The one point to accept with caution from all Longfellow's poems of self-analysis is the oft-recurring reference to heroic strife. Whatever heroism he felt or displayed "in the world's broad field of battle" was more quietly enduring than spectacular. The real Longfellow learned "to labor and to wait"; if wild emotion ever struck the ocean of his soul he possessed himself for the tumult to subside. The finest of all his lyrics, "Victor and Vanquished," cannot be confirmed from the visible evidences of his career. The "Poems on Slavery," for example, attest only to the passive courage of his convictions. In 1842 it was no small matter to come out clearly in public opposition to human bondage (see p. 257). Longfellow did not hesitate to risk his growing popularity by issuing this little volume. He was, and he continued to be, the devoted friend of Charles Sumner. Yet his antislavery heroism began and ended with these seven poems, and their value lay more in the bare fact that he had written them than in any ethical or emotional appeal. The period from 1847 to 1863 was, all things considered, quite the most fruitful for Longfellow; and this contained no five titles to rival "Evangeline" (1847), "The Song of Hiawatha" (1855), "The Courtship of Miles Standish" (1858), "The New England Tragedy" (first form, 1860), and "Tales of a Wayside Inn" (1863). Thus, although he by no means abandoned Europe and the thoughts of Europe, he came at last and altogether naturally to the development of American tradition and the American scene. The immediate success of "Evangeline" (for five thousand copies were sold within two months) is easy to understand. The material was fresh and the story was lovely. Longfellow's reading-public, accustomed to certain charms and qualities in his work, found these no less attractively displayed in the long story than in his brief lyrics. The pastoral scene at the start, the dramatic episode of the separation, the long vista of American scenes presented in Evangeline's vain search, and the final rounding out of the story plot, all belong to a "good seller"; and as it happened there was in America in 1847 no widely popular novelist. The field belonged to the author of "Evangeline" even more completely then a half century earlier it had belonged to the author of "Marmion," on the other side of the sea.