Good-by to Flattery's fawning face;
To Grandeur with his wise grimace;
To upstart Wealth's averted eye;
To supple Office, low and high;
To crowded halls, to court and street;
To frozen hearts and hasting feet;
To those who go, and those who come;
Good-by, proud world! I'm going home.

I'm going to my own hearthstone,
Bosomed in yon green hills alone,
A secret nook in a pleasant land,
Whose groves the frolic fairies planned;
Where arches green, the livelong day,
Echo the blackbird's roundelay,

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And vulgar feet have never trod

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A spot that is sacred to thought and God.

Oh, when I am safe in my sylvan home,
I tread on the pride of Greece and Rome;
And when I am stretched beneath the pines,
Where the evening star so holy shines,

I laugh at the lore and pride of man,
At the sophist schools and the learned clan ;
For what are they all, in their high conceit,
When man in the bush with God may meet?

HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW

1807-1882

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ALL of the greater poets of America during the Middle Period were born in Massachusetts except Longfellow, who was born at Portland, Maine. His father was a lawyer of prominence who had once been a

member of Congress. On his mother's side, he was, like Bryant, descended from John and Priscilla Alden. There was also fighting blood in the family. His mother's father was a general in the Revolution, and his uncle, for whom he was named, was in the navy, and was killed at Tripoli.

The first book which made a strong impression on Longfellow as a boy was Irving's Sketch-Book, and he read it, as he says, "with everincreasing wonder and delight, spellbound by its pleasant humour, its melancholy tenderness, its atmosphere of reverie."

Longfellow was sent to college at Bowdoin in Maine, where he was graduated, with Hawthorne as a classmate, in 1825. Another fellowstudent was Franklin Pierce, who afterwards became President of the United States. In college Longfellow was noted for both high character and scholarly attainments. After graduation he spent four years in Germany, France, Italy, and Spain, familiarizing himself with the languages and literatures of those countries. On his return in 1829 he was appointed professor of modern languages at Bowdoin. In 1831 ne married Miss Mary Potter, who survived only a few years. In 1834 he again went abroad for several months to study, having been called to Harvard to fill the Smith professorship of modern languages. He began his duties at Harvard in 1836, and Cambridge became his home for the remainder of his life. He lived in the old Craigie House, which was once Washington's headquarters. It was at Harvard that he won distinction both as a teacher and as a man of letters. It was during these years, too, that he married Miss Frances Appleton, with whom he lived in the greatest happiness for many years until her tragic death. Her dress caught fire and she was burned to death before her husband could put out the flames. He himself was so badly burned that he was unable to attend her funeral. But, for the most part, these years at Cambridge were happy years. Surrounded by his growing family and by devoted friends, secure in fortune, and with a widening fame, his lot was fortunate beyond that which falls to most men. When, finally, his class-room duties began to grow irksome, he resigned the Smith professorship in 1854 to James Russell Lowell, and devoted the remainder of his life to purely literary work. As a citizen and as a neighbor, his popularity was as great as it was among the great world of his readers. His life was so stainless, and his temper so kindly, that, in his last years, his benign and gracious presence fell upon the community almost like a benediction. He died rather suddenly at the age of seventy-five, and

was buried during a March snowstorm in Mount Auburn cemetery, overlooking the Charles River, in Cambridge. It was at his funeral that Emerson, old and feeble, contracted a cold which led to his death a few days later.

Longfellow's literary productiveness extended over a rather wide field. His three prose romances Outre-Mer, Hyperion, and Kavanagh are graceful, dreamy, and sentimental, but they do not show the power of narration which Longfellow displays in his longer poems. Chief of these longer poems are The Courtship of Miles Standish, a romance of early colonial days at Plymouth; Evangeline, a pastoral idyl of Acadian life in Canada; and Hiawatha, a tale in which he follows Freneau and Cooper in making the red man a romantic figure. He also made many graceful translations from European languages. But, after all Longfellow's fame seems to rest most securely upon his lyrics and ballads. He knew the art of telling a story in verse effectively, while his lyrics - such, for instance, as The Bridge and The Day Is Done have gone straight to the hearts and minds of thousands. It has been said of Longfellow that he lacked strong feeling, and also the flamelike imaginative power which belongs to very great poets; and this is true. But he has so many other poetic gifts that his fame seems reasonably sure to endure. He has unerring good taste, which has so happily been called the conscience of the mind. He has, too, grace and lucidity of phrase, the power to express rhythmically the entire range of gentle sentiment, warm human sympathy, and a lively though not powerful imagination. His very great popularity as a poet, both in America and in England-a popularity which began over half a century ago and which continues to hold - bears witness to effective and unusual artistic powers.

THE SKELETON IN ARMOR

"SPEAK! speak! thou fearful guest!
Who, with thy hollow breast
Still in rude armor drest,

Comest to daunt me !
Wrapt not in Eastern balms,
But with thy fleshless palms
Stretched, as if asking alms,

Why dost thou haunt me?"

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