The period following the publication of "Evangeline" seemed a more
indeterminate and unsettled time than was usual with Longfellow. He
began a dramatic romance of the age of Louis XIV., but did not persist
in it, and apart from the story of "Kavanagh" did no extended work. He
continued to publish scattered poems, and in two years (1850) there
appeared another volume called "The Seaside and the Fireside" in which
the longest contribution and the most finished--perhaps the most
complete and artistic which he ever wrote--was called "The Building of
the Ship." To those who remember the unequalled voice and dramatic power
of Mrs. Kemble, it is easy to imagine the enthusiasm with which her
reading of this poem was received by an audience of three thousand, and
none the less because at that troubled time the concluding appeal to the
Union had a distinct bearing on the conflicts of the time. For 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.

{74 Mistakenly described by the Rev. Samuel Longfellow as "nearly four
hundred pages." _Life_, ii. 3.}

{75 _Life_, iii. 370.}

{76 _Life_, iii. 94.}

{77 _Correspondence of R. W. Griswold_, p. 162.}

{78 _Life_, ii. 81.}

{79 _North American Review_, civ. 534.}

CHAPTER XVII

RESIGNATION OF PROFESSORSHIP--TO DEATH OF MRS. LONGFELLOW

On the last day of 1853, Longfellow wrote in his diary, "How barren of
all poetic production and even prose production this last year has been!
For 1853 I have absolutely nothing to show. Really there has been
nothing but the college work. The family absorbs half the time, and
letters and visits take out a huge cantle." Yet four days later he
wrote, January 4, 1854, "Another day absorbed in the