Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807-1882) Longfellow was born in Portland, Maine, which was then still part of Massachusetts. His poems were popular throughout the English-speaking world, and they were widely translated, making him the most famous American of his day and one of the few American writers honored in the Poets’ Corner of Westminster Abbey. In 1854 he left his teaching position at Harvard and with the country moving toward civil war, he wrote "Paul Revere's Ride," a call for courage in the coming conflict.

The sea awoke at midnight from its sleep,

And round the pebbly beaches far and wide

I heard the first wave of the rising tide

Rush onward with uninterrupted sweep;

A voice out of the silence of the deep,

A sound mysteriously multiplied

As of a cataract from the mountain's side,

Or roar of winds upon a wooded steep.

So comes to us at times, from the unknown

And inaccessible solitudes of being,

The rushing of the sea-tides of the soul;

And inspirations, that we deem our own,

Are some divine foreshadowing and foreseeing

Of things beyond our reason or control.

— Henry Wadsworth Longfellow