The Song of Hiawatha The Song of Hiawatha The Song of Hiawatha is an 1855 epic poem in trochaic tetrameter by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow that features Native American characters. The epic relates the fictional adventures of an Ojibwe warrior named Hiawatha and the tragedy of his love for Minnehaha, a Dakota woman. Events in the story are set in the Pictured Rocks area on the south shore of Lake Superior. Longfellow's poem, though based on native oral traditions surrounding the figure of Manabozho, represents not a work of transmission but an original work of American Romantic literature. Longfellow's sources for the legends and ethnography
Song of the Open Road (poem) Song of the Open Road (poem) "Song of the Open Road" is a poem by Walt Whitman from his 1856 collection "Leaves of Grass". The poem can be split in two parts, Sections 1-8 and Sections 9-15. During the first part, Whitman describes the open road “as a metaphorical journey characterized by freedom, independence and affirmations of self, time and place” (Kreidler). During this part, Whitman notices how everything is as it should be. He realizes that along the journey one will face a test of wisdom, but, as stated by Kreidler, “Whitman says, ‘not [the wisdom] finally tested in