“But when he heard their defiance, the boast, the taunt, and the insult, All the hot blood of his race, of Sir Hugh and of Thurston de Standish, Boiled and beat in his heart, and swelled in the veins of his temples. Headlong he leaped on the boaster, and, snatching his knife from its scabbard, Plunged it into his heart, and, reeling backward, the savage Fell with his face to the sky, and a fiendlike fierceness upon it. Straight there arose from the forest the awful sound of the war-whoop, And, like a flurry of snow on the whistling wind of December, Swift and sudden and keen came a flight of feathery arrows. Then came a cloud of smoke, and out of the cloud came the lightning, Out of the lightning thunder; and death unseen ran before it. Frightened the savages fled for shelter in swamp and in thicket, Hotly pursued and beset; but their sachem, the brave Wattawamat, Fled not; he was dead. Unswerving and swift had a bullet Passed through his brain, and he fell with both hands clutching the greensward, Seeming in death to hold back from his foe the land of his fathers. “There on the flowers of the meadow the warriors lay, and above them, Silent, with folded arms, stood Hobomok, friend of the white man. * * * * * “Thus the first battle was fought and won by the stalwart Miles Standish. When the tidings thereof were brought to the village of Plymouth, And as a trophy of war the head of the brave Wattawamat Scowled from the roof of the fort, which at once was a church and a fortress, All who beheld it rejoiced, and praised the Lord, and took courage.” Such is the poet’s rendering; now what were the facts? We all recognize in these cases what is known as “poetic license.” It is the unquestioned privilege of the poet to so mould hard facts and actual conditions as to make realities conform to his idea of the everlasting fitness of things. On the other hand, it is but fair that, in so doing, the artist should improve on the facts. In other words, he should at least not make them more prosaic, and distinctly less dramatic, than they were. In the present case, I submit, Longfellow, instead of rendering things more poetic and dramatic, made them distinctly less so. This I shall now proceed to show.