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Gleeds – a glowing coal
“Then as the wind seized the gleeds and the burning thatch, and, uplifting,
Whirled them aloft through the air, at once from a hundred house-tops
Started the sheeted smoke with flashes of flame intermingled.
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Evangeline
Refluent – flowing back, ebbing as the tide
“Half the task was not done when the sun went down, and the twilight
Deepened and darkened around; and in haste the refluent ocean
Fled away from the shore, and left the line of the sand-beach
Covered with waifs of the tide, with kelp and the slippery seaweed.
Henry wadsworth Longfellow, Evangeline
Tocsin’s Alarum – an alarm bellow the ringing of it; a warning signal
“Deep were his tones and solemn; in accents measured and mournful
Spake he, as, after the tocsin’s alarum, distinctly the clock strikes.”
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Jocund – merry, cheerful, genial, sportive
“Many a glad good-morrow and jocund laugh from the young folk
Made the bright air brighter…”
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Glebe – turf, soil, ground
“Built are the house and the barn. The merry lads of the village
Strongly have built them and well; and, breaking the glebe round about them,
Filled the barn with hay, and the house with food for a twelvemonth.
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Evangeline
Seraglio – the place of a Turkish sultan or noble; formerly the palace of the sultan of Turkey at Constantinople
“There stood the broad-wheeled wains and the antique ploughs and the harrows;
There were the folds for the sheep; and there, in his feathered seraglio,
Strutted the lordly turkey, and crowed the cock with the selfsame
Voice that in ages of old had startled the penitent Peter.”
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Evangeline
“A fairer reading of Longfellow’s work, however, would be this: Hiawatha was a one-time experiment for him, not to be taken as the quintessence of his muse but as one among other occasional attempts to extend his treatment of American life beyond the regional and cultural boundaries he knew best… Although his experiment failed by any exacting standard, at least it was vigorous enough to establish itself, along with James Fenimore Cooper’s novels, ahead of the thousand of other contemporary literary evocations of Indian life.”
Lawrence Buell, in the introduction to Henry Wadsworth Longfellow: Selected Poems
Mellifluous – flowing sweetly and smoothly; honeyed; said of words, sounds, etc.
“[The two excepts of Hiawatha in this volume] show the poem to be mellifluous, prettily and sometimes even beautifully imagistic, but shallow; a pleasant literary-anthropological tour de force but nothing more.”
Lawrence Buell, in the introduction to Henry Wadsworth Longfellow: Selected Poems
“Longfellow was one of the greatest of all promoters of the arts. Ninety percent of all the poems he ever wrote contained some favorable reference to poetry, poets, artists, art, scholars, or literature. Bards are sublime, grand, immortal; singers are sweet; songs are beautiful; art is wondrous; books are household treasures. Hans Sachs is remembered after kaisers are forgotten. Micheal Angelo is impudent to cardinals. John Alden, the scholar, wins out over Miles Standish, the man of action.”
William Charvat, as quoted by Lawrence Buell, in the introduction to Henry Wadsworth Longfellow: Selected Poems
Effete – barren; no longer capable of producing, as an animal, a soil, etc; hence, exhausted, barren, sterile, inefficient though age, use, or decay
“Hawthorne’s work is shot through with shamefaced apologies, partly but only partly tongue-in-cheek, for the effeteness of romancing.
Lawrence Buell, in the introduction to Henry Wadsworth Longfellow: Selected Poems
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