James Whitcomb Riley

Longfellow

{{sc|O gentlest}} kinsman of Humanity!
Thy love hath touched all hearts, even as thy Song

Harp of harmony

Riley uses the Romantic image of the harp as a symbol for the soul or the universe itself—Longfellow's poetry is presented as attuned to cosmic order, not just personal emotion.

Hath touched all chords of music that belong
To the quavering heaven-strung harp of harmony:
Thou has made man to feel and hear and see

Made the weak to be strong

This is Riley's explicit claim about Longfellow's social function: poetry as a tool for moral and psychological transformation, especially for the vulnerable.

Divinely;—made the weak to be strong;

Wrong / changeless right

The paradox here: Longfellow's 'melodious magic' doesn't just describe right action—it makes it permanent ('changeless'). Poetry is presented as having ethical power, not just aesthetic beauty.

By thy melodious magic, changed the wrong
To changeless right—and joyed and wept as we.
Worlds listen, lulled and solaced at the spell
That unfolds and holds us—soul and body, too,—

Soul and body, too

Riley emphasizes Longfellow's total effect—not just intellectual or spiritual, but physical and embodied. This mirrors Romantic claims about poetry's power over the whole human being.

As though thy songs, as loving arms in stress
Of sympathy and trust ineffable,
Were thrown about us thus by one who knew
Of common human need of kindliness.
Source Wikipedia Poetry Foundation

Reading Notes

Riley's Longfellow: The Poet as Moral Healer

This is an occasional poem—a tribute written after Longfellow's death in 1882. Riley uses the sonnet form (14 lines, though with loose rhyme scheme) to canonize Longfellow as more than a writer: he's a healer and moral force. Notice the theological language: 'Divinely,' 'heaven-strung,' 'spell,' 'ineffable.' Riley is making a religious argument about poetry itself—that Longfellow's work functions like grace, touching 'all hearts' and transforming the 'weak' into the 'strong.'

The poem reflects the 19th-century American faith in literature as a civilizing, morally redemptive force. Longfellow was America's most popular poet precisely because he was seen as a safe, genteel moral educator. Riley, himself a populist poet writing in vernacular forms, is endorsing this view—even as he works in a different register. The tribute is sincere but also strategic: by praising Longfellow's universal reach ('Worlds listen'), Riley positions himself within that same tradition of accessible, humane poetry.

Technical Choices: Formality and Embrace

Riley uses an unusually formal, elevated diction here—'gentlest kinsman,' 'ineffable,' 'solaced'—which contrasts sharply with his typical dialect poetry. This formality is the point: the poem's stiffness and high rhetoric enact respect and distance. The volta (turn) comes in line 9: > 'Worlds listen, lulled and solaced at the spell' shifts from abstract praise to concrete effect.

The final image—Longfellow's songs as 'loving arms in stress / Of sympathy and trust'—is the most important move. After 12 lines of elevated praise, Riley suddenly makes Longfellow intimate and physical. Poetry becomes an embrace, not a spell. This ending redefines what Riley means by 'melody' and 'magic': not distant transcendence, but human comfort. It's Riley's way of saying that Longfellow's genius was his ability to make high art feel like kindness.