I think Longfellow is overdue for some respect. Certainly on my part. And he seems to be getting it here. I'm currently reading his Dante translation, done (or mostly) after his wife's death. And it's clearly going to be my favorite (not that I've read so many), for reasons that I'll elaborate on my blog sometime in the next few weeks.
Until a few years ago, I knew this poem - once widely memorized by schoolchildren - only through Rocky and Bullwinkle: https://youtu.be/EpcK69p3EZk?si=6XRhcdIkjcmg4Xux . I knew Longfellow's (unfair) reputation as overly-sentimental, and I was quite surprised when I first read it as a parent to discover how fresh and true it felt. It's one of my favorites.
Jody has noted before how strange it is that this was a staple for children's memorization, when the sentiments are the father's, not the children's (contrast this with Stevenson, for example, who so often imagined himself into the child's mind). But then maybe it's good for a child reader to put on the perspective of the loving father who treasures his finite hours with them.
I think that Longfellow's tendency to moralize --- to tell the reader, in a poem, how he or she should feel (what it means to grieve, for example) --- is probably more artistically problematic, in the poems where it occurs, than the risk of sentimentality, of which at least in this poem he is aware, and which he undercuts at the end.
I've had similar thoughts about childhood memorization of this poem, although I was surprised when I walked around the house saying it out loud to memorize it that two of my kids (then 5 and 6) loved it and memorized it for themselves as quickly as I did. (Around the same time they also memorized Stevenson's "A Good Play" with equal gusto.)
I think Longfellow is overdue for some respect. Certainly on my part. And he seems to be getting it here. I'm currently reading his Dante translation, done (or mostly) after his wife's death. And it's clearly going to be my favorite (not that I've read so many), for reasons that I'll elaborate on my blog sometime in the next few weeks.
Also, I like this poem. :-)
Until a few years ago, I knew this poem - once widely memorized by schoolchildren - only through Rocky and Bullwinkle: https://youtu.be/EpcK69p3EZk?si=6XRhcdIkjcmg4Xux . I knew Longfellow's (unfair) reputation as overly-sentimental, and I was quite surprised when I first read it as a parent to discover how fresh and true it felt. It's one of my favorites.
Jody has noted before how strange it is that this was a staple for children's memorization, when the sentiments are the father's, not the children's (contrast this with Stevenson, for example, who so often imagined himself into the child's mind). But then maybe it's good for a child reader to put on the perspective of the loving father who treasures his finite hours with them.
I think that Longfellow's tendency to moralize --- to tell the reader, in a poem, how he or she should feel (what it means to grieve, for example) --- is probably more artistically problematic, in the poems where it occurs, than the risk of sentimentality, of which at least in this poem he is aware, and which he undercuts at the end.
I've had similar thoughts about childhood memorization of this poem, although I was surprised when I walked around the house saying it out loud to memorize it that two of my kids (then 5 and 6) loved it and memorized it for themselves as quickly as I did. (Around the same time they also memorized Stevenson's "A Good Play" with equal gusto.)