At the same time, in America

American sonnetry literally begins in the 19^th century. Among the authors who excelled in sonnet writing and in translation work, we should remember Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807-1882). He came from a family with a long record of outstanding public service, and it was expected of him to choose the same path. But instead, he became a language professor at Harvard and continued to earn his living by teaching for 18 years, despite the fact that his poetry was hugely popular. It was only after years of teaching that he resigned his position because he felt it interfered with his writing. In the English-speaking (and reading) world of his time, Henry Longfellow was second only to Tennyson in popularity. That is why after his death, his bust was placed in Poet's Corner of Westminster Abbey − the first American to be so honoured.

Was he a great liberator of verse, a revolutionary in style or subject? By no means, he wasn't. His style and subjects were conventional, and the reading public was pleased with his emphasis on such familiar things as home, family, nature, and religion. His poetry spoke directly to the hearts of ordinary Americans. Part of his popularity came from saying − and saying remarkably well − exactly the things most Americans wanted to hear. Longfellow expressed the hardworking philosophy of his countrymen in poems like A Psalm of Life, with its famous optimistic conclusion:

Let us, then, be up and doing,

With a heart for any fate;

Still achieving, still pursuing,

Learn to labour and to wait.

No doubt, such poetry won the hearts of thousands upon thousands of people, thus having eventually made the phrase the poet coined, be up and doing, part of the phraseological stock. Longfellow was also a man of encyclopedic knowledge: he brought European culture to the attention of Americans, and in turn spread American folklore in Europe. His epic Hiawatha (1855) served the latter purpose brilliantly. It is a long narrative in unrhymed trochaic tetrameter which tells the story of the life and death of the American Indian Hiawatha. This hero is the poet's ideal of manhood. The meter sounds like the beat of an Indian tom-tom drum, and gives the poem a rather primitive, uncivilized feeling. This is precisely the effect Longfellow wants. This richly ornamented poetry enchanted young Ivan Bunin: his translation into Russian seems to be unsurpassable in quality and precision.

In the preface to the translation, Ivan Bunin wrote (1898): "Я всюду старался держаться возможно ближе к подлиннику. Это было нелегко: краткость английских слов вошла в пословицу; приходилось сознательно жертвовать легкостью стиха, чтобы из одной строки Лонгфелло не делать нескольких… Смело могу сказать только одно: я работал с горячей любовью к произведению, дорогому для меня с детства, и с полной добросовестностью, этой слабой данью моей благодарности великому поэту, доставившему мне столько чистой и высокой радости".

Longfellow translated Dante's Divine Comedy. The translation itself is generally regarded bleak. But the sonnets inspired by the translation are considered to be one of Longfellow's most enduring works.Text 29 presents one of them.