Lives of the Poets: Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow was born in Portland, Maine, on February 27, 1807. He entered Bowdoin College at the age of 15, and one of his classmates was Nathaniel Hawthorne; the two would remain lifelong friends. When Longfellow graduated, the college gave him a chair in modern languages, and he worked with translations for the rest of his life.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807–1882) was the most popular American poet of his time, and one of the most famous American poets of all time. It has been said that certain of his poems — the long narratives Evangeline and The Song of Hiawatha, most notably — were once read in every literate home in America. 

Like other 19th-century poets, Longfellow is read less these days. He is often relegated to anthologies of American literature used in classrooms. His topics and language sound "old-fashioned" to modern audiences. 

In 1831, he married Mary Potter, and they went on an extended tour of Europe. While they were in the Netherlands, Mary died from complications after a miscarriage. Longfellow was bereft and found solace in reading German poetry, and when he returned to America to teach at Harvard, he began writing poetry of his own. 

He wrote about uniquely American subjects, and he was the first American poet to be taken seriously abroad. His collection Ballads and Other Poems (1841) became wildly popular; it included his poems “The Wreck of the Hesperus” and “The Village Blacksmith.” 

He wrote several popular narrative poems, including the book-length Evangeline (1847), The Song of Hiawatha (1855), and The Courtship of Miles Standish (1858). 

A second tragedy in his life occurred when his second wife, Fanny, died when her dress caught fire in 1861. As a way to console himself, he began rereading and then undertaking the first American translation of Dante’s Inferno (1867). 

On this late February afternoon, I reread Longfellow's poem "Afternoon In February," which begins:

The day is ending,
The night is descending;
The marsh is frozen,
The river dead.

and I didn't want to go further.

I prefer some of his poems that are less likely to be anthologized, such as "Holidays," which begins:

The holiest of all holidays are those
    Kept by ourselves in silence and apart;
    The secret anniversaries of the heart...

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