A Tale of Two Authors

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow was born in Maine in 1807. He become a national icon for literary achievements in the 1850s and was well-known throughout the world by the time of his death in 1882. Henry was born a second child to his parents and developed a thirst for knowledge early on in his life. He went to a private institution with his older brother where he focused on literature and language. After the war of 1812 had struck, he wrote his first poem at age 13 that details the battle between colonists and Indians  It was published in the Portland Gazette. According to rumor, his father didn't like Henry's poem and he was set a back a bit by this reaction but it did not stop him fully. He then went onto Bowdoin College. After Bowdoin he left for Europe and learned several languages. He went onto marry Mary Potter and become a Professor at Harvard. His wife though died of a miscarriage, the first of many griefs in his life. He went onto marry Franny Appleton and have several children only for her to die in a fire set ablaze by hot wax. Longfellow's son went off to join the Civil War and Longfellow was already considered an icon by then. He passed in 1880. His works included the "Battle of Lovell's Pond," "The Song of Hiawatha," "The Courtship of Miles Standish," and "Evangeline." 

Walt Whitman was born in 1819 on Long Island. He is sometimes known as the father of free verse. He was the second of nine children when born. Early on, his family moved a lot due to bad investments on behalf of the father. This is seen as a developing point for Walt's ambitions as he sees how much life was bad when living in those conditions. Whitman finished formal schooling at age 11 and went through several different apprenticeships and ended up working at the Patriot. After some controversy, he left and took a job at the Long-Island Star. At Age 16, he left once again and went to work as a compositor. In May of 1836, he left again and went back to his family to teach for two years. After those two years though, he once again quit because he wasn't satisfied with teaching. He founded his own newspaper the Long Islander. He continued to work at various newpapers but never finding a place. He was at the founding convention of the Free Soil Party in 1848. He wrote the Leaves of Grass intending it to be an american epic equating to the Bible in its cadence. He wrote more poems in the Civil War and further editions to Leaves of Grass up until his death in 1892. He wrote Franklin Evans, Leaves of Grass, Drum-Taps, Memoranda During the War, Specimen Days, and Democratic Vistas. 

Both these authors are now seen as some of the greatest literary geniuses in American time. But they were severely different. Walt Whtiman was a humanist, deist, pro-prohibition poet who was struggling throughout his life. He went from job-to-job and rarely stuck around. He used free verse to get his point across while Longfellow did not. His life was filled with a different tragedy than Longfellow's which was he couldn't stick around in one place. Longfellow's life was tarred by two of his wives dying and personal tragedy striking him to usher in that romanticism type prose. Whitman seemed to like writing about political subjects a lot, while Longfellow very much liked to stick towards romance. Whitman did branch out and write about nature though.