THE SLAVE IN THE DISMAL SWAMP

THE SLAVE SINGING AT MIDNIGHT

THE WITNESSES

87

88

THE GOOD PART, THAT SHALL NOT BE TAKEN AWAY

89

91

92

93

The Indian Hunter

Ode written for the Commemoration at Frye

burg, Maine, of Lovewell's Fight

NOTE. The portrait prefixed to this volume is from an engraving on steel by J. A. J. Wilcox executed in 1886, after the crayon by Samuel Lawrence, made in 1854.

VOICES OF THE NIGHT

INTRODUCTORY NOTE.

THE first writing of Mr. Longfellow which found its way into print was The Battle of Lovell's Pond, four verses, published in the Portland Gazette when he was thirteen years of age. When he was a student in Bowdoin College he also contributed poems to a periodical journal, and shortly after graduation he wrote poems for an annual, The Atlantic Souvenir. A few prose sketches appeared during this period, but it may be said that previous to his first journey to Europe, that is, until he was nineteen years of age, whatever expression he sought was most naturally in the poetic form. His travel and study abroad gave him pause in this regard. His expectation of a professorship and his own intellectual awakening led him to throw himself into the study of modern languages and literature, and shortly before his return home after a three years' absence he could write: "My poetic career is finished. Since I left America I have hardly put two lines together." His note-book and his letters indicate that his schemes for literary production looked distinctly to prose; and during the next ten years he gave himself, with a single exception, to the prose form. In this time he produced Outre-Mer, Hyperion,