Selections From American Poetry | Page 5

Crowded Street" analyzes
the life in the faces he sees.
Until the early part of the nineteenth century American poetry dealt
mainly with the facts of history and the description of nature. A new
element of fancy is prominent in Joseph Rodman Drake's "The Culprit
Fay." It dances through a long narrative with the delicacy of the fay

himself.
Edgar Allan Poe brought into our poetry somber sentiment and musical
expression. Puritan poetry was somber, but it was almost devoid of
sentiment. Poe loved sad beauty and meditated on the sad things in life.
Many of his poems lament the loss of some fair one. "To Helen,"
"Annabel Lee" "Lenore," and "To One In Paradise" have the theme,
while in "The Raven" the poet is seeking solace for the loss of Lenore.
"Eulalie--A Song" rises, on the other hand to intense happiness. With
Poe the sound by which his idea was expressed was as important as the
thought itself. He knew how to make the sound suit the thought, as in
"The Raven" and "The Bells." One who understands no English can
grasp the meaning of the different sections from the mere sound, so
clearly distinguishable are the clashing of the brass and the tolling of
the iron bells. If we return to our definition of poetry as an expression
of the heart of a man, we shall find the explanation of these
peculiarities: Poe was a man of moods and possessed the ability to
express these moods in appropriate sounds.
The contrast between the emotion of Poe and the c alm spirit of the
man who followed him is very great. In Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
American poetry reached high-water mark. Lafcadio Hearn in his
"Interpretations of Literature" says: "Really I believe that it is a very
good test of any Englishman's ability to feel poetry, simply to ask him,
`Did you like Longfellow when you were a boy?' If he eats `No,' then it
is no use to talk to him on the subject of poetry at all, however much he
might be able to tell you about quantities and metres." No American
has in equal degree won the name of "household poet." If this term is
correctly understood, it sums up his merits more succinctly than can
any other title.
Longfellow dealt largely with men and women and the emotions
common to us all. Hiawatha conquering the deer and bison, and
hunting in despair for food where only snow and ice abound;
Evangeline faithful to her father and her lover, and relieving suffering
in the rude hospitals of a new world; John Alden fighting the battle
between love and duty; Robert of Sicily learning the lesson of humility;

Sir Federigo offering his last possession to the woman he loved; Paul
Revere serving his country in time of need; the monk proving that only
a sense of duty done can bring happiness: all these and more express
the emotions which we know are true in our own lives. In his longer
narrative poems he makes the legends of Puritan life real to us; he takes
English folk-lore and makes us see Othere talking to Arthur, and the
Viking stealing his bride. His short poems are even better known than
his longer narratives. In them he expressed his gentle, sincere love of
the young, the suffering, and the sorrowful. In the Sonnets he showed;
that deep appreciation of European literature which made noteworthy
his teaching at Harvard and his translations.
He believed that he was assigned a definite task in the world which he
described as follows in his last poem:
"As comes the smile to the lips,
The foam to the surge;

So come to the Poet his songs,
All hitherward blown
From the misty realm, that belongs
To the vast unknown.

His, and not his, are the lays