SOURCE: “Longfellow's ‘Tegnér's Drapa’: A Reappraisal,” in The American Transcendental Quarterly, No. 40, Fall, 1978, pp. 379-87.

In the following essay, Griffin explores Longfellow's artistic and philosophical intentions as evinced in “Tegnér's Drapa.”

For the uninitiated, Longfellow's “Tegnér's Drapa” (1847) must surely be one of the most confusing if not unrewarding poems ever written by the best known of the New England Fireside Poets. Without appropriate footnotes the bewildered reader is immediately at a loss to know who or what “Tegnér” is—and the same for “Drapa”—the title means “a death song or lament for Tegnér.” Indeed, not one of the several currently available paperback Longfellow anthologies in which the poem appears offers any editorial assistance. Even the now standard 1964 Signet Classic, edited by Horace Gregory (i.e., Evangeline and Selected Poems), falls into this lamentable category.

Surely we all know that in speaking of...