"Lives of great men all remind us
We can make our lives sublime,"

and the school-girl who read them quietly by herself, felt them,
perhaps, no less keenly than the man of thought and experience.

Longfellow has said that--

"Sublimity always is simple
Both in sermon and song, a child can seize on its meaning,"

and the simplicity of his poetry is the reason why children and young
people have always loved it; the reason, also, why it has been enjoyed
by men and women and children all over the world.

One of his poems which has been the delight of children and grown people
alike is the "Village Blacksmith," the first half of which is a
description that many a boy might feel as if he could have written
himself--if he only had the poet's command of words and rhymes, and the
poet's genius! Is not this one of the proofs of a good poem, that it
haunts us until it seems as if it had almost grown out of our own mind?
How life-like the picture is!--

"And children coming home from school
Look in at the open door;
They love to see the flaming forge,
And hear the bellows roar,
And catch the burning sparks that fly
Like chaff from a threshing-floor."