Longfellow's Poem
She is known to literary history as the unrequited love of the newly widowed Captain Miles Standish, the colony's military advisor, in Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's 1858 poem The Courtship of Miles Standish. According to the poem, Standish asked his good friend John Alden to propose to Priscilla on his behalf, only to have Priscilla ask, “Why don’t you speak for yourself, John?”
Longfellow (a direct descendant of John and Priscilla) based his poem on a romanticized version of a family tradition, though there is no independent historical evidence for the account. The basic story was apparently handed down in the Alden family and published by John and Priscilla’s great-great-grandson, Rev. Timothy Alden, in 1814.
Read more about this topic: Priscilla Alden
Famous quotes containing the words longfellow and/or poem:
“So in majestic cadence rise and fall
The mighty undulations of thy song,
O sightless bard, England’s Monides!
And ever and anon, high over all
Uplifted, a ninth wave superb and strong,
Floods all the soul with its melodious seas.”
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Long in its cloudy bosom hoarded,
Now whispered and revealed
To wood and field.”
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