Chaucer

By Henry Wadsworth Longfellow 1807–1882 Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

An old man in a lodge within a park;

The chamber walls depicted all around

With portraitures of huntsman, hawk, and hound,

And the hurt deer. He listeneth to the lark,

Whose song comes with the sunshine through the dark

Of painted glass in leaden lattice bound;

He listeneth and he laugheth at the sound,

Then writeth in a book like any clerk.

He is the poet of the dawn, who wrote

The Canterbury Tales, and his old age

Made beautiful with song; and as I read

I hear the crowing cock, I hear the note

Of lark and linnet, and from every page

Rise odors of ploughed field or flowery mead.

Biography

By far the most widely known and best-loved American poet of his time, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow achieved a level of national and international prominence possibly unequaled in the literary history of the United States. Poems such as "Paul Revere's Ride," Evangeline, A Tale of Acadie (1847), and "A Psalm of Life" became mainstays of national culture, long remembered by generations of readers who studied them in school. . . .

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