Word: longfellow
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Dates: during 1900-1909
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Last night a meeting was held in Sanders Theatre, under the auspices of the Cambridge Historical Society, to celebrate the one hundredth anniversary of the birth of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow h.'59, Smith Professor of the French and Spanish languages and literatures, and Professor of Belles Lettres, in the University from 1836 to 1854. Sanders Theatre was crowded to the utmost so that many were forced to stand, and many others could not gain admittance. Professor C. E. Norton '46, chairman of the assembly, opened the meeting by a short address, which is printed in full below. The other speakers...
...Forty years ago today the Boston Daily Advertiser contained some verses addressed to Henry Wadsworth Longfellow on his birthday. They were signed with the initials of his neighbor, friend and brother poet, Lowell. The second stanza read as follows...
...current taste in literature, and in which the competition of authors seeking popular favor has been keener than ever before. Many have had their little day of sunshine; few have outlived a single short summer; but all this while there has been no change in the hold of Longfellow on the hearts of men, and today bears witness to the truth of Lowell's prophecy that the next age should double the praise that his own had lavished on the poet...
...here in Cambridge, the home of our poet, tonight, it is the life rather than the poems of Longfellow that I, as the spokesman of his fellow townsmen, am drawn by affectionate memory chiefly to celebrate; more mindful of the sweeter secret which lies within the melody of his verse than of its outward rhythm and rhyme...
...multitude of common men and women, the blessing is still further enhanced. And if combined with genius be a character of exceptional purity, gentleness and graciousness, then the blessing of the presence of such a nature in a community is perfected. Such a blessing was bestowed upon Cambridge while Longfellow lived. Its influence abides with us and will abide with those who follow us. 'A good life hath but a few days, but a good name endureth forever...