Henry Wadsworth Longfellow and the "Fireside Poets"

A Brief Guide to the Fireside Poets                        

The Fireside poets (also called the "schoolroom" or "household" poets) were the first group of American poets to rival British poets in popularity in either country. Today their verse may seem more Victorian in sensibility than romantic, perhaps overly sentimental or moralizing in tone, but as a group they are notable for their scholarship, political sensibilities, and the resilience of their lines and themes. (Most schoolchildren can recite a line or two from "Paul Revere's Ride" or The Song of Hiawatha.) 

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, John Greenleaf Whittier, Oliver Wendell Holmes, James Russell Lowell, and William Cullen Bryant are the poets most commonly grouped together under this heading. In general, these poets preferred conventional forms over experimentation, and this attention to rhyme and strict metrical cadences made their work popular for memorization and recitation in classrooms and homes. They are most remembered for their longer narrative poems (Longfellow's Evangeline and Hiawatha, Whittier's Snow-bound) that frequently used American legends and scenes of American home life and contemporary politics (as in Holmes's "Old Ironsides" and Lowell's anti-slavery poems) as their subject matter.

At the peak of his career, Longfellow's popularity rivaled Tennyson's in England as well as in America, and he was a noted translator and scholar in several languages--in fact, he was the first American poet to be honored with a bust in Westminster Abbey's Poet's Corner. Hiawatha itself draws not only on Native American languages for its rhythmic underpinning, but also echoes the Kalevala, a Finnish epic. Lowell and Whittier, both outspoken liberals and abolitionists, were known for their journalism and work with the fledgling Atlantic Monthly. They did not hesitate to address issues that were divisive and highly charged in their day, and in fact used the sentimental tone in their poems to encourage their audience to consider these issues in less abstract and more personal terms.    (From Poets.org (website of the Academy of American Poets))

Some classic fireside poems by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow:

Evangeline (“This is the forest primeval. The whispering pines and the hemlocks…”)

The Song of Hiawatha (“By the shores of Gitche Gumee,/ By the shining BigSea-Water,/ 

Stood the wigwam of Nokomis,/ Daughter of the moon, Nokomis./ Dark behind it rose the forest…)

The Midnight Ride of Paul Revere (“Listen my children and you shall hear/ Of the midnight ride of Paul…”)

The Village Blacksmith (“Under a spreading chestnut tree/ The village smithy stands;/ The smith, a mighty 

man is he,/ With large and sinewy hands;/ And the muscles of his brawny arms/ Are strong as iron bands.”)

My Lost Youth (“And among the dreams of the days that were,/ I find my lost youth again./ And the strange 

and beautiful song,/ The groves are repeating it still:/ "A boy's will is the wind's will,/ And the thoughts of 

youth are long, long thoughts.")

A Psalm of Life (“Tell me not, in mournful numbers,/ Life is but an empty dream ! —/ For the soul 
is dead that slumbers,/ And things are not what they seem.//  Life is real !   Life is earnest!/ 
And the grave is not its goal…”)

For this Thursday, memorize at least eight lines of a Longfellow poem.  Extra credit for more lines.