Great American WritersH.Holt, 1912 - 256 pages |
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admiration American literature appeared born Boston Bret Harte Bret Harte's Broadway Journal Brook Farm Brown Bryant career character chief Concord Cooper countrymen critical death died early Edition effect Emerson England English essay experience F. B. Sanborn fame father friends genius greatest Harvard Hawthorne Hawthorne's historian Holmes humor ideals inspiration interest Irving later Leatherstocking lecturing less literary lived Longfellow Lowell magazine Margaret Fuller Mark Twain married Massachusetts master moral NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE Nathaniel Parker Willis nature never novel orators Over-Soul Parkman patriotic perhaps period Poe's poems poet poetic poetry political praise prose published readers reputation returned romance Scarlet Letter scene seems Simms slavery Sophia Peabody soul spirit story Stowe success taste theme theory Thoreau thought tion Transcendentalist true Uncle Tom's Cabin verse vols volumes Webster Whitman Whittier wife writing wrote York youth
Popular passages
Page 118 - Our day of dependence, our long apprenticeship to the learning of other lands, draws to a close. The millions that around us are rushing into life cannot always be fed on the sere remains of foreign harvests.
Page 220 - What do you think has become of the young and old men ? And what do you think has become of the women and children ? They are alive and well somewhere, The smallest sprout shows there is really no death, And if ever there was it led forward life, and does not wait at the end to arrest it, And ceas'd the moment life appear'd. All goes onward and outward, nothing collapses, And to die is different from what any one supposed, and luckier.
Page 149 - All else is gone : from those great eyes The soul has fled : When faith is lost, when honor dies, The man is dead! Then, pay the reverence of old days To his dead fame ; Walk backward, with averted gaze, And hide the shame ! fire THE CHRISTIAN TOURISTS.
Page 33 - So live, that when thy summons comes to join The innumerable caravan, which moves To that mysterious realm, where each shall take His chamber in the silent halls of death, Thou go not, like the quarry-slave at night, Scourged to his dungeon, but, sustained and soothed By an unfaltering trust, approach thy grave Like one who wraps the drapery of his couch About him, and lies down to pleasant dreams.
Page 140 - Yet whenever I cross the river On its bridge with wooden piers, Like the odor of brine from the ocean Comes the thought of other years. And I think how many thousands Of care-encumbered men, Each bearing his burden of sorrow, Have crossed the bridge since then.
Page 228 - This day before dawn I ascended a hill and look'd at the crowded heaven, And I said to my spirit, When we become the enfolders of those orbs, and the pleasure and knowledge of every thing in them, shall we be fill'd and satisfied then? And my spirit said, No, we but level that lift to pass and continue beyond.
Page 157 - GRANDMOTHER'S mother: her age, I guess, Thirteen summers, or something less; Girlish bust, but womanly air; Smooth, square forehead with uprolled hair; Lips that lover has never kissed ; Taper fingers and slender wrist; Hanging sleeves of stiff brocade; So they painted the little maid.
Page 98 - It is my design to render it manifest that no one point in its composition is referable either to accident or intuition — that the work proceeded step by step to its completion with the precision and rigid consequence of a mathematical problem.
Page 28 - tis kindled o' nights With a semblance of flame by the chill Northern Lights. He may rank (Griswold says so) first bard of your nation, (There's no doubt that he stands in supreme ice-olation,) Your topmost Parnassus he may set his heel on, But no warm applauses come, peal following peal on...
Page 90 - But I am constitutionally sensitive — nervous in a very unusual degree. I became insane, with long intervals of horrible sanity. During these fits of absolute unconsciousness, I drank — God only knows how often or how much. As a matter of course, my enemies referred the insanity to the drink, rather than the drink to the insanity.