Book excerpt: Of all of Longfellow's beloved poems (and there are many) none is so personal, so sunny, or so touching as this affectionate love letter to his three daughters, "grave Alice, and laughing Allegra, and Edith with the golden hair." Longfellow's happiest hours were spent writing on a cluttered desk by the south window of his beloved Craigie House, an imposing mansion still preserved on Cambridge's famous Brattle Street. It was here that most of the action takes place (except for his literary reference, and brief excursion, to the "Mouse-Tower on the Rhine"), here that his daughters come creeping down the stairs to beard the gentle, genial poet in his lair. Lang's luminous illustrations perfectly capture the happy atmosphere of that house, the author's affections for his daughters, and the painterly quality of his verse. This book for young readers presents one of the sweetest poems in the English language, her newly illustrated, beautifully presented, and now available to a new generation of readers.