LONGFELLOW, HENRY WADSWORTH. - American poet, b. 27 Feb 1807 at Portland (Maine), d. at Cambridge in Massachusetts on 14 March 1882. He pursued his studies at Bowdoin College and there held a chair of modern languages; after a three-year journey through France, Spain and Italy, he returned to his work and, at the end of 1833, was sent to Harvard.
In 1838, two years after his return from a second trip to Europe, he published *Voices of the Night*, a collection of poems of which the *Psalm of Life* was to become one of his most popular lyrics. His dramatic works (*The Spanish Student* [1843], etc.) and his subsequent volumes of verse (notable among them the poem *Evangeline*) brought him wide renown and the means to live independently (1851). Among his mature works are to be noted: the trilogy *Christus* (1851-72); *Hiawatha* (1855), *The Courtship of Miles Standish* (1858) and a translation of the *Divine Comedy*. Longfellow’s popularity was immense, though his poetry does not reveal great imaginative power or intense feeling.