 Longfellow 's popularity rapidly declined , beginning shortly after his death and into the twentieth century as academics began to appreciate poets like Walt Whitman , Edwin Arlington Robinson , and Robert Frost . In the twentieth century , literary scholar Kermit Vanderbilt noted , " Increasingly rare is the scholar who braves ridicule to justify the art of Longfellow 's popular rhymings . " 20th @-@ century poet Lewis Putnam Turco concluded " Longfellow was minor and derivative in every way throughout his career ... nothing more than a hack imitator of the English Romantics . " 
