“A single conversation across the table with a wise man is better than ten years mere study of books.”

American poet and educator

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow was an American poet and educator. He became one of the best-known literary figures of 19th-century New England, and is remembered for poems such as "Paul Revere's Ride," The Song of Hiawatha, and Evangeline. He also made a notable contribution as a translator, becoming the first American to complete a translation of Dante Alighieri's Divine Comedy. He is associated with the fireside poets, a group whose work reached a wide domestic audience in its time.