From the Introduction by Howard Nemerov: "My object in making this selection of Longfellow's work has been to exhibit a poet somewhat different from the one who wrote, e.g.,'A Psalm of Life,' 'Hiawatha,' 'The Wreck of the Schooner Hesperus.' Without trying to present him, in the result, as anything like a great poet (there are fewer of these than formerly though), I shall claim for some of his productions an interest other than historical, scholarly, or biographical—an interest truly poetical, and undiminished by time."
