Selections From American Poetry | Page 4

FITZ-GREENE HALLECK
Marco Bozzaris
On the Death of Joseph Rodman Drake
JOHN HOWARD PAYNE
Home Sweet Home
EDGAR ALLAN POE
To Helen
Israfel
Lenore
The Coliseum
The Haunted Palace

To One in Paradise
Eulalie A Song
The Raven
To Helen

Annabel Lee
The Bells
Eldorado
HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW
Hymn to the Night
A Psalm of Life
The Skeleton in Armor
The
Wreck of the Hesperus
The Village Blacksmith
It is not Always
May
Excelsior
The Rainy Day
The Arrow and the Song
The

Day is Done
Walter Von Vogelweide
The Builders
Santa
Filomena
The Discoverer of the North Cape
Sandalphon
Tales of
a Wayside Inn
The Landlord's Tale
The Sicilian's Tale
The Theologian's Tale
JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER
Proem
The Frost Spirit
Songs of Labor Dedication
Songs of
Labor The Lumberman
Barclay of Ury
All's Well
Raphael

Seed-Time and Harvest
The Prophecy of Samuel Sewall
Skipper
Ireson's Ride
The Double-headed Snake of Newbury
Maud Muller

Burns
The Hero
The Eternal Goodness
The Pipes at Lucknow

Cobbler Keezar's Vision
The Mayflowers
RALPH WALDO EMERSON
Goodbye
Each and All
The Problem
The Rhodora
The
Humble-Bee
The Snow-Storm
Fable
Forbearance
Concord
Hymn
Boston Hymn
The Titmouse
JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL
Hakon's Lay
Flowers
Impartiality
My Love
The Fountain
The
Shepherd of King Admetus
Ode recited at the Harvard
Commemoration

Prelude to the Vision of Sir Launfal
Biglow
Papers
What Mr Robinson Thinks
The Courtin'
Sunthin' in the Pastoral
Line
An Indain Summer Reverie
A Fable for Critics (selection)
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES
Old Ironsides
The Last Leaf
My Aunt
The Chambered Nautilus

Contentment
The Deacon's Masterpiece

THOMAS BUCHANAN READ
Storm on the St. Bernard
Drifting
WALT WHITMAN
O Captain! My Captain!
Pioneers! O Pioneers!
NOTES
SELECTIONS OF AMERICAN POETRY
INTRODUCTION
If we define poetry as the heart of man expressed in beautiful language,
we shall not say that we have no national poetry. True, America has
produced no Shakespeare and no Milton, but we have an inheritance in
all English literature; and many poets in America have followed in the
footsteps of their literary British forefathers.
Puritan life was severe. It was warfare, and manual labor of a most
exhausting type, and loneliness, and devotion to a strict sense of duty.
It was a life in which pleasure was given the least place and duty the
greatest. Our Puritan ancestors thought music and poetry dangerous, if
not actually sinful, because they made men think of this world rather
than of heaven. When Anne Bradstreet wrote our first known American
poems, she was expressing English thought; "The tenth muse" was not
animated by the life around her, but was living in a dream of the land
she had left behind; her poems are faint echoes of the poetry of England.
After time had identified her with life in the new world, she wrote
"Contemplations," in which her English nightingales are changed to
crickets and her English gilli-flowers to American blackberry vines.
The truly representative poetry of colonial times is Michael
Wigglesworth's "Day of Doom. This is the real heart of the Puritan, his
conscience, in imperfect rhyme. It fulfills the first part of our definition,
but shows by its lack of beautiful style that both elements are necessary
to produce real poetry.

Philip Freneau was the first American who sought to express his life in
poetry. The test of beauty of language again excludes from real poetry
some of his expressions and leaves us a few beautiful lyrics, such as
"The Wild Honeysuckle," in which the poet sings his love of American
nature. With them American poetry may be said to begin.
The fast historical event of national importance was the American
Revolution. Amid the bitter years of want, of suffering, and of war; few
men tried to write anything beautiful. Life was harsh and stirring and
this note was echoed in all the literature. As a result we have narrative
and political poetry, such as "The Battle of the Kegs" and "A Fable,"
dealing almost entirely with events and aiming to arouse military ardor.
In "The Ballad of Nathan Hale," the musical expression of bravery,
pride, and sympathy raises the poem so far above the rhymes of their
period that it will long endure as the most memorable poetic expression
of the Revolutionary period.
Poetry was still a thing of the moment, an avocation, not dignified by
receiving the best of a man. With William Cullen Bryant came a
change. He told our nation that in the new world as well as in the old
some men should live for the beautiful. Everything in nature spoke to
him in terms of human life. Other poets saw the re1ation between their
own lives and the life of the flowers and the birds, but Bryant
constantly expressed this relationship. The concluding stanza of "To a
Waterfowl" is the most perfect example of this characteristic, but it
underlies also the whole thought of his youthful poem "Thanatopsis"
(A View of Death). If we could all read the lives of our gentians and
bobolinks as he did, there would be more true poetry in America.
Modern thinkers urge us to step outside of ourselves into the lives of
others and by our imagination to share their emotions; this is no new
ambition in America; since Bryant in "The