Such is his ideal of the poet's functions, and he is himself the best illustration of their noble employment. As a youth, he touched indeed a golden lyre in groves and oy streams, by the light of stars, on Alpine pinnacles straining toward the voice which cried "Excelsior!" He sang the beautiful He sang the beautiful psalm of life" what the heart of the young man said to the psalmist;" with bated breath he heard the "footsteps of angels," "when the forms of the departed enter at the open door."

Then the music changes. As a bearded man he stirs the listening crowd in the market-place with his tearful story of Evangeline, addressed to all hearts; with his "Building of the Ship," addressed to all patriots; with his Indian song of "Hiawatha."

sang

Then as a gray old man, like him who in cathedrals dim and vast, he took up the chant of the mystery of Christ; he sang in English accordant with the terza rima of Dante of hell, purgatory and paradise; and at last, on the fiftieth anniversary of the day of his graduation, he sounded for himself and his classmates a farewell to his alma mater in his "Morituri te Salutamus." There was no discord in the changes of his poet-life. He always sang to "charm, to strengthen and to teach," and every ear was intent to catch the harmonious notes. There is no affectation of hidden meanings: he takes the serious, tender thoughts of our common humanity and puts them into the fittest words; so that when in our moods we think them again we speak them in his own language. This may not be in itself the highest poetry, but it is better, as the true singer is more useful and more satisfying than the poet. The simple singer gives

counsel, sympathy, consolation, instruction. Instead of being forced into an attitude of intellectual acuteness and resistance, we go out to meet him; we crave and accept.

Such is an explanation of the success of "Evangeline." It is an American subject; it is a sentimental subject the exile and wanderings of two lovers of that Acadian band expatriated by the British; it is a pastoral, pleasing by the simple charms of the quaint country-side and country-personages of the French colonists, pure in sentiment, liberal in religion, full of gospel charity. In addition to all this, it presents a curious study in prosody—the use of hexameters, always so doubtful in English and by no means entirely successful in the poet's hands. It may indeed be claimed as the most ambitious of his works, and yet it can hardly be doubted that he owed the suggestion to Goethe's "Hermann and Dorothea." And yet what would our literature be without 'Evangeline"?

Another tour-de-force, so gracefully managed and so strikingly presented that there is nothing disagreeable in the stratagem, is the "Song of Hiawatha," in which we have somewhat of the Indian mythology, not departing much from the authorities, but securing attention from its national and popular interest. The somewhat unusual measure the trochaic tetrameter-seems not illapplied to the utterances of Indian wisdom. and pathos. It contains a few descriptions of men and women more grotesque than ideal, too theatrical to be real, and yet with some exquisite touches of that nature which makes the whole world kin.

Unlike most poets who make their doubt

ful first essays in translation, Longfellow counts among his most finished and effective pieces versions of European poems which do more than justice to the originals. Such is "The Children of the Lord's Supper," from Bishop Tegnér; such his "Into the Silent Land," the "Coplas de Manrique," the Blind Girl of the Castel Cuillé," by Jasmin, "the last of the troubadours." Everybody knows "a maiden fair to see," but everybody does not "beware!" Of his Of his "Building of the Ship" the enthusiastic popular verdict is heard from a thousand voices as they chant,

“Thou too sail on, O Ship of State! Sail on, O Union, strong and great! Humanity, with all its fears,

With all its hopes for future years, Is hanging breathless on thy fate."

It is with no feeling of detraction that we cannot fail to observe how it must have been suggested by the poem of Schiller, "Das Lied von der Glocke "("The Song of the Bell"). | As the bell is founded the ship is built; the fortunes of multitudes are figured in both; and, while upon the bell the bell "Concordia" is inscribed, the name of the good ship, built of "cedar of Maine and Georgia pine," is "The Union." With these features the resemblance ceases the handling is his own and the diction simply perfect.

The genial nature of the poet is everywhere adorned, though never overloaded, with the charms of an extensive scholarship and the skill of a consummate rhetorician, and yet he is always simple and intelligible to all. Unfortunately, much of the apparent mysticism of poetry is found in the fact that many poets, not content with the natural ex

pression of their thoughts, veil them in fig-. ures of speech and forms of rhetoric which require the reader to study before he can understand and enjoy. To use a figure, they pose for purpose; they count upon the effect of a rapt air, a look of inspiration, a wand of mystery. This is to be observed in Byron and in Thomas Moore. Such is often the case with Wordsworth in his forced simplicity; such is eminently true of Browning in his larger poems; of Tennyson in his "Two Voices," "The Talking Oak," and even in those exquisite poems "Enone" and "A Dream of Fair Women." This fault is never Longfellow's; he comes to you at once presenting his clear thought, and thus he reaches the hearts of men as with the salutation of a friend and the hearty grasp of a loving brother. Thus genial, pure, dignified, he uses neither force nor legerdemain to bring you into his moods; what has affected him acts upon you-now a star-influence, now the trailing garments of the night" and its solemn voices, and anon the domestic hearth in a thousand homes "when the shadows of the fitful firelight dance upon the parlor wall." It is probably due to this simplicity of expression that so many of his best pieces have been so easily parodied.

Most liberal in his religious views, Longfellow has constantly felt the divine life, and his poetry abounds in a love for the beautiful in the ritual and ceremonial of worship. Like Milton, he enjoys "the dim religious light of storied windows richly dight," the apostles carved in stone at Nuremberg, the great bells which rejoice at weddings and mourn at funerals. He had but little dramatic power. His only drama-The Spanish Student-although it abounds in beauti

Such is his ideal of the poet's functions, and he is himself the best illustration of their noble employment. As a youth, he touched indeed a golden lyre in groves and by streams, by the light of stars, on Alpine pinnacles straining toward the voice which cried "Excelsior!" He sang the beautiful He sang the beautiful psalm of life" what the heart of the young man said to the psalmist;" with bated breath he heard the "footsteps of angels," "when the forms of the departed enter at the open door."

Then the music changes. As a bearded man he stirs the listening crowd in the market-place with his tearful story of Evangeline, addressed to all hearts; with his "Building of the Ship," addressed to all patriots; with his Indian song of "Hiawatha."

Then as a gray old man, like him who sang in cathedrals dim and vast, he took up the chant of the mystery of Christ; he sang in English accordant with the terza rima of Dante of hell, purgatory and paradise; and at last, on the fiftieth anniversary of the day of his graduation, he sounded for himself and his classmates a farewell to his alma mater in his "Morituri te Salutamus." There was no discord in the changes of his poet-life. He always sang to "charm, to strengthen and to teach," and every ear was intent to catch the harmonious notes. There is no affectation of hidden meanings: he takes the serious, tender thoughts of our common humanity and puts them into the fittest words; so that when in our moods we think them again we speak them in his own language. This may not be in itself the highest poetry, but it is better, as the true singer is more useful and more satisfying than the post. The simple singer gives

counsel, sympathy, consolation, instruction. Instead of being forced into an attitude of intellectual acuteness and resistance, we go out to meet him; we crave and accept.

Such is an explanation of the success of "Evangeline." It is an American subject; it is a sentimental subject-the exile and wanderings of two lovers of that Acadian band expatriated by the British; it is a pastoral, pleasing by the simple charms of the quaint country-side and country-personages of the French colonists, pure in sentiment, liberal in religion, full of gospel charity. In addition to all this, it presents a curious study in prosody-the use of hexameters, always so doubtful in English and by no means entirely successful in the poet's hands. It may indeed be claimed as the most ambitious of his works, and yet it can hardly be doubted that he owed the suggestion to Goethe's "Hermann and Dorothea." And yet what would our literature be without Evangeline"?

aged and so strikingly presented that there is nothing disagreeable in the stratagem, is the "Song of Hiawatha," in which we have somewhat of the Indian mythology, not departing much from the authorities, but securing attention from its national and popular interest. The somewhat unusual measure-the trochaic tetrameter-seems not illapplied to the utterances of Indian wisdom and pathos. It contains a few descriptions of men and women more grotesque than ideal, too theatrical to be real, and yet with some exquisite touches of that nature which makes the whole world kin.

Unlike most poets who make their doubt