Longfellow survives largely as a bad example, not a poète maudit but a maudlin poet, afloat on the lachrymose seas of a sentimental age. Still, he does prevail even if his poetry has not endured, and few critics who even now discuss his work are able to dismiss him out of hand. He is, for one thing, so much a part of the 19th-century literary scene, reaching out of the American Renaissance an index finger pointing toward the Genteel Age and beyond, his verse providing the text, his life the example of what poetry and the poet were in America during a time when both had a popular reach. Through parody and persistence, moreover, his metric tales have attained a measure of immortality, an undeniable public memory, being artifacts in our national attic. The tom-tom beat of Hiawatha, "Speak for yourself, John," "Let us, then, be up and doing," and the cry, "Excelsior!" ring down the years with the force of a brand-name logo. In our collective recollection the village chestnut tree still spreads and the forest primeval still stands—national preserves and clichés.