A review by jeanetterenee
Evangeline and Selected Tales and Poems by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Edward M. Cifelli, Horace Gregory

2.0

I liked Longfellow's poems a lot better when I was a youngster. The sing-songy rhyming cadences were probably comforting to me as a child-- much like a lullaby. As an adult, they mostly just got on my nerves after a bit. And the surfeit of strained similes is almost too much to bear! Longfellow had talent, but he was writing to suit the tastes of the times in which he lived.
I do still get a little shiver up and down my spine from "Paul Revere's Ride"---one of my childhood favorites.