The Chief American Poets: Selected Poems by Bryant, Poe, Emerson, Longfellow, Whittier, Holmes, Lowell, Whitman and Lanier; Ed., with Notes, Reference Lists and Biographical Sketches

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Houghton, Mifflin, 1905 - 713 pages
 

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Page 155 - UNION, strong and great! Humanity with all its fears, With all the hopes of future years, Is hanging breathless on thy fate! We know what Master laid thy keel, What Workmen wrought thy ribs of steel, Who made each mast, and sail, and rope, What anvils rang, what hammers beat, In what a forge and what a heat Were shaped the anchors of thy hope!
Page 366 - This is the ship of pearl, which, poets feign, Sails the unshadowed main, — The venturous bark that flings On the sweet summer wind its purpled wings In gulfs enchanted, where the siren sings, And coral reefs lie bare, Where the cold sea-maids rise to sun their streaming hair. Its webs of living gauze no more unfurl; Wrecked is the ship of pearl! And every chambered cell, Where its dim dreaming life was wont to dwell, As the frail tenant shaped his growing shell, Before thee lies revealed, —...
Page 1 - Earth and her waters, and the depths of air — Comes a still voice, — Yet a few days and thee The all-beholding sun shall see no more...
Page 115 - The day is done, and the darkness Falls from the wings of Night, As a feather is wafted downward From an eagle in his flight. I see the lights of the village Gleam through the rain and the mist, And a feeling of sadness comes o'er me, That my soul cannot resist: A feeling of sadness and longing, That is not akin to pain, And resembles sorrow only As the mist resembles the rain.
Page 49 - Ah, distinctly I remember it was in the bleak December, And each separate dying ember wrought its ghost upon the floor. Eagerly I wished the morrow; — vainly I had sought to borrow From my books surcease of sorrow — sorrow for the lost Lenore, For the rare and radiant maiden whom the angels name Lenore: Nameless here for evermore.
Page 51 - And the Raven, never flitting, still is sitting, still is sitting On the pallid bust of Pallas just above my chamber door; And his eyes have all the seeming of a demon's that is dreaming, . And the lamp-light o'er him streaming throws his shadow on the floor: And my soul from out that shadow that lies floating on the floor Shall be lifted — nevermore...
Page 531 - A child said What is the grass ? fetching it to me with full hands ; How could I answer the child ? I do not know what it is any more than he. I guess it must be the flag of my disposition, out of hopeful green stuff woven. Or I guess it is the handkerchief of the Lord, A scented gift and remembrancer designedly dropt, Bearing the owner's name someway in the corners, that we may see and remark, and say Whose ? Or I guess the grass is itself a child, the produced babe of the vegetation.
Page 300 - Knowledge never learned of schools, — Of the wild bee's morning chase ; Of the wild-flower's time and place; Flight of fowl, and habitude Of the tenants of the wood ; How the tortoise bears his shell ; How the woodchuck digs his cell ; And the ground-mole sinks his well ; How the robin feeds her young ; How the oriole's nest is hung...
Page 150 - She is not dead, — the child of our affection, — But gone unto that school Where she no longer needs our poor protection, And Christ himself doth rule. In that great cloister's stillness and seclusion, By guardian angels led, Safe from temptation, safe from sin's pollution, She lives, whom we call dead.
Page 233 - LISTEN, my children, and you shall hear Of the midnight ride of Paul Revere, On the eighteenth of April, in Seventyfive ; Hardly a man is now alive Who remembers that famous day and year. He said to his friend, "If the British march By land or sea from the town to-night, Hang a lantern aloft in the belfry arch Of the North Church tower as a signal light, — One, if by land, and two, if by sea ; And I on the opposite shore will be, Ready to ride and spread the alarm Through every Middlesex village...

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