237 Famous Quotes by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
2/27/1807 - 3/24/1984
Also Known As:
Wadsworth Henry Longfellow
Henry W Longfellow
Professions:
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About Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow was an American poet and educator whose works include "Paul Revere's Ride", The Song of Hiawatha, and Evangeline. He was also the first American to translate Dante Alighieri's The Divine Comedy and was one of the five Fireside Poets.
Longfellow was born in Portland, Maine, then part of Massachusetts, and studied at Bowdoin College. After spending time in Europe he became a professor at Bowdoin and, later, at Harvard College. His first major poetry collections were Voices of the Night and Ballads and Other Poems. Longfellow retired from teaching in 1854 to focus on his writing, living the remainder of his life in Cambridge, Massachusetts, in a former headquarters of George Washington. His first wife Mary Potter died in 1835 after a miscarriage. His second wife Frances Appleton died in 1861 after sustaining burns when her dress caught fire. After her death, Longfellow had difficulty writing poetry for a time and focused on his translation. He died in 1882.
Longfellow wrote predominantly lyric poems, known for their musicality and often presenting stories of mythology and legend. He became the most popular American poet of his day and also had success overseas. He has been criticized, however, for imitating European styles and writing specifically for the masses.
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Even the blackest of them all, the crow,
Renders good service as your man-at-arms,
Crushing the beetle in his coat of mail,
And crying havoc on the slug and snail.
- Henry Wadsworth Longfellow,
Crows
Quotes, by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow , Source: Tales of a Wayside Inn--The Poet's Tale--Birds of Killingworth (st. 19)
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Good-night! good-night! as we so oft have said
Beneath this roof at midnight, in the days
That are no more, and shall no more return.
Thou hast but taken up thy lamp and gone to bed;
I stay a little longer, as one stays
To cover up the embers that still burn.
Parting
Quotes, by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow , Source: Three Friends of Mine (pt. IV)
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Multitudinous echoes awoke and died in the distance.
. . . .
And, when the echoes had ceased, like a sense of pain was the
silence.
Echo
Quotes, by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow , Source: Evangeline (pt. II, l. 56)
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It was Autumn, and incessant
Piped the quails from shocks and sheaves,
And, like living coals, the apples
Burned among the withering leaves.
Autumn
Quotes, by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow , Source: Pegasus in Pound
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The holiest of all holidays are those
Kept by ourselves in silence and apart;
The secret anniversaries of the heart,
When the full river of feeling overflows;--
The happy days unclouded to their close;
The sudden joys that our of darkness start
As flames from ashes; swift desires that dart
Like swallows singing down each wind that blows!
Holidays
Quotes, by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow , Source: Holidays (l. 1)
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I love the season well
When forest glades are teeming with bright forms,
Nor dark and many-folded clouds foretell
The coming of storms.
April
Quotes, by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow , Source: An April Day (st. 8)
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It is a dream, sweet child! a waking dream,
A blissful certainty, a vision bright,
Of that rare happiness, which even on earth
Heaven gives to those it loves.
Visions
Quotes, by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow , Source: Spanish Student (act III, sc. 5)
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Day, like a weary pilgrim, had reached the western gate of
heaven, and Evening stooped down to unloose the latchets of his
sandal shoon.
Evening
Quotes, by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow , Source: Hyperion (bk. IV, ch. V)
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Where should the scholar live? In solitude, or in society? in
the green stillness of the country, where he can hear the heart
of Nature beat, or in the dark, gray town where he can hear and
feel the throbbing heart of man?
Students
Quotes, by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow , Source: Hyperion (bk. I, ch. VIII)
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Morality without religion is only a kind of dead reckoning,--an
endeavor to find our place on a cloudy sea by measuring the
distance we have run, but without any observation of the heavenly
bodies.
Morality
Quotes, by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow , Source: Kavanagh (ch. XIII)
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World-wide apart, and yet akin,
As showing that the human heart
Beats on forever as of old.
Sympathy
Quotes, by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow , Source: Tales of a Wayside Inn (pt. III, The Theologian's Tale, Interlude)
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