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“ [144] murmuring softly against its banks, heaven over it, and the glory of the unspoiled wilderness all around.”

After a tenure — of eighteen years, Longfellow resigned his Harvard professorship. During the next few years Hiawatha and The Courtship of miles Standish were produced, and were received with great enthusiasm in America and elsewhere. The principal works of his later years were the Dante translations and Christus: a Mystery. The Christus was the fine flowering of Longfellow's spiritual life. Yet one rarely sees the book quoted; it has not been widely read, and in all the vast list of Longfellow translations into foreign languages, there appears no version of any part of it except the comparatively modern Golden legend. It has simply afforded one of the most remarkable instances in literary history of the utter ignoring of the supposed high-water mark of a favorite author, and also perhaps of the fact that an author's early impulses are a safer guide than his maturer judgment. But, apart from any single work, Longfellow's fame was secure, and his death in March, 1882, was recognized as more than a national calamity.

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