Though Longfellow wrote in prose and is the author of many shorter poems, his reputation is mainly based upon his longer poems. Longfellow was a great admirer of the German poet, Goethe, to whose "Hermann and Dorothea" we are indebted for much of the form and no doubt some of the story of Evangeline. The story of Acadie was told first to Hawthorne by a friend of both authors; but the tale was hardly dark enough to suit the fancy of Hawthorne, whereas to Longfellow it seemed to have in it precisely those elements of faith and devotion that make the widest appeal. In a collection of poems published in 1850 appeared the poem of Longfellow's highest patriotic reach, the allegory of "The Building of the Ship." A friend of Lincoln recited this poem to him, and when the lines of its closing apostrophe to the ship of state were reached, with tears in his eyes the president said, "It is a great gift to be able to stir men like that." In his poem, "Hiawatha," Longfellow chose the metre of the Finnish epic "Kalevala," which is peculiarly suited to the tales of primitive people. The worthiest and most picturesque traditions of the American Indian are woven into a connected story whose charm is greatly heightened by the novel melody of the verse. In 1861 the happiness of Longfellow's home life was broken by the death of his wife, who was fatally burned. He turned from this sorrow and the anxieties of the Civil War to the more mechanical work of writing tales and making translations. The "Tales of a Wayside Inn" appeared in 1863, and seven years later he published his translation of Dante's "Divine Comedy." On Longfellow's seventy-second birthday the children of Cambridge presented him with a chair made from the wood of the "Village Blacksmith's" chestnut tree. He died March 24, 1882, aged seventy-five. In 1884 a bust of him was placed in the Poets' Corner of Westminster Abbey--England's gracious tribute to the renown of America's best loved poet. EVANGELINE: A TALE OF ACADIE HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW PRELUDE This is the forest primeval. The murmuring pines and the hemlocks, Bearded with moss, and in garments green, indistinct in the twilight, Stand like Druids of eld, with voices sad and prophetic, Stand like harpers hoar, with beards that rest on their bosoms. Loud from its rocky caverns, the deep-voiced neighboring ocean Speaks, and in accents disconsolate answers the wail of the forest.