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
Long poem "Song of Myself" by Whitman. Yet that long poem, Keller notes, does not have a "specified end toward which the poem or speaker is directed," unlike a more traditional long poem. Though long poems do have roots in the epic form, that does not mean long poems that are epic-like are completely epic. A second example of long poems distancing themselves from the traditional epic form is seen in "Helen In Egypt" by H.D. Though traditional epics feature physical quests or journeys, "Helen In Egypt" is about the psychological journey of Helen. Other characteristics of the epic include a hero