American Poetry

Front Cover
C. Scribner's Sons, 1918 - 721 pages

From inside the book

Other editions - View all

Common terms and phrases

Popular passages

Page 365 - Was not spoken of the soul. Not enjoyment and not sorrow. Is our destined end or way; But to act, that each tomorrow Find us farther than today. Art is long, and time is fleeting. And our hearts, though stout and brave. Still, like muffled drums are beating Funeral marches to the grave. In the world's broad field of battle. In the bivouac of life, Be not like dumb, driven cattle! Be a hero in the strife!
Page 431 - Year after year beheld the silent toil That spread his lustrous coil; Still, as the spiral grew, He left the past year's dwelling for the new, Stole with soft step its shining archway through, Built up its idle door, Stretched in his last-found home, and knew the old no more.
Page 234 - Hear the sledges with the bells — Silver bells! What a world of merriment their melody foretells! How they tinkle, tinkle, tinkle, In the icy air of night! While the stars that oversprinkle All the heavens, seem to twinkle With a crystalline delight...
Page 535 - O Captain! my Captain! rise up and hear the bells; Rise up— for you the flag is flung— for you the bugle trills, For you bouquets and ribbon'd wreaths— for you the shores a-crowding, For you they call, the swaying mass, their eager faces turning; Here Captain! dear father! This arm beneath your head! It is some dream that on the deck, You've fallen cold and dead. My Captain does not answer, his lips are pale and still, My father does not feel my arm, he has no pulse nor will, The ship is anchor'd...
Page 267 - 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 169 - Or lose thyself in the continuous woods Where rolls the Oregon, and hears no sound, Save his own dashings — yet the dead are there: And millions in those solitudes, since first The flight of years began, have laid them down In their last sleep — the dead reign there alone.
Page 265 - It shivered the window, pane and sash; It rent the banner with seam and gash. Quick, as it fell, from the broken staff Dame Barbara snatched the silken scarf. She leaned far out on the window-sill, And shook it forth with a royal will. ' Shoot, if you must, this old gray head, But spare your country's flag,
Page 400 - It was two by the village clock When he came to the bridge in Concord town. He heard the bleating of the flock, And the twitter of birds among the trees, And felt the breath of the morning breeze Blowing over the meadows brown.
Page 478 - I stand and look at them long and long. They do not sweat and whine about their condition, They do not lie awake in the dark and weep for their sins, They do not make me sick discussing their duty to God, Not one is dissatisfied, not one is demented with the mania of owning things, Not one kneels to another, nor to his kind that lived thousands of years ago, Not one is respectable or unhappy over the whole earth.
Page 529 - When I heard the learn'd astronomer, When the proofs, the figures, were ranged in columns before me, When I was shown the charts and diagrams, to add, divide, and measure them, When I sitting heard the astronomer where he lectured with much applause in the lecture-room, How soon unaccountable I became tired and sick, Till rising and gliding out I wander'd off by myself, In the mystical moist night-air, and from time to time, Look'd up in perfect silence at the stars.

Bibliographic information