"Evangeline" from Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. American poet and educator (1807-1882).

"Evangeline with Notes and Plan of Study" from Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. American poet and educator (1807-1882).

"Hyperion" from Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. American poet and educator (1807-1882).

"Tales of a Wayside Inn" from Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. American poet and educator (1807-1882).

"The Children's Own Longfellow" from Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. American poet and educator (1807-1882).

"The Golden Legend" from Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. American poet and educator (1807-1882).

"The Song Of Hiawatha" from Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. American poet and educator (1807-1882).

THIS is the forest primeval. The murmuring pines and the hemlocks, Bearded with moss, and in garments green, indistinct in the twilight, Stand like Druids of eld, with voices sad and prophetic, Stand like harpers hoar, with beards that rest on their bosoms. Loud from its rocky caverns, the deep-voiced neighboring ocean Speaks, and in accents disconsolate answers the wail of the forest.

The Song of Hiawatha is based on the legends and stories of many North American Indian tribes, but especially those of the Ojibway Indians of northern Michigan, Wisconsin, and Minnesota. They were collected by Henry Rowe Schoolcraft, the reknowned historian, pioneer explorer, and geologist. He was superintendent of Indian affairs for Michigan from 1836 to 1841.

"Norman's Woe" is the picturesque name of a rocky headland, reef, and islet on the coast of Massachusetts, between Gloucester and Magnolia. The special disaster in which the name originated had long been lost from memory when the poet Longfellow chose the spot as a background for his description of the "Wreck of the Hesperus," and gave it an association that it will scarcely lose while the English language endures. Nor does it matter to the legend lover that the ill-fated schooner was not "gored" by the "cruel rocks" just at this point, but nearer to the Gloucester coast.