Longfellow poem sail forth8/17/2023 ![]() She loved nature also, even in its wilder and more sublime aspects, and thunĭer-storms were her delight. Music and dancing had great attractions for her. In her early days she was fond of gaiety. She was beautiful in person and gracious in demeanor. From his mother our poet probably derived his gifts of imagination and of sympathy. The father kept watch over his children's education, criticizing their youthful productions, and directing their thoughts to God, as their Creator, Preserver, and Friend. The government of the family was kindly, but strict. ![]() He was so highly esteemed that his fellow citizens chose him to be their representative in Congress. His father was a lawyer of integrity and courtesy, social and public-spirited, a graduate of Harvard College and a genuine scholar. Providence ordained that Longfellow should come of good stock. The true poet is born, not made, and he owes much to his ancestry. With a broader view of life than Bryant's, a finer sense of form than Emerson's, a keener apprehension of ideal beauty than Whittier's, a sounder morality than Poe's, he was our first all-round poet and teacher of poetry, and of all our American poets the most beloved. If Bryant was the father of American poetry, Longfellow was as certainly its first cultivator and enricher. His liberal, loving, sympathetic spirit was a garden-plot in which plants hitherto exotic were nourished for distribution over our whole broad commonwealth. He was one of the first to profit by absorbing foreign culture and by importing it into America. Longfellow bridged the gulf between us and the past, between us and Europe, between us and the whole world of romance. We were too young for literary elegance, and too practical to appreciate ideal creations. He rose to fame in a time of comparative uncouthness and mediocrity. ![]() My purpose in this essay, however, is to disclose even a larger influence of Longfellow than this upon individual writers. The excellent biography written by Samuel Longfellow, his brother, gives extracts from many letters of men well known, which show that the poet's early productions were germs from which sprang a great literary harvest. And what he did for me he did for a multitude of others. His " Psalm of Life " encouraged me to think that I too might make my life sublime. He introduced me to literature, and gave me the freedom of the mind. I begin my essay on Longfellow with vivid recollection of the admiration, and even awe, with which he first inspired me. The poet who awakens his soul to see what the poet himself saw, and so creates in him the poetic instinct, becomes to him a sort of demigod, and is worshiped forever after. Far-reaching vistas open before him-a new world of wonder and delight. That is a great day in one's history when he gets his first view of the beauty and the mystery of poetry.
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