Henry Wadsworth Longfellow was the Little Book of Calm of the 19th century, supplier of a bracingly pious quote for every domestic disaster.
When the prime minister went to bed, alone, he turned for comfort to one of the most popular poets in the world, as almost two centuries of troubled souls have done before him.
Tony Blair apparently read The Village Church, and drew comfort from the pious Longfellow lines "For thine own purpose, thou hast sent/The strife and the discouragement!"
But if he saw only an excerpt from the several hundred line poem in a compendium, he might not have been aware that the verses go on to take some peculiar twists.
Longfellow introduces Lucifer, dressed as a priest, who recites a Satanic version of the Lord's Prayer.
This includes the lines: "Open, open hell's gates!/ Shut, shut heaven's gates! All the devils in the air/ The stronger be, that hear the Black Prayer!"
He could just as well have muttered to himself, as he prepared for a sticky father and son chat: "The greatest firmness is the greatest mercy." Or indeed: "Believe me, every man has his secret sorrows, which the world knows not; and oftentimes we call a man cold, when he is only sad."
Longfellow outsold by millions of books his more critically regarded contemporaries Emerson and Thoreau. His rumty-tumpty rhythm, and clunky but unforgettable rhymes, made his work instantly accessible, recognisable, and parodied. Hiawatha, his most famous work - treated with some respect by scholars as a genuine attempt to cele brate indigenous American culture - has been recreated in sculpture, painting, opera, ballet and innumerable films.
Longfellow was born in New England in 1807, to a family which had emigrated from Yorkshire in the 17th century. He started school at the age of three and was offered a professorship at 22. He earned enough money from Evangeline and later massive best sellers - 10,000 copies of The Courtship of Miles Standish were ordered in London on publiciation day in 1858 - to retire from academia and become a full-time poet and pundit by the age of 40.
His two marriages ended in tragedy. He married his childhood sweetheart Mary in 1831, but she died of fever in Rotterdam only three years later. His second wife died in 1861 of burns from a fire started when she was melting wax to seal up locks of their five children's hair.
Longfellow quotations, still regularly to be found in antique shops, were lovingly worked as illuminated texts or cross stitch samplers to hang on the wall. Should Cherie Blair feel moved to take up her embroidery frame, here's a Longfellow text for Euan's room: "Joy, temperance, and repose/Slam the door on the doctor's nose."
Extracts from A Village Church
The day is drawing to its close;
And what good deeds, since it first rose,
Have I presented, Lord, to thee,
As offsprings of my ministry?
Feeble, at best, is my endeavour!
I see, but cannot reach, the height
That lies forever in the light;
And yet forever and forever,
When seeming just within my grasp,
I feel my feeble hands unclasp,
And sink discouraged into night!
For thine own purpose,
thou hast sent
The strife and the discouragement!
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