Page:The Cambridge History of American Literature, v2.djvu/55

Rh American, the poem may justly make more of a local appeal than such a work as The Golden Legend based on Der Arme Heinrich. Yet it may be doubted whether either Hiawatha or Miles Standish did as much to establish Longfellow as the most admired poet of his time as some of the unpretentious poems contained in the collection entitled The Seaside and the Fireside (1850), such poems, for example, as the tender Resignation, to say nothing of the patriotic close of The Building of the Ship.

From the date of the tragic accident to his wife-July, 1861—to his death 24 March, 1882, at his home in Cambridge, Longfellow's life takes on dignity without losing its quiet charm, and his genius—shall we say, mellows, or slowly abates in energy? There was no marked falling off in the number of published volumes, in the range of his interests, in his hold upon his intimate friends, such as Charles Eliot Norton and James Russell Lowell, in his endeavours, conscious and unconscious, to deserve the affectionate gratitude of his countrymen. Even in the South, for a time rent away from the rest of the country politically, and for a longer period estranged in sentiment, his was a Northern name not anathema to the rising generation, and in Great Britain he rivalled in popularity Tennyson himself. But, as might have been expected, these years saw the production of little, except for some excellent sonnets, that adds permanently to his fame as a poet.

True, he added considerably to the mass of his narrative poetry by the three series of Tales of a Wayside Inn, the first of which appeared under its own name in 1863, the second and third of which were included respectively in Three Books of Song (1872—along with Judas Maccabaeus), and in Aftermath (1874), but save for the spirited Paul Revere' s Ride and the Saga of King Olaf, of the first series, these tales in verse have made only a mild impression. This is about all that may justly be said with regard to the twelve poems collected in Flower-de-luce (1867); it is more than should be said of The New England Tragedies, the third part of Christus, consisting of John Endicott and Giles Cory of the Salem Farms. These, with the first part of the ambitious trilogy, The Divine Tragedy (1871), constitute what may best be ambiguously denominated