Nature

Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 1878

A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.

Download PDF

Summary

Background

Poem Analysis

Themes

Symbols & Motifs

Literary Devices

Further Reading & Resources

Related Poems

“The Day is Done” by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1844)

The speaker begs an unnamed companion to share a brief poem about life’s possibilities to console him and quiet his melancholy. This homage to poetry reflects a much younger Longfellow and foreshadows “Nature,” which provides the brief consolation poem his younger self needed.

“Do not go gentle into that good night” by Dylan Thomas (1947)

As a measure of how a 20th-century poet responded to the premise of Longfellow’s gentle and uplifting poem, Dylan Thomas’ landmark poem argues the opposite of Longfellow: Thomas, reflecting the Modernist urgencies and uncertainties over the possibility of a transcendent afterlife, counsels only to fight and resist. Borrowing from Longfellow’s metaphor in “Nature,” this would equate to the boy throwing a temper tantrum that might stall the surrender to sleep.

“Thanatopsis” by William Cullen Bryant (1817)

Bryant, another of the Fireside poets, penned this affirmation on how to die quietly and with dignity as part of his undergraduate curriculum at Williams College. He was 17 at the time. The two poems can be compared as the argument of a young student for whom death is still far off, against the spiritual serenity of a man who has lived well beyond his expectations and is nearing the end of his life.

Further Literary Resources

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, United States National Literature, and the Canonical Erasure of Material Nature by Lloyd Willis (2006)

An important reassessment of Longfellow’s position within the canon of American literature, the study sees “Nature” as part of Longfellow’s wider thematic interest in the environment and the spiritual power of the land. Although Longfellow does not here depict the traditional sense of America’s expansive landscape, he does redefine nature into Nature, a powerful spiritual dimension. In turn, that argument helps reposition Longfellow as a harbinger of the contemporary Green movement in international literatures.

Cross of Snow: A Life of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow by Nicholas A. Basbanes (2020)

The first major interpretive biography of Longfellow in more than 20 years positions Longfellow as a major American poet who, along with Whitman and Dickinson, defined what has become, respectively, the head, heart, and soul of the American poetry canon. The biography researches Longfellow’s private life to draw important connections between his verse and his life.

"What Is There to Love About Longfellow?" by James Marcus (2020)

This seminal essay, first published in The New Yorker, argues the case against Longfellow’s “excommunication” to the margins of American literature despite his unprecedented cultural position in his time. The article uses “Nature” to argue Longfellow’s relevance and how his insight into the power of nature to console and inspire predates the eco-criticism of the early-21st century. Longfellow argues the importance of nature, not the Christian God, as a spiritual presence. Despite the dogged efforts of science, Nature for Longfellow remained the essence of mystery that demanded respect and admiration, a lesson his contemporary readers could take to heart.