World, and in his _Hymn of the Moravian Nuns of Bethlehem_ he
transformed the rude church of the Moravian sisters to a cathedral with
"glimmering tapers," swinging censers, chancel, altar, cowls, and "dim
mysterious aisle." After his visit to Europe Longfellow returned
deeply imbued with the spirit of romance. It was his mission to refine
our national taste by opening to American readers, in their own
vernacular, new springs of beauty in the literatures of foreign
tongues. The fact that this mission was interpretive, rather than
creative, hardly detracts from Longfellow's true originality. It
merely indicates that his inspiration came to him in the first instance
from other sources than the common life about him. He naturally began
as a translator, and this first volume contained, among other things,
exquisite renderings from the German of Uhland, Salis, and Müller, from
the Danish, French, Spanish, and Anglo-Saxon, and a few passages from
Dante. Longfellow remained all his life a translator, and in subtler
ways than by direct translation he infused the fine essence of European
poetry into his own. He loved

"Tales that have the rime of age
And chronicles of eld."

The golden light of romance is shed upon his page, and it is his habit
to borrow mediaeval and Catholic imagery from his favorite Middle Ages,
even when writing of American subjects. To him the clouds are hooded
friars, that "tell their beads in drops of rain;" the midnight winds
blowing through woods and mountain passes are chanting solemn masses
for the repose of the dying year, and the strain ends with the prayer--

"Kyrie, eleyson,
Christe, eleyson."