longfellow sings in "It is not always May:" "The sun is bright-the air is clear, The darting swallows soar and sing, And from the stately elms I hear The blue-bird prophesying spring."
"A Key to Lord Tennyson's 'In Memoriam'"
Alfred Gatty
When we think of the ideal poet, it is not the champion of the middle class like longfellow and Tennyson, or one full of the early martial spirit and drawing fighting heroes like the author of Beowulf, or the Nibelungen Lied.
"The Literature of Ecstasy"
Albert Mordell
It is this which puts Whitman above longfellow, Nietzsche above Macaulay, Byron and Shelley above Tennyson and Rossetti, Ibsen above Scott.
"The Literature of Ecstasy"
Albert Mordell
