But it is with such poems as _Evangeline_ and _Hiawatha_, and the shorter famous poems like _A Psalm of Life_, _Excelsior_, _The Wreck of the Hesperus_, _The Building of the Ship_, _The Footsteps of Angels_ that his claim as the favorite poet of America rests. _Evangeline_ and _Hiawatha_ marked an era in American literature in introducing themes purely American, while of the famous shorter poems each separate one was greeted almost with an ovation. _The Building of the Ship_ was never read during the struggle of the Civil War without raising the audience to a passion of enthusiasm, and so in each of these shorter poems Longfellow touched with wondrous sympathy the hearts of his readers. Throughout the land he was revered as the poet of the home and heart, the sweet singer to whom the fireside and family gave ever sacred and beautiful meanings.
Some poems on slavery, a prose tale called _Kavanagh_, and a translation of _The Divine Comedy_ of Dante must also be included among Longfellow's works; but these have never reached the success attained by his more popular poems which are known by heart by millions to whom they have been inspiration and comfort.
Longfellow died in Cambridge in 1882, in the same month in which was written his last poem, _The Bells of San Blas_, which concludes with these words:
One day in the year 1827, a boy of thirteen first entered the chapel of Harvard College to take his seat there as a student. His schoolfellows looked at him curiously first, because of his remarkable beauty, and second because of his reputation as a linguist, a great distinction among boys who looked upon foreign tongues as so many traps for tripping their unlucky feet in the thorny paths of learning. He had come to Harvard from Mr. Bancroft's school at Northampton, where he was famous as a reader, writer, and orator, and was more admired, perhaps, than is good for any boy. Both pupils and masters recognized his talents and overlooked his lack of industry. But neither dreamed that their praise was but the first tribute to the genius of the future historian, John Lothrop Motley.
Motley was born in Dorchester, a suburb of Boston, April 15, 1814. As a child he was delicate, a condition which fostered his great natural love for reading. He devoured books of every kind, history, poetry, plays, orations, and particularly the novels of Cooper and Scott. Not satisfied with reading about heroes, he must be a hero himself, and when scarcely eight he bribed a younger brother with sweetmeats to lie quiet, wrapped in a shawl, while he, mounted upon a stool, delivered Mark Antony's oration over the dead body of Cæsar. At eleven he began a novel, the scene of which was laid in the Housatonic Valley, because that name sounded grand and romantic. On Saturday afternoon he and his playmates, among whom was Wendell Phillips, would assemble in the garret of the Motley house, and in plumed hats and doublets enact tragedies or stirring melodramas. Comedy was too frivolous for these entertainments, in which Motley was always the leading spirit; the chief bandit, the heavy villain, the deadliest foe.