Get that frown off your head
‘Cause you’re a long time dead
Life goes on and on and on
The Kinks – Life Goes On
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow is long dead. In fact, at this writing, he is 141 years dead, nearly double the 75 years he lived. He was born in the Portland District of Massachusetts in 1807. In 1820, the Missouri Compromise created the free State of Maine and the slave State of Missouri.
He lived some forty years in Cambridge, Massachusetts. The house was General George Washington’s headquarters for a time. He went on to the next (aka died) on March 24, 1882. He was so old that he lived long enough for the word old to lose its silent e.
He compiled an impressive batch of greatest hits poetry:
Listen, my children, and you shall hear, of the midnight ride of Paul Revere;
I shot an arrow into the air, It fell to earth, I knew not where;
Thy fate is the common fate of all, Into each life some rain must fall, Some days must be dark and dreary;
On the shores of Gitche Gumee, Of the shining Big-Sea-Water, Stood Nokomis, the old woman, Pointing with her finger westward.
I am not sure, but Patti Labell may have lifted Longfellow with Creole Lady Marmalade: Itchi gitchi ya ya da da, Itchi gitchi ya ya here, Mocha-choca-lata ya ya.
I had cause recently to reconsider Longfellow beyond his greatest hits.
Meandering through resources focused on ancient philosophy, I came across an 1863 Atlantic Monthly article by Longfellow, “Pericles and Lincoln.” It was a deep dive into the world before philosophy, moved on to Sparta vs. Athens, and then to the U.S. Civil War.
In short, Longfellow writes that in Sparta/Athens Greece and America strife arises out of conflict between the interests of an oligarchy based upon slavery and a democracy suggesting that slavery can be “dispensed with without any radical revolution.” As for Pericles and Lincoln, writes Longfellow, “each stands illustrious as the last reach upward of the towering civilizations that respectively pushed them to this eminence.”
Two years earlier, Longfellow published Paul Revere’s Ride in the January 1861 issue of the Atlantic Monthly. Three months later, on April 12th confederates bombarded Fort Sumter in South Carolina.
In a 2017 Atlantic article, author Sage Stossel was quoted saying, that the poem created “a patriotic national myth that would remind readers of their shared heroic past while galvanizing them to once more to stand up for the nation’s founding principles.”
Atlantic Poetry Editor David Barber called Longfellow “the native bard who gave mythic dimension to the country’s historical imagination, a national poet of epic sweep and solemn feeling who came along right at the moment when the emerging nation had the most need for one.”
Longfellow is indeed a long time dead. Yet, his words live on, including 11 poetry collections, two novels, three epic poems, several plays, and he translated fourteen thousand two hundred and seventy-eight lines of Dante’s Divina Commedia (Divine Comedy for those of us who sat in the last seat in English class).
His best work was helping Americans recognize who they were, what they could be, and the importance of defending democracy.
Notes:
The Kinks – Life Goes On Lyrics | Genius Lyrics
The Arrow and the Song | Poetry Out Loud
The Rainy Day by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow – Famous poems, famous poets. – All Poetry
Longfellow: The Song of Hiawatha, The Song of Hiawatha (hwlongfellow.org)
https://poets.org/poem/paul-reveres-ride
Neklason, A. (2017, April 19). Poem of the Day: ‘Paul Revere’s Ride’ by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. The Atlantic. https://www.theatlantic.com/culture/archive/2017/04/poem-of-the-day-paul-reveres-ride-by-henry-wadsworth-longfellow/622464/
McGrath, C. (2020, June 4). Cross Of Snow: A Life of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow by Nicholas A. Basbanes (Book Review). New York Times. https://rb.gy/hrfjn
Longfellow, H. W. (1863, March 1). Pericles and President Lincoln. Atlantic Monthly. https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1863/03/pericles-and-president-lincoln/629080/