His father was a Harvard graduate, and his
mother, like Bryant's, was descended from John and Priscilla Alden of
Plymouth. Longfellow, when three years old, began to go to school, and,
like Bryant, he published at the ripe age of thirteen his first poem,
_Battle of Lovell's Pond_, which appeared in the _Portland Gazette_.
Portland made a great impression on the boy. To his early life there is due
the love of the sea, which colors so much of his poetry. In his poem, _My
Lost Youth_, he says:--
"I remember the black wharves and the slips,
And the sea tides tossing free;
And Spanish sailors with bearded lips,
And the beauty and mystery of the ships,
And the magic of the sea."
He went to Bowdoin College, Maine, where he had Nathaniel Hawthorne for a
classmate. In his senior year Longfellow wrote to his father, "I most
eagerly aspire after future eminence in literature; my whole soul burns
most ardently for it, and every earthly thought centers in it." His father
replied, "There is not enough wealth in this country to afford
encouragement and patronage to merely literary men. And as you have not had
the fortune ... to be born rich, you must adopt a profession which will
afford you subsistence as well as reputation.
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