Longfellow's poetic service to his countrymen has thus become a
national asset, and not merely because in his three best known
narrative poems, "Evangeline," "Hiawatha," and "The Courtship of
Miles Standish," he selected his themes from our own history.
"The Building of the Ship," written with full faith in the
troubled year of 1849, is a national anthem. "It is a wonderful
gift," said Lincoln, as he listened to it, his eyes filled with
tears, "to be able to stir men like that." "The Skeleton in
Armor," "A Ballad of the French Fleet," "Paul Revere's Ride,"
"The Wreck of the Hesperus," are ballads that stir men still. For
all of his skill in story-telling in verse--witness the "Tales of
a Wayside Inn"--Longfellow was not by nature a dramatist, and his
trilogy now published under the title of "Christus," made up of
"The Divine Tragedy," "The Golden Legend," and "New England
Tragedies," added little to a reputation won in other fields. His
sonnets, particularly those upon "Chaucer," "Milton," "The Divina
Commedia," "A Nameless Grave," "Felton," "Sumner," "Nature," "My
Books," are among the imperishable treasures of the English
language. In descriptive pieces like "Keramos" and "The Hanging
of the Crane," in such personal and occasional verses as "The
Herons of Elmwood," "The Fiftieth Birthday of Agassiz," and the
noble "Morituri Salutamus" written for his classmates in 1875, he
exhibits his tenderness of affection and all the ripeness of his
technical skill. But it was as a lyric poet, after all, that he
won and held his immense audience throughout the English-speaking
world. Two of the most popular of all his early pieces, "The
Psalm of Life" and "Excelsior," have paid the price of a too apt
adjustment to the ethical mood of an earnest moment in our
national life. We have passed beyond them. And many readers may
have outgrown their youthful pleasure in "Maidenhood," "The Rainy