The Song of Hiawatha

Longfellow's American epic in Finnish metre: Hiawatha, the Great Lakes, and a vanishing world.

Specifications & Metrics

author

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

type

Epic poem

era

American Romantic (1855)

language

English

verse form

Trochaic tetrameter

cantos count

22

Core Principles & Analysis

• Published 1855; its metre borrows the Kalevala's trochaic tetrameter.
• Its Native materials were drawn from Henry Rowe Schoolcraft's collections.
• It was instantly among the best-selling long poems in American letters.

Sources

• Wikipedia: The Song of Hiawatha