Henry wadsworth longfellow poems childrens hour
Longfellow a psalm of life.
Henry wadsworth longfellow poems childrens hour
The Children's Hour (poem)
Poem by Longfellow
"The Children's Hour" is a poem by American poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, first published in the September 1860 edition of The Atlantic Monthly.
Overview
The poem describes the poet's idyllic family life with his own three daughters, Alice, Edith, and Anne Allegra:[1] "grave Alice, and laughing Allegra, and Edith with golden hair." As the darkness begins to fall, the narrator of the poem (Longfellow himself) is sitting in his study and hears his daughters in the room above.
He describes them as an approaching army about to enter through a "sudden rush" and a "sudden raid" via unguarded doors. Climbing into his arms, the girls "devour" their father with kisses, who in turn promises to keep them forever in the dungeon of his heart.
Publication and response
"The Children's Hour" was included in the Birds of Passage section at the end of the 1863 collection Tales of a Wayside Inn.[2] Longfellow's