SOURCE: “Gentle Shades of Longfellow,” in The Cycle of Modern Poetry, Russell & Russell, 1965, pp. 64-82.

In the following essay, Elliot compares the work of Longfellow to that of Walt Whitman, maintaining that the two poets are complementary and instrumental to the development of an American poetic.

There are more guests at table than the hosts Invited; the illuminated hall Is thronged with quiet, inoffensive ghosts As silent as the pictures on the wall. 

The poet Vachel Lindsay, tramping and talking among the Rockies several years ago, said he considered Longfellow a greater poet than Walt Whitman. The remark was noted in a book by Stephen Graham, and smiled at by reviewers. It was indeed queerly discordant with Our Age. Doubtless it conveyed the sense of the majority of Americans who happen just now to be in existence. But we—by which I mean, of course, Our Age—know...