National Endowment for the Arts 
 
 READER'S GUIDE 
 
 .*•;: . .INSTITUTE or 
 
 ,•/.. MuseurriandLibrary 
 
 ,•*•• SERVICES 
 
 THE POETRY OF 
 
 Henry Wadsworth 
 
 Longfellow 
 
a 
 
 Nationality is a 
 good thing to a 
 certain extent but 
 universality is better. 
 All that is best in 
 the great poets of 
 all countries is not 
 what is national in 
 them, but what is 
 universal." 
 
 —HENRY WADSWORTH 
 LONGFELLOW 
 from his novel Kavanagh (1849) 
 
Preface 
 
 Henry Wadsworth Longfellow was not only a major American poet, but he 
 was also one of the most influential figures in our national cultural history. 
 In unforgettable poetic language that appealed to millions of readers across 
 all classes, he helped create many of the songs, stories, characters, and 
 images by which the young United States knew itself. 
 
 It is especially appropriate that the Big Read includes poetry for the first 
 time by honoring Longfellow. The National Endowment for the Arts joins 
 the Poetry Foundation to create this new program to celebrate great 
 American poets and the historic sites associated with their lives and works. 
 
 The Big Read is an initiative of the National Endowment for the Arts 
 designed to revitalize the role of literary reading in American popular 
 culture. Reading at Risk: A Survey of Literary Reading in America, a 2004 NEA 
 report, identified a critical decline in reading for pleasure among American 
 adults. The Big Read aims to address this issue directly by providing 
 citizens with the opportunity to read and discuss a single book within their 
 communities. 
 
 By celebrating poets and their literary landmarks, the NEA and the Poetry 
 Foundation not only bring poetry to a broader audience but also help 
 preserve and promote local heritage and history. 
 
 Great literature combines enlightenment with enchantment It awakens our 
 imagination and enlarges our humanity. It can even offer harrowing insights 
 that somehow console and comfort us. Whether you're a regular reader 
 already or a nonreader making up for lost time, thank you for joining the 
 
 Big Read. 
 
 Dana Gioia 
 
 Chairman 
 
 National Endowment for the Arts 
 
 John Barr 
 President 
 Poetry Foundation 
 
 Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, circa 1 855 
 
The Tide Rises, the Tide Falls 
 
 "he tide rises, the tide falls, 
 
 s twilight darkens, the curlew calls; 
 Jong the sea-sands damp and brown 
 The traveller hastens toward the town, 
 And the tide rises, the tide falls. 
 
 arkness settles on roofs and walls, 
 But the sea, the sea in the darkness calls; 
 The little waves, with their soft, white hands, 
 Efface the footprints in the sands, 
 And the tide rises, the tide falls. 
 
 The morning breaks; the steeds in their stalls 
 Stamp and neigh, as the hostler calls; 
 The day returns, but nevermore 
 Returns the traveller to the shore, 
 : And the tide rises, the tide falls. 
 
 —HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW 
 
 2 THE BIG READ • National Endowment for the Arts 
 
Introduction to Longfellow's Poetry 
 
 BY DANA GIOIA 
 
 Henry Wadsworth Longfellow was 
 the most popular poet in American 
 history. His work commanded 
 a readership that is almost 
 unimaginable today even for best- 
 selling novels. In terms of their reach 
 and influence, Longfellow's poems 
 resembled studio-era Hollywood 
 films: they were popular works of art 
 enjoyed by huge, diverse audiences 
 that crossed all social classes and age 
 groups. Writing in a period before 
 electronic media usurped the serious 
 literary artist's role as society's story- 
 teller, Longfellow did as much as 
 any author or politician of his time 
 to shape the way nineteenth-century 
 Americans saw themselves, their 
 nation, and their past. At a crucial 
 time in American history — just as 
 the Revolutionary War receded from 
 living memory and the disastrous 
 Civil War inexorably approached — 
 Longfellow created the national 
 myths for which his new and still 
 unstoried country hungered. His 
 poems gave his contemporaries the 
 words, images, myths, and heroes 
 by which they explained America to 
 one another and themselves. 
 
 Longfellow was an immensely 
 versatile poet who excelled at 
 
 virtually every form and genre from 
 the epic to the sonnet. He was an 
 innovator in versification and a 
 master of lyric poetry, translation, 
 and adaptation. No form, however, 
 better displayed his distinctive gifts 
 than the short narrative poem. 
 Nineteenth-century readers gready 
 esteemed the form, which combines 
 the narrative pleasures of fiction 
 with the verbal music of verse. 
 
 Longfellow's status as a major 
 poet rests especially on the critical 
 assessment of his four book- 
 length poems — Evangeline: A 
 Tale ofAcadie (1847), The Song of 
 Hiawatha (1855), The Courtship 
 of Miles Standish (1858), and Tales 
 of a Wayside Inn (1863-1873). 
 These were the poems that earned 
 him a preeminent position among 
 his contemporaries. The special 
 qualities of these poems seem 
 antithetical to the lyric traditions of 
 modern poetry, which prize verbal 
 compression, intellectual complexity, 
 elliptical style, and self-referential 
 movement. Longfellow's greatest 
 gifts were best suited to more public 
 poetry — forceful clarity, evocative 
 simplicity, emotional directness, 
 and a genius for memorable (indeed 
 often unforgettable) phrasing. 
 
 National Endowment for the Arts • THE BIG READ 3 
 
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow 
 
 (1807-1882) 
 
 On February 27, 1807, Henry 
 Wadsworth Longfellow was born in 
 his aunt's house on the waterfront 
 of Portland, Maine (which remained 
 part of Massachusetts until 1820). 
 He was the second son of the 
 Harvard-educated lawyer Stephen 
 Longfellow and Zilpah Longfellow 
 (nee Wadsworth) whose father was 
 Peleg Wadsworth, a distinguished 
 Revolutionary War veteran and 
 congressman. 
 
 At age six, Henry Wadsworth 
 Longfellow began school at the 
 Pordand Academy, and, at fourteen, 
 he began college at Bowdoin College 
 in Maine, graduating in 1825 with 
 his friend Nathaniel Hawthorne. 
 Although his father wanted him 
 to become a lawyer, Longfellow 
 instead became a professor of 
 
 modern languages. Extensive travel 
 in Europe — living for long stretches 
 in France, Spain, Germany, and 
 Italy — prepared him for the six years 
 he spent teaching at Bowdoin. He 
 married Mary Potter of Pordand 
 in 1831, but he longed to escape a 
 future in a small college town. 
 
 The gifted teacher gladly accepted 
 the position of Smith Professor 
 of Modern Languages at Harvard 
 College, which he held from 1834 
 to 1854. But his joy at this good 
 fortune soon gave way to grief 
 when, during a long trip in northern 
 Europe, Mary suffered a miscarriage 
 and died from a resulting infection 
 in 1835. 
 
 In July of 1 836, he met and fell 
 in love with Fanny Appleton. The 
 daughter of wealthy industrialist 
 
 THE LIFE AND TIMES OF 
 
 HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW 
 
 1800s 
 
 Lieutenant Henry Wadsworth of 
 the U.S. Navy dies a hero at the 
 Battle of Tripoli in 1 804. 
 
 Henry Wadsworth Longfellow is 
 bom on February 27, 1807, and 
 is named in honor of his mother's 
 late war-hero brother. 
 
 The U.S. Embargo Act of 1807 
 prohibits trade with European 
 nations in protest of violated U.S. 
 neutrality rights in the Napoleonic 
 Wars. 
 
 1810s 
 
 The War of 181 2 pits the United 
 States against Britain. 
 
 Jane Austen's novel Pride and 
 Prejudice published, 1 81 3. 
 
 Francis Scott Key writes "The 
 Star-Spangled Banner," 1814. 
 
 Napoleon defeated at Waterloo by 
 united European forces, ending 
 French control of the continent, 
 1815. 
 
 1820s 
 
 Longfellow enrolls at Bowdoin 
 College, 1821, and graduates in 
 1825. 
 
 Longfellow travels across Europe 
 to prepare for his job as Professor 
 of Modem Languages, 1826-29. 
 
 An American Dictionary of the 
 English Language by Noah 
 Webster published, the first 
 expressly American dictionary, 
 1828. 
 
 4 THE BIG READ • National Endowment for the Arts 
 
Fanny Appleton, 1 834 
 
 "I never looked at her without a thrill of 
 pleasure; she never came into a room 
 where I was without my heart beating 
 quicker, nor went out without my 
 feeling that something of the light went 
 with her." 
 
 —HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW 
 referring to his wife Fanny, in an 1862 letter to 
 his sister-in-law 
 
 Nathan Appleton, she gave 
 Longfellow the cold shoulder 
 for many years. Meanwhile, his 
 literary career took off. By the 
 time his immediately successful 
 first collection of poetry, Voices of 
 the Nighty appeared in December 
 of 1839, the 32-year-old author 
 had already written or edited nine 
 volumes: six small textbooks in 
 Spanish, Italian, and French; a 
 book of verse translation; and two 
 prose works, Outre-Mer (1835) and 
 Hyperion (1839). 
 
 Fanny finally accepted his proposal 
 in 1843. Their happy and fulfilling 
 marriage revolved around their 
 
 home — her father purchased Craigie 
 House as their wedding present — 
 and their six children. Believing that 
 "women have so much to suffer," 
 Longfellow arranged for his wife 
 to be the first woman in the U.S. 
 to give birth under the influence 
 of ether. The poet witnessed a 
 daughter's healthy birth on April 7, 
 1847, but her death 17 months later 
 completely devastated him. 
 
 Professional success continued. 
 Collections of poetry such as 
 The Belfry of Bruges (1845) and 
 his bestselling narrative poem 
 Evangeline: A Tale of 
 Acadie(l847) sold 
 
 1830s 
 
 ary 
 
 )ngfellow, 
 rca 1833 
 
 Longfellow 
 anonymously 
 publishes Outre- 
 Mer, a collection of 
 travel writing. While 
 in Holland, his wife, 
 Mary, dies, 1835. 
 
 More than 14,000 
 Cherokee are forced 
 to give up their land 
 and move to what is now the 
 state of Oklahoma, walking the 
 "Trail of Tears," 1838-39. 
 
 1840s 
 
 Longfellow meets 
 Charles Dickens, who helps 
 inspire Poems on Slavery, 1 842. 
 
 Longfellow marries Fanny 
 Appleton, and her father buys 
 them Craigie House, 1843. 
 
 The Mexican War between the 
 U.S. and Mexico results in the 
 southern expansion of Texas and 
 the ceding of the California and 
 New Mexico territories to the 
 U.S.,1 846-48. 
 
 1850s 
 
 Charles Sumner, U.S. senator and 
 lifelong friend of Longfellow, is 
 physically attacked on the Senate 
 floor after an anti-slavery speech, 
 1856. 
 
 Longfellow's The Courtship of 
 Miles Standish and Other Poems 
 sells 25,000 copies in the first 
 two months and 10,000 copies 
 in London on its first publication 
 day, 1858. 
 
 National Endowment for the Arts • THE BIG READ 5 
 
Longfellow with his second wife, 
 Fanny, and their sons Charles and 
 Ernest, circa 1 849 
 
 so well that in 1854 he retired 
 from Harvard to devote himself to 
 writing full-time, thus becoming 
 America's first self-supporting poet. 
 The Song of Hiawatha (1855) and 
 The Courtship of Miles Standish and 
 Other Poems (1858) were published 
 to great acclaim in both America 
 and England. 
 
 Then tragedy struck again. On 
 July 9, 1861, Fanny's dress caught 
 on fire at Craigie House while she 
 was using hot wax to seal a package. 
 She ran into Longfellow's study, 
 
 where he tried to extinguish the 
 flames, but she died the next day. 
 He was so badly burned that he 
 could not attend her funeral. 
 
 Numb with shock and despair, 
 Longfellow nevertheless devoted 
 himself to his five remaining 
 children — the eldest was seventeen 
 and youngest was five when Fanny 
 died — and to his poetry, most 
 notably his Tales of a Wayside Inn 
 (1863-1873) and his translation 
 of Dante's The Divine Comedy 
 (1865-1867). He lived to see 
 the celebration of his birthday 
 as a national holiday and the 
 birth of two grandchildren. On 
 March 24, 1882, he died at home 
 from peritonitis and is buried in 
 Cambridge, Massachusetts. 
 
 THE LIFE AND TIMES OF 
 
 HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW 
 
 1860s 
 
 Abraham Lincoln becomes U.S. 
 president; the Civil War begins 
 when Confederate forces attack 
 Fort Sumter, 1861. 
 
 The Civil War ends with the 
 surrender of Confederate General 
 Robert E. Lee at Appomattox 
 Court House in Virginia; Lincoln 
 assassinated, 1865. 
 
 1870s 
 
 Longfellow meets President 
 Ulysses S.Grant, 1871. 
 
 In 1874, Longfellow begins 
 work on the anthology Poems of 
 Places, which will be published in 
 31 volumes by 1879. 
 
 Thomas Edison patents the 
 incandescent light bulb, 1879. 
 
 Longfellow's first grandchild is 
 bom, 1879. 
 
 The Thirteenth Amendment to 
 the U.S. Constitution is passed, 
 abolishing slavery in the U.S., 
 1865. 
 
 6 THE BIG READ • National Endowment for the Arts 
 
 1880s 
 
 Longfellow dies at age 75 on 
 March 24, 1882. 
 
 Longfellow becomes the first 
 American poet memorialized at 
 Westminster Abbey's 
 Poets' Comer, 1884. 
 
 A monument to 
 Longfellow stands 
 in Washington, 
 DC. 
 
Longfellow's Homes 
 
 Henry Wadsworth Longfellow lived in one of two houses for most 
 of his life: the Wadsworth-Longfellow House on Congress Street in 
 Portland, Maine, where he grew up; and Craigie House, a colonial 
 mansion in Cambridge, Massachusetts, where he lived from 1 837 until 
 his death in 1882. Both are open to the public. 
 
 CAMBRIDGE, MA 
 
 The handsome building on Brattle 
 Street now known as the Vassall- 
 Craigie-Longfellow House was 
 originally built in 1759 by John Vassall, 
 a wealthy royalist The house was 
 later used by George Washington 
 as his headquarters between July 
 1 775 and April 1 776 during the siege 
 of Boston. In 1 79 1 the house was 
 purchased by Andrew Craigie, the 
 Apothecary General (equivalent to 
 today's U.S. Surgeon General) during 
 the Revolutionary War. 
 
 Henry Wadsworth Longfellow 
 occupied Craigie House from 1 837 
 to 1882. Longfellow's descendants 
 preserved the house along with the 
 poet's collections and furnishings 
 until 1 972. The National Park Service 
 now maintains Craigie House as the 
 Longfellow National Historic Site. 
 
 www.nps.gov/long 
 
 PORTLAND, ME 
 
 The house in Portland was built by the 
 poet's maternal grandfather, General 
 Peleg Wadsworth, in 1785-1786. 
 Henry Wadsworth Longfellow grew 
 up in the house from 1 807 to 1 82 1 . 
 The last person to live there was 
 Anne Longfellow Pierce, Henry's 
 younger sister, who died in 1 90 1 . She 
 bequeathed the house to the Maine 
 Historical Society to be preserved as 
 a memorial to her famous brother 
 and their family. In June 2002, the 
 Maine Historical Society celebrated 
 the centennial of the Wadsworth- 
 Longfellow House as Maine's first 
 house museum open to the public. 
 
 www.hwlongfellow.org 
 
 National Endowment for the Arts • THE BIG READ 7 
 
Longfellow's Ballads and Lyric Poetry 
 
 Even if you can't recite any poems 
 by Longfellow, you may have used 
 some phrases from his work — 
 "Footprints on the sands of time" 
 (from "A Psalm of Life"), "The 
 patter of little feet" (from "The 
 Children's Hour"), or "Into each 
 life some rain must fall" (from "The 
 Rainy Day"). 
 
 Longfellow's first collection of 
 poems and translations, Voices of 
 the Night (1839), was an immediate 
 success. Edgar Allan Poe predicted 
 that its opening ballad, "Hymn to 
 the Night" — with the memorable 
 lines "I heard the trailing garments 
 of the Night / Sweep through her 
 marble halls!" — would endure as 
 a favorite. But "A Psalm of Life" 
 became the more popular poem, in 
 part because of the moral idealism 
 of lines like "Lives of great men all 
 remind us / We can make our lives 
 sublime." 
 
 If Voices of the Night revealed 
 Longfellow's mastery of lyric poetry 
 and his dexterity as a translator, 
 Ballads and Other Poems (1841) 
 revealed his other great strength: 
 storytelling. Ballads such as "The 
 Wreck of the Hesperus" — about 
 the heartbreaking death of a 
 young girl — and "The Village 
 Blacksmith" — a tribute to his 
 
 
 
 fl 
 
 
 ^^^^^^^^^^HB^ 4H 
 
 'iriwjf 
 
 
 |CZn& fjfflj 
 
 
 c 
 
 ! w\^^^B*\ — ^ ~^^3S^fc 
 
 ^^upd 
 
 Longfellow in his Craigie House 
 study, circa 1875 
 
 ancestor, Stephen Longfellow — 
 proved he could create a moving 
 and memorable story. 
 
 Longfellow-is righdy celebrated for 
 telling the diverse story of America, 
 but he also draws on his own life 
 in many of his shorter poems. 
 Written at age 48, "My Lost Youth' : 
 evokes the trees, ships, and sailors 
 of the poet's childhood in Portland, 
 Maine, with the refrain "A boy's 
 will is the wind's will, / And the 
 thoughts of youth are long, long 
 thoughts." 
 
 "The Children's Hour," a playful 
 ballad, expresses Longfellow's love 
 for his three daughters. When they 
 invade his study, the poet says: "I 
 
 8 THE BIG READ • National Endowment for the Arts 
 
But to me, a dreamer of dreams, 
 To whom what is and what seems 
 
 Are often one and the same, — 
 The Bells of San Bias to me 
 Have a strange, wild melody, 
 
 And are something more than a name. 
 
 —HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW 
 from his poem "The Bells of San Bias" (1882) 
 
 have you fast in my 
 fortress, / And will not 
 let you depart, / But 
 put you down into the 
 dungeon / In the round- 
 tower of my heart." 
 
 The Italian sonnet "Mezzo 
 Cammin" borrows its tide from 
 the opening line of Dante's 
 Inferno, which Longfellow himself 
 translated as "Midway upon the 
 journey of our life." Both poets 
 use this metaphor to describe 
 the age of thirty-five, the halfway 
 point in the Bible's allotted span 
 of human life, "three-score years 
 and ten." In "Mezzo Cammin," 
 Longfellow grieves not only for his 
 first wife's death — "sorrow, and 
 a care that almost killed" — but 
 also for his failure to achieve his 
 literary ambitions. Eighteen years 
 after his second wife's shocking 
 death, Longfellow's anguish 
 remains fresh in the sonnet tided 
 
 "The Cross of Snow." Despite the 
 enormous popularity of this first 
 poet-professor of the nineteenth 
 century, these two posthumously 
 published sonnets suggest the 
 intensely private life he kept inside, 
 as he once expressed in a letter: 
 "With me, all deep feelings are 
 silent ones." 
 
 National Endowment for the Arts • THE BIG READ 
 
vangeline: A Tatfe of Acadie 
 
 
 
 
 A masterpiece of American literature, 
 Evangeline: A Tale of Acadie (1847) 
 is a narrative poem of romantic 
 longing set against a tragic political 
 injustice. It tells a story of the 
 racial and religious persecution of a 
 minority who are dispossessed by an 
 imperial power and required to make 
 their way in a new land. British 
 troops forcibly relocate the French 
 Catholics from the little Canadian 
 village of Grand-Pre on the wedding 
 day of two young lovers, Evangeline 
 and Gabriel. Before they can be 
 married, the British fleet arrives, 
 burns the town, and forces the peace- 
 loving Acadian farmers into ships. In 
 the chaos, Evangeline and her fiance 
 become separated. Most of the poem 
 then describes her search for Gabriel, 
 which takes her all over America: 
 down the Mississippi River, across 
 
 the Nebraska prairie, into the Ozark 
 Mountains, through the Michigan 
 forests, and finally to Louisiana, 
 where her people ultimately become 
 the Cajuns (a name derived from 
 the word "Acadian"). Weary from 
 her journey, she eventually becomes 
 a nun, giving up hope for a reunion 
 with Gabriel. But years later as an 
 old woman, Evangeline finds her 
 beloved on his deathbed. After her 
 death, they are buried side by side in 
 a Catholic churchyard. 
 
 This tale may seem melodramatic, 
 but it is loosely based on a true 
 story. In 1840, Longfellow first 
 heard it from an Episcopal priest 
 in the company of his good friend 
 Nathaniel Hawthorne. On several 
 other occasions, this priest had 
 already urged Hawthorne to use the 
 
 | THE BIG READ • National Endowment for the Arts 
 
>!< &&- 
 
 
 
 4* 
 
 This is the forest primeval. The murmuring pines and the hemlocks, 
 Bearded with moss, and in garments green, indistinct in the twilight, 
 Stand like Druids of eld, with voices sad and prophetic, 
 Stand like harpers hoar, with beards that rest on their bosoms. 
 Loud from its rocky caverns, the deep-voiced neighboring ocean 
 Speaks, and in accents disconsolate answers the wail of the forest 
 
 stoiy for a novel, but Longfellow 
 asked Hawthorne if he might use 
 it for a poem. The poet reputedly 
 declared it "the best illustration of 
 faitJifulness and the constancy of 
 woman that I have ever heard of or 
 read." 
 
 Although he was never 
 primarily interested in 
 precise historical accuracy, 
 Longfellow nevertheless 
 researched le Grand 
 Derangement of 1755, or 
 The Great Upheaval, from 
 T.C. Haliburton's History 
 of Nova Scotia (1829). By 
 the time of Evangeline 's 
 1847 publication, most of 
 the world had forgotten 
 the deportation of 
 ) some 7,000 innocent 
 
 Canadians between 1755 and 1762. 
 The poem's sensational popularity 
 not only told the world of the 
 Acadians' exile but also brought its 
 author nationwide fame. 
 
 Evangeline is an extraordinary 
 work of literary experimentation. 
 Longfellow's unprecedented mastery 
 of versification grew from his 
 attempts to recreate classical poetic 
 meters in English. For about 500 
 years, English-language poets had 
 been trying to make the dactylic 
 hexameter of Latin and Greek work 
 in English — the ancient meter in 
 which Homer and Virgil wrote. 
 Longfellow achieved the only 
 conspicuous success in English. In 
 Evangeline, he created a tune for 
 English that had never existed before 
 in verse. 
 
 m? 
 
 Statue of Evangeline in 
 Nova Scotia, Canada 
 
 National Endowment for the Arts 'THE BIG READ | | 
 
Longfellow's Tales of a Wayside Inn 
 
 Introduction 
 
 Like Evangeline, Longfellow's 
 narrative poem Tales of a 
 Wayside Inn remains surprisingly 
 contemporary in its concerns. 
 Published in three parts between 
 1863 and 1873, Tales of a Wayside 
 Inn celebrates what we now call 
 multiculturalism, and its stories 
 are openly concerned with 
 environmental sensitivity, religious 
 tolerance, political freedom, and 
 charity. Longfellow's poem — 
 roughly modeled after Boccaccio's 
 Decameron and Chaucer's The 
 Canterbury Tales — consists of 
 twenty-two tales in verse told by a 
 sundry group of travelers over three 
 days at the Red Horse Tavern in 
 Sudbury, Massachusetts, which was 
 a stagecoach stop about twenty miles 
 from Cambridge. 
 
 Prelude: "The Wayside Inn" 
 
 The poem begins with a prelude 
 that inuoduces a diverse group 
 of storytellers — a Sicilian political 
 refugee, a Spanish Jew, a Norwegian 
 musician, a youthful student, a broad- 
 minded theologian, and a tender- 
 hearted poet. The stories draw from 
 all their ethnic traditions, told in an 
 astonishing array of meuical forms. 
 Longfellow draws from medieval, 
 colonial, and romantic sources for all 
 the tales except for The Poets Tale, 
 tided "The Birds of Killingworth." 
 This poem, as well as "Paul Revere's 
 Ride," "The Legend Beautiful," 
 "Azrael," and "The Monk of Casal- 
 Maggiore," rank among some of the 
 best short American narrative poems 
 ever written. The Yankee landlord, 
 based on the real-life innkeeper 
 named Lyman Howe, begins the 
 narrative. 
 
 Longfellow's Wayside Inn was originally 
 known as Howe's Tavern from 1 7 1 6 to 
 1 86 1 . (It was later called the Red Horse 
 Tavern.) The first innkeeper, David 
 Howe, operated what was then called 
 a "house of entertainment" along the 
 old Boston Post Road in the same spot 
 where the Wayside Inn stands today. 
 Longfellow visited the tavern in 1 862. 
 
 www.wayside. 
 
 | 2 THE BIG READ • National Endowment for the Arts 
 
The Landlord's Tale: 
 "Paul Revere's Ride" 
 
 Listen, my children, and you shall hear 
 
 Of the midnight ride of Paul Revere, 
 
 On the eighteenth of April, in Seventy-five; 
 
 Hardly a man is now alive 
 
 Who remembers that famous day and year. 
 
 These opening lines of "Paul 
 Revere's Ride" are so famous that 
 even people who have not read 
 the entire poem often know them 
 by heart. By invoking children in 
 the opening line of his patriotic 
 poem, Longfellow implicidy defines 
 his narrative as a story the older 
 generation considers important 
 enough to pass down to posterity. 
 Perhaps for this reason, Longfellow 
 placed "Paul Revere's Ride" as the 
 first story told in Tales of a Wayside 
 Inn. 
 
 Everyone in Longfellow's original 
 audience would have understood 
 
 the significance of April 18, 1775: 
 it was the day before the American 
 Revolution began. The next morning 
 at Lexington and Concord, the 
 American colonists fired their "shot 
 heard round the world" and initiated 
 their ultimately successful armed 
 resistance against the British Empire. 
 
 The real Paul Revere was one of 
 many patriots who spread the 
 warning to "every Middlesex village 
 and farm." Biographer Charles 
 Calhoun says, "Had it not been for 
 the poem, Revere would probably 
 be remembered today only for his 
 skill as a silversmith, but Longfellow 
 single-handedly elevated him to the 
 Revolutionary pantheon." Reading 
 the poem against the backdrop of 
 America's impending Civil War — 
 its original publication date was 
 1860, a year before the firing on 
 Fort Sumter — suggests an even 
 deeper level of meaning. 
 
 y^ A region of repose it seems 
 
 A place of slumber and of dreams, 
 Remote among the wooded hills! 
 
 — from the Prelude of Tales of a Wayside Inn 
 
 '" i I 
 
 r 
 
 
 M 
 
 1 
 
 
 
 
 Longfellow's characters at the Wayside Inn 
 
 National Endowment for the Arts • THE BIG READ | 3 
 
Longfellow and Other Arts 
 
 BY DANA GIOIA 
 
 Longfellow's fame was not merely 
 literary. His poetry exercised a broad 
 cultural influence that today seems 
 more typical of movies or popular 
 music than anything we might 
 imagine possible for poetry. His 
 poems became subjects for songs, 
 choral works, operas, musicals, plays, 
 paintings, symphonies, pageants, 
 and eventually films. Evangeline, for 
 instance, was adapted into an opera, 
 a cantata, a tone poem, a song 
 cycle, and even a touring musical 
 burlesque show. Later, it became a 
 movie five times — the last in 1929 
 starring Dolores del Rio, who sang 
 two songs to celebrate Longfellow's 
 arrival in talkies. "The Village 
 Blacksmith" became a film at least 
 eight times, if one counts cartoons 
 and parodies, including John Ford's 
 1922 adaptation, which updated the 
 protagonist into an auto mechanic. 
 
 The Song of Hiawatha not only 
 provided American artists, 
 composers, cartoonists, and directors 
 with a popular subject, it gave 
 Antonin Dvorak the inspiration 
 for two movements of his "New 
 World" symphony. It also provided 
 the Anglo-African composer Samuel 
 Coleridge-Taylor with texts for 
 three immensely popular cantatas, 
 
 %** 
 
 tto* 
 
 Virsi 
 
 fi« ie ' 
 
 
 which until World War II were 
 performed annually in a 
 two-week festival 
 at Royal Albert 
 Hall by almost a 
 thousand British 
 choristers dressed as 
 Indians. Hiawatha s 
 cultural currency was 
 so high that it was not 
 only translated into 
 virtually every modern 
 European language but 
 also into Latin. It was 
 even recast as English 
 prose — the way a popular 
 movie today is "novelized" in 
 paperback — and it eventually 
 became a comic book written in 
 Longfellow's original meter. 
 
 "Paul Revere's Ride" prompted too 
 many adaptations to list, though 
 painter Grant Wood's witty version 
 underlines the poem's status as 
 national icon. Composer Charles Ives's 
 setting of "The Children's Hour" (later 
 choreographed by Jerome Robbins 
 for Ives Songs) may also have a touch 
 of irony, but it mainly luxuriates in 
 the poem's celebration of domesticity, 
 for Longfellow's emotional directness 
 appealed immensely to composers. 
 There are over seven hundred musical 
 settings of his work in the Bowdoin 
 College Library. 
 
 , the a 
 
 tee" 
 
 14 THE BIG READ • National Endowment for the Arts 
 
Sheet music for "Paul 
 Revere's Ride" 
 
 Paul Revere's Ride 
 
 Hiawatha movie 
 handbill, circa 
 1952 
 
 The 1929 silent film 
 adaptation of Evangeline 
 starred Dolores del Rio and 
 Roland Drew. 
 
 Other Books You 
 Might Enjoy 
 
 Paul Revere's Ride by David 
 Hackett Fischer (1 994) 
 
 The Dante Club by Matthew 
 Pearl (2003) 
 
 Songs of Ourselves: The Uses 
 of Poetry in America by Joan 
 Shelley Rubin (2007) 
 
 Discussion Questions 
 
 Why was Henry Wadsworth 
 Longfellow so popular with his 
 original audience? Which of these 
 reasons remain valid today? 
 
 Longfellow is often thought of as 
 the poet who gave voice to the 
 experiences and emotions of the 
 common person. What examples 
 of this do you see in his poetry? 
 
 Poetry usually must be emotional 
 to be effective, but some readers 
 may then disapprovingly call it 
 sentimental. Are there moments 
 where Longfellow risks this 
 accusation of sentimentality to 
 make an emotional point? 
 
 What might Longfellow's 
 Evangeline tell us about ethnic 
 cleansing, about racial and 
 religious persecution? How 
 relevant is this poem for the 
 21st century? 
 
 Longfellow was a national figure 
 because he wrote for a diverse 
 audience about broad themes. 
 What contemporary writers or 
 artists have a similar position 
 today? 
 
 In his poems and storytelling, 
 what is Longfellow's lasting 
 cultural legacy? 
 
 National Endowment for the Arts • THE BIG READ | 5 
 
Additional Resources 
 
 The Poetry of Henry Wadsworth 
 Longfellow 
 
 The most comprehensive, available 
 collection of Longfellow's poetry is 
 Henry Wadsworth Longfellow: Poems 
 and Other Writings, edited by J.D. 
 McClatchy, published in hardback 
 by the Library of America (2000). It 
 includes selections from thirteen of 
 Longfellow's collections of poetry, 
 the unabridged Evangeline and The 
 Courtship of Miles Standish, and a 
 chronology of the poet's life. 
 
 An unabridged version of Tales 
 of a Wayside Inn is published by 
 Longfellow's Wayside Inn (Sudbury, 
 MA: 1995). 
 
 Paperback versions of Longfellow's 
 verse include Henry Wadsworth 
 Longfellow: Selected Poems, with an 
 introduction by Lawrence Buell 
 (New York: Penguin, 1988), and 
 Evangeline and Selected Tales and 
 Poems, with an introduction by 
 Horace Gregory (New York: Signet, 
 2005). 
 
 Longfellow's translation of Dante's 
 Inferno is available from Modern 
 Library (2003), based on his 1867 
 translation, with a preface by 
 Matthew Pearl and an introduction 
 by Lino Pertile. 
 
 In 2007, the United States 
 Postal Service issued 
 this stamp in honor of 
 Longfellow's bicentennial. 
 
 Selected Books about Longfellow 
 and His Poetry 
 
 Calhoun, Charles C. Longfellow: A 
 Rediscovered Life. Boston: Beacon 
 Press, 2004. 
 
 Gale, Robert L. A Henry Wadsworth 
 Longfellow Companion. Westport, 
 CT: Greenwood Press, 2003. 
 
 Henry Wadsworth Longfellow and 
 His Portland Home. Portland, ME: 
 Maine Historical Society, 2004. 
 
 Irmscher, Christoph. Longfellow 
 Redux. Urbana: University of Illinois 
 Press, 2006. 
 
 Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth. 
 The Letters of Henry Wadsworth 
 Longfellow. Ed. Andrew Hilen. 
 6 vols. Cambridge, MA: Belknap, 
 1966-82. 
 
 | 6 THE BIG READ • National Endowment for the Arts 
 
NATIONAL 
 ENDOWMENT 
 FORTHE ARTS 
 
 _ _ INSTITUTE of , ., 
 
 MuseurriandLibrary 
 
 SERVICES 
 
 AH 
 
 MIDWEST 
 
 POETRY 
 
 The National Endowment for the Arts is a public agency dedicated to 
 supporting excellence in the arts — both new and established — bringing the 
 arts to all Americans, and providing leadership in arts education. Established 
 by Congress in 1965 as an independent agency of the federal government, the 
 Endowment is the nation's largest annual funder of the arts, bringing great art 
 to all 50 states, including rural areas, inner cities, and military bases. 
 
 The Institute of Museum and Library Services is the primary source of federal 
 support for the nation's 122,000 libraries and 17,500 museums. The Institute's 
 mission is to create strong libraries and museums that connect people to 
 information and ideas. The Institute works at the national level and in coordination 
 with state and local organizations to sustain heritage, culture, and knowledge; 
 enhance learning and innovation; and support professional development. 
 
 Arts Midwest connects people throughout the Midwest and the world to 
 meaningful arts opportunities, sharing creativity, knowledge, and understanding 
 across boundaries. One of six non-profit regional arts organizations in the United 
 States, Arts Midwest's history spans more than 25 years. 
 
 The Poetry Foundation, publisher of Poetry magazine, is an independent literary 
 organization committed to a vigorous presence for poetry in our culture. It has 
 embarked on an ambitious plan to bring the best poetry before the largest possible 
 audiences. 
 
 OUNDATION 
 
 Works Consulted 
 
 Calhoun, Charles C. Longfellow: A Rediscovered Life. Boston: Beacon Press, 2004. 
 
 Irmscher, Christoph. Public Poet, Private Man: Henry Wadsworth Longfellow at 200. Harvard Library Bulletin, Vol. 17: 
 Num. 34. Fall-Winter 2006. 
 
 Works Cited 
 
 Gioia, Dana. "Longfellow in the Aftermath of Modernism." Disappearing Ink: Poetry at the End of Print Culture. St. 
 Paul, MN: Graywolf Press, 2004. Used with permission of Dana Gioia. 
 
 Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow: Poems and Other Writings. Ed. J.D. McClatchy. New 
 York: Library of America, 2000. 
 
 Some text in the timeline (pages 4-6), the text on page 7, and the caption on page 12, is cited from 
 www.hwlongfeUow.org (used with permission of the Maine Historical Society), www.nps.gov/long {used with permission 
 of the Longfellow National Historic Site) and www.wayside.org (used with permission of Longfellow's Wayside Inn). 
 
 Acknowledgments 
 
 David Kipen, NEA Director of Literature, National Reading Initiatives 
 
 Writers: Dana Gioia and Erika Koss for the National Endowment for the Arts 
 
 Series Editor: Erika Koss for the National Endowment for the Arts 
 
 Image Editor: Dan Brady for the National Endowment for the Arts 
 
 Graphic Design: Fletcher Design/Washington, DC 
 
 Special thanks to James Shea and Anita Israel of the Longfellow National Historic Site, Cynthia Hall Koure of 
 
 Longfellow's Wayside Inn, Richard D'Abate and Alissa Lane of the Maine Historical Society, and Charles Calhoun. 
 
 Image Credits 
 
 Cover Portrait John Sherffius for The Big Read. Inside Front Cover: Photo courtesy of the Longfellow National Historic Site. Page 1: Dana Gioia, 
 image by Vance Jacobs; John Barr, courtesy of the Poetry Foundation. Page 2: © Altrendo/Getty Images. Page 5: Portrait of Henry Wadsworth 
 Longfellow by Cephus Giovanni Thompson, courtesy of the Longfellow National Historic Site; Portrait of Frances Elizabeth Appleton Longfellow by 
 George Peter Alexander Healy courtesy of the Longfellow National Historic Site; Portrait of Mary Storer Potter courtesy of the Maine Historical Society. 
 Page 6: Longfellow family portrait courtesy of the Longfellow National Historic Site; Longfellow Monument in Washington, DC, photo courtesy 
 of Dan Brady. Page 7: Photo of the Wadsworth-Longfellow House courtesy of the Maine Historical Society, photo of the Craigie House courtesy of 
 the Longfellow National Historic Site. Pages 8-9: Photos courtesy of the Longfellow National Historic Site. Pages 10-11: Yakushima Forest © 2007 
 Jeremy Hedley, Statue photo courtesy of the Archives of Ontario, Ministry of Government Services. Pages 12-13: Image of the Wayside Inn courtesy 
 of Longfellow's Wayside Inn; Engraving courtesy of the Longfellow National Historic Site. Pages 14-15: Hiawatha handbill courtesy of the Maine 
 Historical Society; Paul Revere sheet music courtesy of the Longfellow National Historic Site; Evangeline image courtesy of Milestone Film & Video. 
 Page 16: Henry Longfellow Stamp Design © 2007 United States Postal Service. All Rights Reserved. Used with Permission. 
 
 This publication is published by: 
 National Endowment for the Arts 
 
 (202) 682-5400 • www.nea.gov 
 
 1 100 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW. 
 
 Washington, DC 20506-0001 
 
 www.NEABigRead.org 
 
 January 2008 
 
NATIONAL 
 ENDOWMENT 
 FOR THE ARTS 
 
 Lives of great men all remind us 
 
 We can make our lives sublime, 
 And, departing, leave behind us 
 
 Footprints on the sands of time... 
 
 —HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW 
 from his poem "A Psalm of Life" 
 
 The Big Read is an initiative of the National Endowment for 
 the Arts designed to restore reading to the center of American 
 culture. The NEA presents The Big Read in partnership 
 with the Institute of Museum and Library Sewices and in 
 cooperation with Arts Midwest. Longfellow educational 
 materials are made possible through the generous support of 
 the Poetry Foundation. 
 
 A great nation deserves great art. 
 
 Museum.ndLibrary