Longfellow was an American poet born in 1807. He is one of the five Fireside Poets. Longfellow is best known for his poems Paul Revere's Ride and Evangeline. Hyperion is an 1839 Romantic prose work which was a poetical account of Longfellow's travels. At the time of its publication, it had an immense popularity, due mainly to its sentimental romanticism. Hyperion has historical importance, for two reasons (1) because it marks that period in Longfellow's career when, though he had left nature, he had not yet found art, and (2) because it opened the sluices through which the flood of German sentimental poetry flowed into the United States.