The Poets and Poetry of America

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Rufus Wilmot Griswold
Carey and Hart, 1845 - American poetry - 476 pages
One of the most important American poetry anthologies of the nineteenth century, including the works of nearly every major and minor poet of the day, selected by Edgar Allan Poe's future literary executor. Poets included are Longfellow, Lowell, Whittier, Holmes, Bryant, Emerson, Jones Very, William Gilmore Simms, Christopher P. Cranch, Richard Henry Dana, and an impressive selection of female poets now mostly forgotten: Sigourney, Gould, Brooks, Mrs. Seba Smith, Hall, Embury, Ellett, Dinnies, Welby, Hooper, Davidson.

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Page 125 - To him who in the love of Nature holds Communion with her visible forms, she speaks A various language ; for his gayer hours She has a voice of gladness, and a smile And eloquence of beauty, and she glides Into his darker musings, with a mild And healing sympathy, that steals away Their sharpness, ere he is aware.
Page 133 - Whither, midst falling dew, While glow the heavens with the last steps of day, Far, through their rosy depths, dost thou pursue Thy solitary way?" Vainly the fowler's eye Might mark thy distant flight to do thee wrong, As, darkly painted on the crimson sky, Thy figure floats along.
Page 294 - Lives of great men all remind us We can make our lives sublime, And, departing, leave behind us Footprints on the sands of time; Footprints, that perhaps another, Sailing o'er life's solemn main, A forlorn and shipwrecked brother, Seeing, shall take heart again.
Page 236 - ANNOUNCED by all the trumpets of the sky, Arrives the snow, and, driving o'er the fields, Seems nowhere to alight: the whited air Hides hills and woods, the river, and the heaven, And veils the farm-house 'at the garden's end. The sled and traveller stopped, the courier's feet Delayed, all friends shut out, the housemates sit Around the radiant fireplace, enclosed In a tumultuous privacy of storm.
Page 342 - But now his nose is thin, And it rests upon his chin Like a staff, And a crook is in his back, And a melancholy crack In his laugh.
Page 125 - Yet a few days, and thee The all-beholding sun shall see no more In all his course; nor yet in the cold ground, Where thy pale form was laid, with many tears, Nor in the embrace of ocean, shall exist Thy image.
Page 134 - THE melancholy days are come, the saddest of the year, Of wailing winds, and naked woods, and meadows brown and sere. Heaped in the hollows of the grove, the autumn leaves lie dead ; They rustle to the eddying gust, and to the rabbit's tread ; The robin and the wren are flown, and from the shrubs the jay, And from the wood-top calls the crow through all the gloomy day. Where are the flowers, the fair young flowers...
Page 134 - Thou'rt gone, the abyss of heaven Hath swallowed up thy form ; yet on my heart Deeply hath sunk the lesson thou hast given, And shall not soon depart. He who, from zone to zone, Guides through the boundless sky thy certain flight, In the long way that I must tread alone, Will lead my steps aright.
Page 471 - Oh, say, can you see, by the dawn's early light, What so proudly we hailed at the twilight's last gleaming? Whose broad stripes and bright stars through the perilous fight, O'er the ramparts we watched, were so gallantly streaming! And the rocket's red glare, the bombs bursting in air, Gave proof through the night that our flag was still there; O say, does that star-spangled banner yet wave O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave?
Page 384 - In the greenest of our valleys, By good angels tenanted, Once a fair and stately palace — Radiant palace — reared its head. In the monarch Thought's dominion — It stood there! Never seraph spread a pinion Over fabric half so fair. Banners yellow, glorious, golden, On its roof did float and flow; (This — all this — was in the olden Time long ago...

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