All about Walt Whitman

3.6 Longfellow

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807–82), a contemporary of Whitman, though “certainly more universally loved”, even though he did not possess “so colorful a personality” (ALLEN, 1955, p.541), wrote some of the most popular poems in American literature, in which he created a body of romantic American legends. Although a sympathetic and ethical person, Longfellow was not involved in religious and social issues of the time.[1] However, he did display some interest in the abolitionist cause. He achieved great fame with poems such as Evangeline (1847), The Song of Hiawatha (1855), The Courtship of Miles Standish (1858), and Tales of a Wayside Inn (1863). He used uncommon, old rhythms to weave myths of the American past. Nevertheless, Longfellow was “predominantly an iambic writer”, who included in his poetry variations of this poetic pattern, such as “elisions, the trochaic substitutions, the spondaic effects”, but all within the “regular iambic patterns” (WRIGHT, 1985, p.90).

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