"
His poem, _The Rainy Day_ (1841), has developed in many a person the
qualities of patience, resignation, and hopefulness. Repetition makes the
majority of things seem commonplace, but even repetition has not robbed
lines like these of their power:--
"Be still, sad heart! and cease repining,
Behind the clouds is the sun still shining;
Thy fate is the common fate of all;
Into each life some rain must fall,
Some days must be dark and dreary."
Nine days before he died, he wrote his last lines with the same simplicity
and hopefulness of former days:--
"Out of the shadows of night
The world rolls into light.
It is daybreak everywhere."
As we examine these typical poems, we shall find that all of them appeal to
our common experiences or aspirations, and that all are expressed in that
simple language which no one need read twice to understand.
BALLADS.--Longfellow knew how to tell a story which preserved the
simplicity and the vigor of the old ballad makers. His _The Wreck of the
Hesperus_ (1839) starts in the true fashion to make us wish to finish the
tale:--
"It was the schooner Hesperus,
That sailed the wintry sea;
And the skipper had taken his little daughter
To bear him company.
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