Poetic Comfort Food
Longfellow's poems tend to have a pretty standard form. He might switch up the meter a little, but he tends to keep the rhyme and the stanzas regular and even. Just by looking at "The Day is Done" on the page, you can tell it isn't out to break any rules. Same goes for his subjects. They tend to be comforting, wholesome, and usually a little sentimental. He celebrates honest, hardworking people and wholesome values.
Even when he was alive, some people thought this made him a bad poet, and there are definitely still Longfellow haters today. We say, why should all good poems have to be the same? Like Longfellow says in this poem, there should be different kinds of poems for different moods and occasions. Just because you like a fancy restaurant meal one night doesn't mean you can't enjoy a plate of hearty, home-cooked mac 'n cheese the next. Yes, we did just compare all of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's work to mac 'n cheese, and we're sticking to it. Come on, who doesn't like mac 'n cheese?