21. "Valley of the Shadow" suggests death and is a fitting close to Poe's poetic work.
HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW (1807-1882)
"His verse blooms like a flower, night and day;
Bees cluster round his rhymes; and twitterings
Of lark and swallow, in an endless May,
Are mingling with the tender songs he sings.
Nor shall he cease to sing—in every lay
Of Nature's voice he sings—and will alway."
—JAMES WHITCOMB RILEY.
Born in Portland, Maine, he graduated from Bowdoin College in 1825 and went abroad to prepare himself to teach the modern languages. He taught until 1854, when he became a professional author. During the remaining years of his fife he lived quietly at Craigie House in Cambridge and there he died.
The poems by Longfellow are used by permission of, and by special arrangement with, Houghton Mifflin Company, authorized publishers of his works.
HYMN To THE NIGHT
"Night, thrice welcome." "Night, undesired by Troy, but to the Greeks Thrice welcome for its interposing gloom."
-COWPER, TRANS. OF ILIAD VIII, 488.
21. Orestes-like. Orestes, the son of Agamemnon and Clytemnestra, avenged the death of his father by killing his mother. The Furies chased him for many years through the world until at last he found pardon and peace. The story is told in several Greek plays, but perhaps best in AEschylus' "Libation Pourers" and "Furies"
A PSALM of LIFE