Other poems that are well worth reading many times, until you really understand and love them, are “The Waterfowl,” “Autumn Woods,” “November,” “The Gladness of Nature,” “The Past,” “To the Fringed Gentian,” “The Conqueror’s Grave,” “An Invitation to the Country,” “The Wind and the Stream,” “The Poet,” “May Evening,” “The Flood of Years,” and “Our Fellow-Worshipers.” To have mastered one of these poems is better than to have read the whole of Bryant carelessly. Take one, and read it until by very force of habit you learn to love it; and then the next poem you take up will reveal beauties which you never suspected when you first read it. There is also a city poem of Bryant’s, “The Crowded Street,” well worth learning to love: Let me move slowly through the street, Filled with an ever-shifting train, Amid the sound of steps that beat The murmuring walks like autumn rain. How fast the flitting figures come! The mild, the fierce, the stony face; Some bright with thoughtless smiles, and some Where secret tears have left their trace. And here is one more short poem, which may you all remember, long after you have forgotten that you ever read this little history of the poet’s life! THE DEATH OF LINCOLN. Oh, slow to smite and swift to spare, Gentle and merciful and just! Who, in the fear of God, didst bear The sword of power, a nation’s trust! In sorrow by thy bier we stand, Amid the awe that hushes all, And speak the anguish of a land That shook with horror at thy fall. Thy task is done; the bond are free: We bear thee to an honored grave, Whose proudest monument shall be The broken fetters of the slave. Pure was thy life; its bloody close Hath placed thee with the sons of light, Among the noblest host of those Who perished in the cause of Right. THE STORY OF HENRY W. LONGFELLOW [Illustration: _HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW_] LONGFELLOW CHAPTER I A GREAT POET Lives of great men all remind us We can make our lives sublime, And, departing, leave behind us Footprints on the sands of time;— Footprints, that perhaps another, Sailing o’er life’s solemn main, A forlorn and shipwrecked brother, Seeing, shall take heart again. You doubtless remember how Robinson Crusoe one day found footprints in the sand on the shore of his desert island. “I am not alone!” said he to himself. “Another human being has been here before me.” Soon afterward he had the good fortune to find his “man Friday.” In geology we learn of footprints in rocks. Living beings ages ago walked on the soft sand, and that sand, lying for a long time undisturbed, was at length hardened into rock.