The Complete Poetical Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Few poets have captured the American imagination as durably as Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, and this comprehensive collection reveals why. Spanning his entire career, it gathers the verses that taught generations how to feel about their own history, their childhoods, and the passage of time. Here are the famous narratives that became cultural touchstones: "Paul Revere's Ride," with its galloping urgency; "Evangeline," the heartbreaking exile; "The Song of Hiawatha," with its hypnotic rhythms drawn from Native American oral tradition. Here too are the shorter lyrics that readers return to at bedsides and funerals: "A Psalm of Life," with its defiant insistence that "Life is real, life is earnest"; "The Children's Hour" with its portrait of small hands closing around a father's heart. Longfellow's gift was making the profound feel approachable, his meter so smooth it almost conceals his philosophical depth. He wrote about mortality with elegance rather than despair, about memory as a treasure rather than a burden. This collection is both a portrait of 19th-century America seeing itself through poetry and a timeless compendium for anyone who wants language to do the heavy lifting of emotion.