NINETEENTH-CENTURY AMERICAN POETRY

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1 NINETEENTH-CENTURY AMERICAN POETRY EDITED WITH AN INTRODUCTION AND NOTES BY WILLIAM C. SPENGEMANN WITH JESSICA F. ROBERTS PENGUIN BOOKS

2 INTRODUCTION SUGGESTIONS FOR FURTHER READING A NOTE ON THE TEXTS xv xxxv xxxvii JOEL BARLOW (17S4-1812). l from The Columbiad: Book the Eighth 2 WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT ( ) 9 Thanatopsis 10 To a Waterfowl 12 Mutation 13 Hymn to the North Star 14 To a Mosquito 15 A Meditation on Rhode Island Coal 17 The Prairies 20 The Crowded Street 23 Not Yet 25 The Poet 26 The Death of Lincoln 28 RALPH WALDO EMERSON ( ) 29 Each and All 30 The Humble-Bee 32 The Snow-Storm 34 Grace 34 Blight 35 Motto to "The Poet" 36 The World-Soul 37 Mithridates 40 Hamatreya 41 Ode, Inscribed to W. H. Channing 43 Merlin I 46

3 vi CONTENTS Motto to "Nature" 48 Days 48 The Chartist's Complaint 49 Two Rivers 49 - Motto to "Illusions" SO Terminus 51 HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW ( ) 53 Mezzo Cammin 54 The Warning 54 The Day Is Done 55 Dante 56 Sand of the Desert in an Hour-Glass 57 The Fire of Drift-Wood 59 The Jewish Cemetery at Newport 60 The Ropewalk 62 The Golden Mile-Stone 64 from Hiawatha: The White Man's Foot 66 Snow-Flakes 68 The Legend of Rabbi Ben Levi 69 The Rhyme of Sir Christopher 71 JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER ( ) 76 The Cities of the Plain 76 The Farewell 78 Official Piety 80 The Haschish 81 Skipper Ireson's Ride 82 The Palm-Tree 85 Brown of Ossawatomie 87 A Word for the Hour 88 Barbara Frietchie 89 from Tent on the Beach: [The Dreamer] 91 Overruled 92 EDGAR ALLAN POE ( ) 94 Dreams 96 Sonnet: To Science 97 Romance 97

4 vii A Dream Within a Dream 98 The City in the Sea 99 To One in Paradise 100 Silence 101 -The Sleeper 101 The Conqueror Worm 103 Dreamland 104 Stanzas 106 The Raven 107 A Valentine 111 Ulalume 112 Annabel Lee 115 Eldorado 116 OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES ( ) 117 Old Ironsides 118 Our Limitations 119 Latter-Day Warnings 119 The Chambered Nautilus 121 Iris, Her Book 122 Prologue 124 Tartarus 124 JONES VERY ( ) 126 The New Birth 127 The Son 127 The Word 128 The Spirit 128 The Serpent 129 The Robe 129 The Winter Rain. 130 The Cross 130 The Mountain 131 The Promise 131 The Birds of Passage 132 The Silent 132 The Indian's Retort 133 Slavery 134 The First Atlantic Telegraph 135

5 ii CONTENTS The Slowness of Belief in a Spiritual World 135 Forevermore 136 HENRY DAVID THOREAU ( ) Sic Vita 138 Brother Where Dost Thou Dwell 140 On Ponkawtasset, Since, We Took Our Way 141 Low-Anchored Cloud 142 Woof of the Sun, Ethereal Gauze 142 My Life Has Been the Poem I Would Have Writ 143 Inspiration 143 For Though the Eaves Were Rabbeted 146 Pray to What Earth Does This Sweet Cold Belong. 146 A Winter and Spring Scene 147 m JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL ( ) iso A Contrast 151 from A Fable for Critics 152 from The Biglow Papers: The Pious Editor's Creed 158 The Darkened Mind 161 Sonnet: On Being Asked for an Autograph in Venice 162 The Boss 162 In a Copy of Omar Khayyam 162 Science and Poetry 163 WALT WHITMAN ( ) 164 Song of Myself 165 Crossing Brooklyn Ferry 225 Out of the Cradle Endlessly Rocking 231 I Saw in Louisiana a Live-Oak Growing 238 Cavalry Crossing a Ford 238 Beat! Beat! Drums! 239 As I Lay with My Head in Your Lap Camerado 240 Years of the Modern 240 When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom'd 242 A Noiseless Patient Spider 250 Passage to India 251

6 ix Prayer of Columbus 260 To a Locomotive in Winter 262 HERMAN MELVILLE ( ) 264 Immolated 265 from Battle-Pieces The Portent 266 Misgivings 266 The March into Virginia 267 The Temeraire 268 A Utilitarian View of the Monitor's Fight 270 Stonewall Jackson: Mortally Wounded at Chancellorsville 271 Stonewall Jackson: Ascribed to a Virginian 272 The House-Top 273 The College Colonel 274 The Martyr 275 The Apparition 276 Iris 277 from Clarel from Part I, canto xiii: The Arch 278 Part II, canto vii: Guide and Guard 281 from Part II, canto xxiii: By the Jordan 284 from Part III, canto xx: Afterward 287 from Part III, canto xxix: Rolfe and the Palm 287 from Part IV, canto iii: The Island 289 Part IV, canto xxxi: Dirge 292 Part IV, canto xxxiv: Via Crucis 292 Part IV, canto xxxv: Epilogue 294 from John Marr and Other Sailors Tom Deadlight 295 The Aeolian Harp 296 The Maldive Shark 298 The Berg 298 The Enviable Isles 300 Pebbles 300 from Timoleon After the Pleasure Party 302 The Night-March 306 Art" 307 Herba Santa 307

7 In a Bye-Canal The Attic Landscape The Parthenon In the Desert from Weeds and Wildings, Chiefly; With a Rose or Two The Little Good Fellows The Chipmunk Time's Betrayal Rosary Beads Miscellaneous Poems The Rusty Man Camoens Fruit and Flower Painter In Shards the Sylvan Vases Lie To Pontoosuce Billy in the Darbies LEDERICK GODDARD TUCKERMAN ( ) Sonnets: First Series Infatuation Rhotruda As Sometimes in a Grove Coralie The Cricket EMILY DICKINSON ( ) I never lost as much but twice My nosegays are for Captives I never hear the word "escape" Some things thatfly there be Water, is taught by thirst "Faith" is a fine invention Come slowly Eden! Did the Harebell loose her girdle I've known a Heaven, like a Tent Wild Nights Wild Nights! 3S Delight is as the flight There's a certain Slant of light 358

8 xi 281. 'Tis so appalling it exhilarates Of Bronze and Blaze I reason, Earth is short The One who could repeat the Summer day He fumbles at your Soul I cannot dance upon my Toes A Bird came down the Walk I know that He exists God is a distant stately Lover The first Day's Night had come 'Twas like a Maelstrom, with a notch Much Madness is divinest Sense This was a Poet It is That This World is not Conclusion At least to pray is left is left He touched me, so I live to know 'Twas warm at first like Us I've seen a Dying Eye The Brain, within its Groove If I may have it, when it's dead There is a pain so utter The Trees like Tassels hit and swung It would have starved a Gnat They shut me up in Prose To know just how He suffered would be dear I watched the Moon around the House The Brain is wider than the Sky I cannot live with You A Prison gets to be a friend The Name of it is "Autumn" I dwell in Possibility One need not be a Chamber to be Haunted My Life had stood a Loaded Gun It was a quiet way A Pit but Heaven over it I think the Hemlock likes to stand Dropped into the Ether Acre Publication is the Auction None can experience stint A Light exists in Spring The Wind begun to rock the Grass 384

9 xii CONTENTS 854. Banish Air from Air Faith is the Pierless Bridge Struck, was I, not yet by Lightning Under the Light, yet under A loss of something ever felt I Crumbling is not an instant's Act There is a Zone whose even Years I am afraid to own a Body These are the Nights that Beetles love The Lightning is a yellow Fork Like Rain it sounded till it curved To pile like Thunder to its close This dirty little Heart Wonder is not precisely Knowing The Bat is dun, with wrinkled Wings What mystery pervades a well! How brittle are the Piers Death is the supple Suitor Oh give it Motion deck it sweet Come show thy Durham Breast Those dying then In Winter in my Room Drowning is not so pitiful There comes an hour when begging stops 396 SARAH MORGAN BRYAN PIATT ( ) 397 The Palace-Burner 398 A Doubt 399 This World 400 In Her Prison 402 Answering a Child 403 No Help 404 In a Queen's Domain 405 If I Had Made the World 405 Stone for a Statue 407 Army of Occupation 407 A Lesson in a Picture 408 A Pique at Parting 409 Her Word of Reproach 411 Sad Spring-Song 412

10 xiii SIDNEY LANIER ( ) 413 Song for "The Jacquerie" 414 Nirvana 415 _ To Beethoven 417 To Richard Wagner 419 The Revenge of Hamish 421 To Bayard Taylor 425 EDWIN ARLINGTON ROBINSON ( S) 429 Walt Whitman 429 John Evereldown 430 Luke Havergal 431 Three Quatrains 432 The House on the Hill 433 Aaron Stark 434 Sonnet 434 Verlaine 435 Richard Cory 435 Cliff Klingenhagen 436 Reuben Bright 436 The Tavern 437 Octaves XV, XIX, XX 437 EXPLANATORY NOTES 439

Nineteenth-Century American Literature. Apes, William ~ "An Indian's Looking-Glass for the White Man 1833

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