“Look not mournfully into the past, it comes not back again. Wisely improve the present, it is thine. Go forth to meet the shadowy future without fear and with a manly heart.”

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.