The description of the great primeval forests stretching down to the sea; of the villages and farms scattered over the land as unprotected as the nests of the meadow-lark; of the sowing and harvesting of the peasant folks, with their fêtes and church-going, their weddings and festivals; and the pathetic search of Evangeline for her lost lover Gabriel among the plains of Louisiana—all show Longfellow in his finest mood as a poet whom the sorrows of mankind touched always with reverent pity, as well as a writer of noble verse.
Everywhere that the English language is read, "Evangeline" has passed as the most beautiful folk-story that America has produced: and the French Canadians, the far-away brothers of the Acadians, have included Longfellow among their national poets. Among them "Evangeline" is known by heart, and the cases are not rare where the people have learned English expressly for the purpose of reading Longfellow's poem in the original, a wonderful tribute to the poet who could thus touch to music one of the saddest memories of their race.
In "Hiawatha" Longfellow gave to the Indian the place in poetry that had been given him by Cooper in prose.
"Hiawatha" is a poem of the forests and of the dark-skinned race who dwelt therein, who were learned only in forest-lore, and lived as near to nature's heart as the fauns and satyrs of old. Into this legend Longfellow has put all the poetry of the Indians' nature, and has made his hero, Hiawatha, a noble creation, that compares favorably with the King Arthur of the old British romances. From first to last Hiawatha moves among the people a real leader, showing them how to clear their forests, to plant grain, to make for themselves clothing of embroidered and painted skins, to improve their fishing-grounds, and to live at peace with their neighbors. From the time when he was a little child, and his grandmother told him all the fairy-tales of nature, up to the day when, like Arthur, he passed mysteriously through the gates of the sunset, all his hope and joy and work were for his people. He is a creature that could only have been born from a mind as pure and poetic as that of Longfellow. All the scenes and images of the poem are so true to nature that they seem like very breaths from the forests. We move with Hiawatha through the dewy birchen aisles, learn with him the language of the nimble squirrel and of the wise beaver and mighty bear, watch him build his famous canoe, and spend hours with him fishing in the waters of the great inland sea, bordered by the great pictured rocks painted by nature itself. Longfellow's first idea of the poem was suggested, it is said, by his hearing a Harvard student recite some Indian tales. Searching among the various books that treated of the American Indians, he found many legends and incidents that preserved fairly well the traditional history of the Indian race, and grouping these around one central figure, and filling in the gaps with poetic descriptions of the forests, mountains, lakes, rivers, and plains which made up the abode of these picturesque people, he thus built up the entire poem. The metre used is that in which the "Kalevala Thean," the national epic of the Finn, is written, and the Finnish hero Wainamoinen, in his gift of song and his brave adventures, is not unlike the great Hiawatha.
Among Longfellow's other long poems are "The Spanish Student," a dramatic poem founded upon a Spanish romance; "The Divine Tragedy" and "The Golden Legend," founded upon the life of Christ; "The Courtship of Miles Standish," a tale of Puritan love-making in the time of the early settlers; and "Tales of a Wayside Inn," which are a series of poems of adventure supposed to be related by the guests at an inn.
But it is with such poems as "Evangeline" and "Hiawatha," and the shorter famous poems like the "Psalm of Life," "Excelsior," "The Wreck of the Hesperus," "The Building of the Ship," "The Footsteps of Angels," that his claim as the favorite poet of America has its foundation. "The Building of the Ship" was never read during the struggle of the civil war without raising the audience to a passion of enthusiasm; and so in each of these shorter poems Longfellow touched with wondrous sympathy the hearts of his readers. Throughout the land he was received as the poet of the home and heart: the sweet singer to whom the fireside and family gave ever sacred and beautiful meanings.
Some poems on slavery, a prose tale called "Kavanajh," and a translation of the "Divine Comedy" of Dante, must also be included among Longfellow's work; but these have never reached the success attained by his more popular poems, which are known by heart by millions.
Longfellow died in Cambridge in 1882, in the same month in which was written his last poem, "The Bells of San Blas," which concludes with these words,
"It is daybreak everywhere."