HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW 181 poetry. In 1839 he published his first popular volume of verse under the title of " Voices of the Night ; " in 1841, " Ballads and other Poems ; " in 1842, " Poems on Slavery;" in 1843, "The Spanish Student;" in 1846, "The Belfry of Bruges;" and in 1847, "Evangeline," which established his fame. His other works were published after intervals of two or three years, with a long silence after the death of his wife in 1861. The last of his great poems was " Morituri Salutamis," read by him at the fiftieth reunion of his class at Bowdoin College. One of his most perfect poems, and perhaps the most elegant of its kind in any language, was produced at this period of the beginning of life's winter, " Three Friends of Mine." One March day in 1882, a lad from one of the Boston schools came to me, and said that some pupils from the school wished to call on the poet, and asked me if I supposed that he would receive them and give them his autograph. I recalled that Longfellow had said to me that he always answered applications for autographs, adding, " Would it not be discourteous in me to refuse my name to one who took such an interest in anything which I had written as to write me for such a favor ? " I replied that I had no doubt but that the poet would re- ceive them kindly ; that he loved young people, and advised them to make the call. He received the lads with his usual kindness, showed them the historic asso- ciations of the old house, and then in their company looked over on the Brighton meadows and the Charles River with its now icy C, for the last time. The day was declining, the last March day that he would ever see in health. Illness came soon after this visit from the school-boys, and soon he who had lived on the way to Mt. Auburn, was borne to the calm city of the dead. His grave is near Spurzheim's, not far from the gate, on a beautiful knoll, and is marked by a sim- ple stone with a plain inscription. Longfellow was the poet of humanity and eternal hope, and his poetic script- ures are always sought and always will be by spirits seeking sympathy. He doubtless will live as the poet of the heart long after greater rhetoricians and more philosophical poets have lost their influence. It is the poet that is most human that has the greatest influence and the most enduring fame. As the poet of eternal hope, his horizons ever lift. He could not have writ- ten Browning's " Lost Leader." His characters are all happy in the end ; his ships of song all come to blue harbors and happy ports. Poems like Lowell's " Rhoecus," where opportunity is lost forever, find no expression in his muse, but rather the rainbow always that shines in the " Legend Beautiful." His Sor- dellos do not fail ; they attain ; the people of his fancy overcome even their sins and mount on them like ladders to heaven. Even old age in his view is full of opportunity, and all experiences have their kindly helps and opportunities. Though a translator of Dante, his own muse had no " Inferno," but only a " Pur- gatorio." He is the most loved poet of our own or of any age ; the American Horace, whose pictures of all that is best in our early history will ever remain. To study
