Henry Wadsworth Longfellow was an American poet whose story-poems, like Paul Revere's Ride and The Song of Hiawatha, were memorized and recited in homes and schoolrooms across America. He was the most popular American poet of his time, loved for verses with strong rhythms that were a joy to read aloud, and was also a professor and translator who produced the first complete American translation of Dante's Divine Comedy. He was the first American poet honored with a memorial bust in Poets' Corner at London's Westminster Abbey, unveiled in 1884.