Thomas Wentworth Higginson, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

[201] the rest of the volume, it included the strong and lyric verses called ‘Seaweed,’ which were at the time criticised by many, though unreasonably, as rugged and boisterous; another poem of dramatic power, ‘Sir Humphrey Gilbert;’ and one of the most delicately imaginative and musical among all he ever wrote, ‘The Fire of Drift-Wood,’ the scene of which was the Devereux Farm at Marblehead. There were touching poems of the fireside, especially that entitled ‘Resignation,’ written in 1848 after the death of his little daughter Fanny, and one called ‘The Open Window.’ Looking back from this, his fourth volume of short poems, it must be owned that he had singularly succeeded in providing against any diminution of power or real monotony. Nevertheless his next effort was destined to be on a wider scale.