Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807–82) is one of America’s best-known poets, recognized for his insistent moral tone, sentimentality, and serene idealism. He is best remembered for such poems as “The Wreck of the Hesperus” and “The Village Blacksmith” (both 1841) and for narrative poems such as “Evangeline” (1847,) “The Song of Hiawatha” (1855,) and “Paul Revere’s Ride” (1861.)
Longfellow also produced a translation of Dante Alighieri’s Divine Comedy (1867.) His poems, such as “There was a little girl,” remain familiar to this day as rhymes and melodies.
Longfellow’s prose romance Hyperion (1839,) his tale of a young man who seeks to forget sorrow in travel, was a result of his grief after the death of his first wife in 1835. Longfellow’s creative life was again interrupted by the 1861 death of his second wife, who was burned to death in a domestic accident.
More: Wikipedia • READ: Works by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Art is the child of Nature; yes, her darling child, in whom we trace the features of the mother’s face, her aspect and her attitude.
—Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Topics: Art, Arts, Artists
Not enjoyment, and not sorrow,
Is our destined end or way;
But to act, that each to-morrow
Find us farther than to-day.
—Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Topics: The Future, Tomorrow
It is difficult to know at what moment love begins; it is less difficult to know that it has begun.
—Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Topics: Love
Every man has a paradise around him till he sins and the angel of an accusing conscience drives him from his Eden. And even then there are holy hours, when this angel sleeps, and man comes back, and with the innocent eyes of a child looks into his lost paradise again—into the broad gates and rural solitudes of nature.
—Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Topics: Paradise
Silence is a great peacemaker.
—Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Topics: Silence
Nor deem the irrevocable past
As wholly wasted, wholly vain,
If, rising on its wrecks, at last
To something nobler we attain.
—Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Topics: Past, Reflection
Genius is infinite painstaking.
—Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Topics: Genius
The evening came.—The setting sun stretched his celestial rods of light across the level landscape, and like the miracle in Egypt, smote the rivers, the brooks, and the ponds, and they became as blood.
—Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Many men do not allow their principles to take root, but pull them up every now and then, as children do the flowers they have planted, to see if they are growing.
—Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Topics: Principles
Let nothing disturb thee, Let nothing affright thee, All things are passing, God changeth never.
—Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Topics: Difficulty
Be still, sad heart! And cease repining; behind the clouds is the sun still shining; thy fate is the common fate of all, into each life some rain must fall.
—Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Topics: Difficulties, Difficulty, Love
Man-like it is, to fall into sin; fiend like it is, to dwell therein; Christ-like it is, for sin to grieve; God-like it is, all sin to leave.
—Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Topics: Sin
Joy, temperance, and repose, slam the door on the doctor’s nose.
—Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Topics: Health
Life is real! Life is earnest!
And the grave is not its goal;
Dust thou art, to dust returnest,
Was not spoken of the soul.
—Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
It is a beautiful trait in the lovers character, that they think no evil of the object loved.
—Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Topics: Lovers, Love
To be seventy years old is like climbing the Alps. You reach a snow-crowned summit, and see behind you the deep valley stretching miles and miles away, and before you other summits higher and whiter, which you may have strength to climb, or may not. Then you sit down and meditate and wonder which it will be.
—Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Topics: Age, Aging
Write on your doors the saying wise and old. “Be bold!” and everywhere—“Be bold; Be not too bold!” Yet better the excess Than the defect; better the more than less sustaineth him and the steadiness of his mind beareth him out.
—Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Topics: Bravery, Courage
Oh, the long and dreary winter! Oh, the cold and cruel winter.
—Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Topics: Seasons
I venerate old age; and I love not the man who can look without emotion upon the sunset of life, when the dusk of evening begins to gather over the watery eye, and the shadows of twilight grow broader and deeper upon the understanding.
—Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Topics: Aging, Age
Yes, we must ever be friends; and of all who offer you friendship Let me be ever the first, the truest, the nearest and dearest!
—Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Topics: Friends and Friendship, Friendship
All things come round to him who will but wait.
—Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Topics: Patience, Resilience
Silent, one by one, in the infinite meadows of heaven, blossomed the lovely stars, the forget-me-nots of angels.
—Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Topics: Stars
The life of a man consists not in seeing visions and in dreaming dreams, but in active charity and in willing service.
—Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Topics: Service
Thy voice is celestial melody.
—Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
The adoration of his heart had been to her only as the perfume of a wild flower, which she had carelessly crushed with her foot in passing.
—Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Softly the evening came. The sun from the western horizon
Like a magician extended his golden wand o’er the landscape;
Twinkling vapors arose; and sky and water and forest
Seemed all on fire at the touch, and melted and mingled together.
—Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Fleeting as were the dreams of old, remembered like a tale that’s told, we pass away.
—Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Topics: Life
The student has his Rome, his Florence, his whole glowing Italy, within the four walls of his library. He has in his books the ruins of an antique world and the glories of a modern one.
—Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Topics: Libraries
All things are symbols: the external shows of Nature have their image in the mind
—Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Topics: Wilderness
In character, in manners, in style, in all things, the supreme excellence is simplicity.
—Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Topics: Simplicity
O, how wonderful is the human voice! It is indeed the organ of the soul! The intellect of man sits enthroned visibly upon his forehead and in his eye; and the heart of man is written upon his countenance. But the soul reveals itself in the voice only; as God revealed himself to the prophet of old in the still, small voice; and in a voice from the burning bush. The soul of man is audible, not visible. A sound alone betrays the flowing of the eternal fountain, invisible to man!
—Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Topics: Singing, Soul
The strength of criticism lies in the weakness of the thing criticized.
—Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Topics: Critics, Criticism
It is folly to pretend that one ever wholly recovers from a disappointed passion. Such wounds always leave a scar. There are faces I can never look upon without emotion; there are names I can never hear spoken without almost starting.
—Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Topics: Passion, Love
But the nearer the dawn the darker the night, And by going wrong all things come right; Things have been mended that were worse, And the worse, the nearer they are to mend.
—Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Fame comes only when deserved, and then is as inevitable as destiny, for it is destiny.
—Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Topics: Fame
Mercy more becomes a magistrate than the vindictive wrath which men call justice.
—Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Topics: Mercy
Sail on ship of state, sail on, I union, strong and great! Humanity with all its fears, with all its hopes of future years, is hanging on thy fate!
—Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Topics: Fate
A torn jacket is soon mended; but hard words bruise the heart of a child.
—Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Topics: Children
I heard the bells on Christmas Day
Their old, familiar carols play,
And wild and sweet
The words repeat
Of peace on earth, good-will to men!
—Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Topics: Christmas
Yea, music is the prophet’s art; among the gifts that God hath sent, one of the most magnificent.
—Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Topics: Music
Wondering Whom to Read Next?
James Russell Lowell American Poet, Critic
Nathaniel Parker Willis American Poet, Playwright
Celia Thaxter American Poet
Edna St. Vincent Millay American Poet
Emily Dickinson American Poet
Edgar Allan Poe American Poet
John Greenleaf Whittier American Poet, Abolitionist
Thomas Bailey Aldrich American Writer
Josiah Gilbert Holland American Editor, Novelist
John Ciardi American Poet