HENRY W. LONGFELLOW, THE AMERICAN CHILDREN’S POET
Living in Portland, Maine, a town of rare beauty, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow could hardly have helped being a poet, even if he had tried. He was born in a big, square, three-story house, close to the edge of Casco Bay, one of the largest and loveliest harbors in the world. Portland stands on several wooded hills, overlooking the bay, which is said to contain three hundred and sixty-five small islands--one for every day in the year. On the blue water the green islands sparkle like emeralds on a shining sea of sapphire.
From the highest point on Great Diamond, one of the larger islands in the harbor, little Henry could see, sometimes, as the sun was setting behind the hills of Portland, the hazy blue and pink outlines of the White Mountains, more than a hundred miles away. Any boy with eyes and heart to take in the deep meaning of it all would have wanted to be a poet. Henry’s inner nature throbbed in response to the beauties of Nature without, and because he had the gift of putting his feelings into words, he was a poet long before he or those around him realized it.
Like the boy Benjamin Franklin and the boy George Washington, who lived about a hundred years before him, the Longfellow boy had the best chances to hear the sailors who came into port tell their tales of the sea--of pirates and hairbreadth adventures.
Henry’s grandfather--his mother’s father--was bluff old General Peleg Wadsworth, a hero of the Revolutionary War. He could tell stories of the struggle for independence that would have fired the soul of any boy.
[Illustration: HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW.]
In the War of 1812, when the little Longfellow lad was only five, a company of American soldiers was stationed in the fort at Portland to defend the town against attacks from British warships. Young as Henry was, he understood what all the excitement meant. When he was in his seventh year, he heard the booming of the cannon in the great sea battle between the American brig _Enterprise_ and the British schooner _Boxer_. Both commanders were killed and buried on one of the hills of Portland. There was a sensation when the _Enterprise_ towed the _Boxer_ into port as a prize of war. In the poem, “My Lost Youth,” nearly fifty years after the battle, Longfellow wrote: