Less than a month later he died, and was laid to rest in
Mount Auburn cemetery, Cambridge.
[Illustration: LONGFELLOW AS A YOUNG MAN]
"LAUREATE OF THE COMMON HUMAN HEART."--"God must love the common people,"
said President Lincoln, "because he has made so many of them." Longfellow
wrote for "the common human heart." In him the common people found a poet
who could gild the commonplace things of life and make them seem more
attractive, more easily borne, more important, more full of meaning.
In his first published volume of poems, _Voices of the Night_ (1839), he
shows his aim distinctly in such poems as _A Psalm of Life_. Its lines are
the essence of simplicity, but they have instilled patience and noble
purpose into many a humble human soul. The two stanzas beginning
"Life is real! Life is earnest,"
and
"Lives of great men all remind us,"
can be repeated by many who know but little poetry, and these very stanzas,
as well as many others like them, have affected the lives of large numbers
of people. Those born a generation ago not infrequently say that the
following stanza from _The Ladder of St. Augustine_ (1850) has been the
stepping-stone to their success in life:--
"The heights by great men reached and kept
Were not attained by sudden flight,
But they, while their companions slept,
Were toiling upward in the night.
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