Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth- Watertown, MA

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Watertown, MA

N 42° 22.411 W 071° 08.590

The tomb of American poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow is located near the intersection of Indian Ridge Path and Catalpa Path in Mount Auburn Cemetery, Watertown, MA. The grave of is marked by a 8' by 4' by 6' stone tomb set in a landscaped area of Mount Auburn Cemetery. The tomb is set three steps up on a stone block platform at the edge of a steep down slope. The exposed face of the tomb is simply inscribed LONGFELLOW.

Inscription

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow was born on February 27, 1807 in Portland, ME then a part of Massachusetts. He graduated Bowdoin College, in Brunswick, ME and became a professor at Bowdoin then Harvard Colleges. He is most famous for is lyric poetry although he also wrote several novels. His most famous poems include:

The Village Blacksmith (1840)
The Wreck of the Hesperus (1842)
Evangeline: A Tale of Acadie (1847)
The Song of Hiawatha (1855)
The Children's Hour (1860)
Paul Revere's Ride (1860)
Tales of a Wayside Inn (1863)

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, along with Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr., William Cullen Bryant, John Greenleaf Whittier, and James Russell Lowell were members of the Fireside Poets. A group of American poets whose works rivaled those of English poets.

Longfellow died on March 24, 1882 in Cambridge, MA. In 1884, he was the first and only American poet to have his bust placed in Poet's Corner in Westminster Abbey, London.

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