Observe how the repetition served to represent the growing of the lover’s admiration.  The same repetition can be used much more effectively in describing weariness and pain, as In the lines about the winter famine: 

  Oh, the long and dreary Winter! 
  Oh, the cold and cruel Winter! 
  Ever thicker, thicker, thicker
  Froze the ice on lake and river,
  Ever deeper, deeper, deeper
  Fell the snow o’er all the landscape,
  Fell the covering snow, and drifted
  Through the forest, round the village. 
  Hardly from his buried wigwam
  Could the hunter force a passage;
  With his mittens and his snow-shoes
  Vainly walked he through the forest,
  Sought for bird or beast and found none,
  Saw no track of deer or rabbit,
  In the snow beheld no footprints,
  In the ghastly, gleaming forest
  Fell, and could not rise from weakness,
  Perished there from cold and hunger. 
  Oh, the famine and the fever! 
  Oh, the wasting of the famine! 
  Oh, the blasting of the fever! 
  Oh, the wailing of the children! 
  Oh, the anguish of the women! 
  All the earth was sick and famished;
  Hungry was the air around them,
  Hungry was the sky above them,
  And the hungry stars in heaven
  Like the eyes of wolves glared at them!

This is strong, emotionally strong, though it is not great poetry; but it makes the emotional effect of great poetry by the use of the same means which the Finnish poets used.  The best part of the poem is the famine chapter, and the next best is the part entitled “The Ghosts.”  However, the charm of a composition can be fully felt only by those who understand something of the American Indian’s life and the wild northwestern country described.  That is not the immediate matter to be considered, notwithstanding.  The matter to be considered is whether this method of using parallelism and repetition and alliteration can give new and great results.  I believe that it can, and that a greater Longfellow would have brought such results into existence long ago.  Of course, the form is primitive; it does not follow that an English poet or a Japanese poet should attempt only a return to primitive methods of poetry in detail.  The detail is of small moment; the spirit is everything.  Parallelism means simply the wish to present the same idea under a variety of aspects, instead of attempting to put it forward in one aspect only.  Everything great in the way of thought, everything beautiful in the way of idea, has many sides.  It is merely the superficial which we can see from the front only; the solid can be perceived from every possible direction, and changes shape according to the direction looked at.