Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

 Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807-1882) was an American poet and educator. His works include “Paul Revere’s Ride”, The Song of Hiawatha, and Evangeline. He was one of the fireside poets from New England. He studied at Bowdoin College and became a professor at Bowdoin and later at Harvard College. His first poetry collections were “Voices of the Night (1839) and Ballads and Other Poems (1841). He retired from teaching in 1854 to focus on his writing.

 Longfellow wrote many lyric poems known for their musicality. He was the most popular poet of his day. As a friend wrote, “no other poet was so fully recognized in his lifetime. Many of his poems helped shape the American character and its legacy, particularly with the poem “Paul Revere’s Ride”. He was such an admired figure in the United States during his life that his 70th birthday in 1877 took on the air of a national holiday, with parades, speeches, and the reading of his poetry. Longfellow had become one of the first American celebrities and was popular in Europe. The rapidity with which American readers embraced Longfellow was unparalleled in publishing history in the United States.

 

However, Longfellow’s popularity rapidly declined, beginning shortly after his death and into the 20th century, as academics focused attention on other poets such as Walt Whitman. In the 20th century, literary scholar Kermit Vanderbilt noted: “Increasingly rare is the scholar who braves ridicule to justify the art of Longfellow’s popular rhymings.” Poet Lewis Putnam Turco concluded that “Longfellow was minor and derivative in every way throughout his career…nothing more than a hack imitator of the English Romantics. 

 

Poet Walt Whitman considered him an imitator of European forms but praised his ability to reach a popular audience as “the expressor of common themes - of the little songs of the masses. Lewis Mumford said that Longfellow could be completely removed from the history of literature without much effect. Toward the end of his life, contemporaries considered him more of a children’s poet, as many of his readers were children. A reviewer in 1848 accused Longfellow of creating a “goody-two-shoes kind of literature…slipshod, sentimental stories told in the style of the nursery, beginning in nothing and ending in nothing”. However, an editor of the Boston Evening Transcript wrote, “Whatever the miserable envy of trashy criticism may write against Longfellow, one thing is most certain, no American poet is more read”. 

John Masefield

John Edward Masefield (1878-1967), was an English author and poet laureate. His reputation was established with “Salt-Water Ballads” (1902). “The Everlasting Mercy (1911), “The Dauber” (1913), and “Reynard the Fox” (1920), are representative of his long narrative poems. Masefield also wrote novels, short stories, and critical studies. 

 

In his 16th year, he sailed as an apprentice seaman on a windjammer, rounding Cape Horn. Illness sent him home from a Chilean port. He then became an officer in the liner Adriatic. In 1895 poor health caused him to stay ashore in New York City. For several years he lived as a vagrant, shifting between odd jobs before he found work as a barkeeper’s assistant. In 1895 he read the poem by Duncan Campbell Scott called “The Piper of Arll.” Ten years later he wrote to Scott to tell what reading the poem meant to him:

 

“I had never (till that time) cared very much for poetry, but your poem impressed me deeply and set me on fire. Since then poetry has been one deep influence in my life, and to the love of poetry, I owe all my friends and the position I now hold. 

 

Returning to England, Masefield began his literary career by writing poems, short stories, articles, and book reviews for magazines. In 1930 he succeeded Robert Bridges as poet laureate. It was not until 70 that Masefield slowed his pace. “In Glad Thanksgiving” his last book was published when he was 88 years old. In 1960 his wife Constance died aged 93. In late 1966 Masefield developed gangrene in his ankle. This spread to his leg and he died of the infection in 1967. His body was cremated and his ashes were placed in Poet’s Corner in Westminster Abbey. However, the following verse by Masefield was discovered later addressed to his “Heirs, Administrators, and assigns”:

 

No religious rite be done or read

In any place for me when I am dead

But burn my body into ash, and scatter

The ash in secret into running water

Or on the windy down, and let none see

And then, thank God that there’s an end of me. 

 

He wrote the following memorable poem:

 

I must go down to the seas again, to the lonely sea and the sky,

And all I ask is a tall ship and a star to steer her by

And the wheel’s kick and the wind’s song and the white sail’s shaking

And a grey mist on the sea’s face and a grey dawn breaking

 

I must go down to the seas again, for the call of the running tide

Is a wild call and a clear call that may not be denied

And all I ask is a windy day with white clouds flying

And the flung spray and the blown spume, and the sea-gulls crying.

Robert Louis Stevenson

Robert Louis Stevenson (1850-1894) was a Scottish author. He was one of the most versatile of writers. His romantic novels of adventure captured the public fancy as had no British works since Sir Walter Scott’s. Treasure Island (1883), a story of a search for pirate treasure, is the most popular of these romances and one of the best children’s books in English. The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1886), an allegorical novel about man’s dual nature, is a suspenseful horror story that shows psychological insight. A Child’s Garden of Verses (1885) is a classic.

Stevenson proved himself a master of the short story in such tales as the eerie “Marheim” and “Thrawn Janet,” the tragic “The Beach at Falesa,” and the fanciful “The Sire de Maletroit’s Door.” His essays travel books, and letters are polished, witty, informative. Stevenson’s writings brought him great popularity during his lifetime, but after his death, his literary reputation declined for several years and he was thought of only as a competent writer of children’s tales. Toward the middle of the 20th century, however, a new critical evaluation of his work ranked him with the great writers of the 19th century.

Stevenson was born in Edinburgh, the son of a prosperous engineer who wanted him to follow the same profession. Instead, Stevenson studied law at the University of Edinburgh. He passed the bar examinations in 1875 but never practiced law. Since 1873 he had been publishing essays in various periodicals and he now turned all his attention to a literary career. Stevenson had never been robust and he began traveling early in life, partly for health and partly for pleasure. In 1888 he sailed to the islands of the Pacific Ocean, settling finally in the Samoan island of Upolu in 1890. There Stevenson bought a large estate he called “Vailima.” He took an active part in Samoan political affairs and wrote extensively.

Stevenson died suddenly of a cerebral hemorrhage. He left an unfinished novel, Weir of Hermiston, that was published as a fragment in 1896. This novel, set in 18th century Scotland, contains some of Stevenson’s most powerful and realistic characterizations. Some critics believe it would have been his masterpiece. Samoan friends affectionately called Stevenson Tusitala (teller of tales). They carried his body to the top of Mount Vaea, where it was buried under this epitaph written by himself :

Under a wide and starry sky

Dig a grave and let me lie

Glad did I live and gladly die

And I laid me down with a will

This is the verse you grave for me

Here he lies where he longed to be

Home is the sailor, home from the sea

And the hunter home from the hill