内容简介：
Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER III. HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW. For many years the most representative name in American poetry has been that of Henry Wads- worth Longfellow. Others have often rivalled or surpassed him in special successes, Henry Wadsworth - r Longfellow, or in peculiar fields. The poetry 1807-1882. t -C A- 1 I ot tmerson displays a clearness of vision, a loftiness of plan, an optimistic philosophy, and a profundity of thought to which Longfellow cannot wholly attain; but it is the splendid poetry of fragment and of swift utterance. Poe's peculiar domain Longfellow neither would enter nor could enter with success. In some few respects Lowell displays powers?and not alone -of wit?more significant than those of his friend and neighbor and collegiate predecessor. Such reflections as these, however, cannot profitably be followed far. All in all, Longfellow has been the nation's poet, and has been recognized as such in the other great Teutonic countries as well as in America. From him came the only important poem embodying the myths and imaginative life of the Indian race, ?a poem which, alone among all our productions, shows something of the epic spirit, in that it is a characteristic verse-story of the hero of a race andtime, whose deeds are affected by the courage of man and by the supernatural work of the powers above. From Longfellow, too, came other tales or dramas of by-gone American life and scenery, in New England or in Nova Scotia. " The Courtship of Miles Standish," " Evangeline," and " The New England Tragedies" were distinctly local products, while at least one of them possessed that universal interest which is a mark of true literary achievement. Longfellow, more than any other American, made known to a provincial people the wealth and the charm of contin...