were toiling upward in the night."
His poem, The Rainy Day (1841), has developed in many a person the qualities of patience, resignation, and hopefulness. Repetition makes the majority of things seem commonplace, but even repetition has not robbed lines like these of their power:—
"Be still, sad heart! and cease repining,
Behind the clouds is the sun still shining;
Thy fate is the common fate of all;
Into each life some rain must fall,
Some days must be dark and dreary."
Nine days before he died, he wrote his last lines with the same simplicity and hopefulness of former days:—
"Out of the shadows of night
The world rolls into light.
It is daybreak everywhere."
As we examine these typical poems, we shall find that all of them appeal to our common experiences or aspirations, and that all are expressed in that simple language which no one need read twice to understand.
BALLADS.—Longfellow knew how to tell a story which preserved the simplicity and the vigor of the old ballad makers. His The Wreck of the Hesperus (1839) starts in the true fashion to make us wish to finish the tale:—
"It was the schooner Hesperus,
That sailed the wintry sea;
And the skipper had taken his little daughter
To bear him company."