Smiling said she to me Recollect thee nowThat thou this very day hast drunk of Lethe . . .Americas most popular poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow 180782 spent man... » 

Smiling said she to me Recollect thee nowThat thou this very day hast drunk of Lethe . . .Americas most popular poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow 180782 spent many ofhis working years producing translations of European works. During the 19thcentury the Classic tradition was still vibrantly alive in the countriesacross the Atlantic and through his verse translations Longfellow hoped hemight help it acquire similar importance among readers in the young republic ofthe United States. Many of these translations stand alongside Longfellows mostfamous original poems The Psalm of Life The Childrens Hour andHiawatha. Perhaps his most important were those based upon Dante which hebegan in 1843. This second volume The Purgatory with its visions of theWanton the Gluttonous the Sodomites the Tree of Knowledge and the RiverLethe is second in the threevolume poem that begins with the Inferno. «