Nineteenth-Century American Poetry

by Unknown

• ISBN13: 9780140435870
• ISBN10: 0140435875
• eBook ISBN(s): 9781101177327
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 1996-10-01
• Publisher: Penguin Classics
• More Book Details
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Summary

Whitman, Dickinson, and Melville occupy the center of this anthology of nearly three hundred poems, spanning the course of the century, from Joel Barlow to Edwin Arlington Robinson, by way of Bryant, Emerson, Longfellow, Whittier, Poe, Holmes, Jones Very, Thoreau, Lowell, and Lanier.

Author Biography

William C. Spengemann is the Hale Professor in Arts and Sciences and Professor of English Emeritus at Dartmouth College. He edited the Penguin Classics edition of Nineteenth-Century American Poetry.

Table of Contents

Introduction	xv
Suggestions for Further Reading	xxxv
A Note on the Texts	xxxvii
Joel Barlow (1754-1812)	1	(8)
from The Columbiad: Book the Eighth	2	(7)
William Cullen Bryant (1794-1878)	9	(20)
Thanatopsis	10	(2)
To a Waterfowl	12	(1)
Mutation	13	(1)
Hymn to the North Star	14	(1)
To a Mosquito	15	(2)
A Meditation on Rhode Island Coal	17	(3)
The Prairies	20	(3)
The Crowded Street	23	(2)
Not Yet	25	(1)
The Poet	26	(2)
The Death of Lincoln	28	(1)
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882)	29	(24)
Each and All	30	(2)
The Humble-Bee	32	(2)
The Snow-Storm	34	(1)
Grace	34	(1)
Blight	35	(1)
Motto to ``The Poet''	36	(1)
The World-Soul	37	(3)
Mithridates	40	(1)
Hamatreya	41	(2)
Ode, Inscribed to W.H. Channing	43	(3)
Merlin I	46	(2)
Motto to ``Nature''	48	(1)
Days	48	(1)
The Chartist's Complaint	49	(1)
Two Rivers	49	(1)
Motto to ``Illusions''	50	(1)
Terminus	51	(2)
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807-1882)	53	(23)
Mezzo Cammin	54	(1)
The Warning	54	(1)
The Day Is Done	55	(1)
Dante	56	(1)
Sand of the Desert in an Hour-Glass	57	(2)
The Fire of Drift-Wood	59	(1)
The Jewish Cemetery at Newport	60	(2)
The Ropewalk	62	(2)
The Golden Mile-Stone	64	(2)
from Hiawatha: The White Man's Foot	66	(2)
Snow-Flakes	68	(1)
The Legend of Rabbi Ben Levi	69	(2)
The Rhyme of Sir Christopher	71	(5)
John Greenleaf Whittier (1807-1892)	76	(18)
The Cities of the Plain	76	(2)
The Farewell	78	(2)
Official Piety	80	(1)
The Haschish	81	(1)
Skipper Ireson's Ride	82	(3)
The Palm-Tree	85	(2)
Brown of Ossawatomie	87	(1)
A Word for the Hour	88	(1)
Barbara Frietchie	89	(2)
from Tent on the Beach: [The Dreamer]	91	(1)
Overruled	92	(2)
Edgar Allan Poe (1809-1849)	94	(23)
Dreams	96	(1)
Sonnet: To Science	97	(1)
Romance	97	(1)
A Dream Within a Dream	98	(1)
The City in the Sea	99	(1)
To One in Paradise	100	(1)
Silence	101	(1)
The Sleeper	101	(2)
The Conqueror Worm	103	(1)
Dreamland	104	(2)
Stanzas	106	(1)
The Raven	107	(4)
A Valentine	111	(1)
Ulalume	112	(3)
Annabel Lee	115	(1)
Eldorado	116	(1)
Oliver Wendell Holmes (1809-1894)	117	(9)
Old Ironsides	118	(1)
Our Limitations	119	(1)
Latter-Day Warnings	119	(2)
The Chambered Nautilus	121	(1)
Iris, Her Book	122	(2)
Prologue	124	(1)
Tartarus	124	(2)
Jones Very (1813-1880)	126	(11)
The New Birth	127	(1)
The Son	127	(1)
The Word	128	(1)
The Spirit	128	(1)
The Serpent	129	(1)
The Robe	129	(1)
The Winter Rain	130	(1)
The Cross	130	(1)
The Mountain	131	(1)
The Promise	131	(1)
The Birds of Passage	132	(1)
The Silent	132	(1)
The Indian's Retort	133	(1)
Slavery	134	(1)
The First Atlantic Telegraph	135	(1)
The Slowness of Belief in a Spiritual World	135	(1)
Forevermore	136	(1)
Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862)	137	(13)
Sic Vita	138	(1)
Brother Where Dost Thou Dwell	138	(3)
On Ponkawtasset, Since, We Took Our Way	141	(1)
Low-Anchored Cloud	142	(1)
Woof of the Sun, Ethereal Gauze	142	(1)
My Life Has Been the Poem I Would Have Writ	143	(1)
Inspiration	143	(3)
For Though the Eaves Were Rabbeted	146	(1)
Pray to What Earth Does This Sweet Cold Belong	146	(1)
A Winter and Spring Scene	147	(3)
James Russell Lowell (1819-1891)	150	(14)
A Contrast	151	(1)
from A Fable for Critics	152	(6)
from The Biglow Papers: The Pious Editor's Creed	158	(3)
The Darkened Mind	161	(1)
Sonnet: On Being Asked for an Autograph in Venice	162	(1)
The Boss	162	(1)
In a Copy of Omar Khayyam	162	(1)
Science and Poetry	163	(1)
Walt Whitman (1819-1892)	164	(100)
Song of Myself	165	(60)
Crossing Brooklyn Ferry	225	(6)
Out of the Cradle Endlessly Rocking	231	(7)
I Saw in Louisiana a Live-Oak Growing	238	(1)
Cavalry Crossing a Ford	238	(1)
Beat! Beat! Drums!	239	(1)
As I Lay with My Head in Your Lap Camerado	240	(1)
Years of the Modern	240	(2)
When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom'd	242	(8)
A Noiseless patient Spider	250	(1)
Passage to India	251	(9)
Prayer of Columbus	260	(2)
To a Locomotive in Winter	262	(2)
Herman Melville (1819-1891)	264	(69)
Immolated	265	(1)
from Battle-Pieces
The Portent	266	(1)
Misgivings	266	(1)
The March into Virginia	267	(1)
The Temeraire	268	(2)
A Utilitarian View of the Monitor's Fight	270	(1)
Stonewall Jackson: Mortally Wounded at Chancellorsville	271	(1)
Stonewall Jackson: Ascribed to a Virginian	272	(1)
The House-Top	273	(1)
The College Colonel	274	(1)
The Martyr	275
The Apparition	273	(4)
Iris	277	(1)
from Clarel
from Part I, canto xiii: The Arch	278	(3)
Part II, canto vii: Guide and Guard	281	(3)
from Part II, canto xxiii: By the Jordan	284	(3)
from Part III, canto xx: Afterward	287	(1)
from Part III, canto xxix: Rolfe and the Palm	287	(2)
from Part IV, canto iii: The Island	289	(3)
Part IV, canto xxxi: Dirge	292	(1)
Part IV, canto xxxiv: Via Crucis	292	(2)
Part IV, canto xxxv: Epilogue	294	(1)
from John Marr and Other Sailors
Tom Deadlight	295	(1)
The Aeolian Harp	296	(2)
The Maldive Shark	298	(1)
The Berg	298	(2)
The Enviable Isles	300	(1)
Pebbles	300	(2)
from Timoleon
After the Pleasure Party	302	(4)
The Night-March	306	(1)
Art	307	(1)
Herba Santa	307	(2)
In a Bye-Canal	309	(1)
The Attic Landscape	310	(1)
The Parthenon	311	(1)
In the Desert	312	(1)
from Weeds and Wildings, Chiefly; With a Rose or Two
The Little Good Fellows	313	(1)
The Chipmunk	314	(1)
Time's Betrayal	314	(1)
Rosary Beads	315	(1)
Miscellaneous Poems
The Rusty Man	316	(1)
Camoens	316	(1)
Fruit and Flower Painter	317	(1)
In Shards the Sylvan Vases Lie	318	(1)
To --	318	(1)
Pontoosuce	319	(2)
Billy in the Darbies	321	(12)
Frederick Goddard Tuckerman (1821-1873)	333	(19)
Sonnets: First Series	324	(12)
Infatuation	336	(1)
Rhotruda	336	(5)
As Sometimes in a Grove	341	(5)
Coralie	346	(2)
The Cricket	348	(4)
Emily Dickinson (1830-1886)	352	(45)
I never lost as much but twice	353	(1)
My nosegays are for Captives--	354	(1)
I never hear the word ``escape''	354	(1)
Some things that fly there be--	354	(1)
Water, is taught by thirst	355	(1)
``Faith'' is a fine invention	355	(1)
Come slowly--Eden!	355	(1)
Did the Harebell loose her girdle	356	(1)
I've known a Heaven, like a Tent--	356	(1)
Wild Nights--Wild Nights!	356	(1)
Delight is as the flight--	357	(1)
There's a certain Slant of light	358	(1)
'Tis so appalling--it exhilarates--	358	(1)
Of Bronze--and Blaze--	359	(1)
I reason, Earth is short--	360	(1)
The One who could repeat the Summer day--	360	(1)
He fumbles at your Soul	361	(1)
I cannot dance upon my Toes--	361	(1)
A Bird came down the Walk--	362	(1)
I know that He exists	363	(1)
God is a distant--stately Lover--	363	(1)
The first Day's Night had come--	364	(1)
'Twas like a Maelstrom, with a notch	364	(1)
Much Madness is divines Sense--	365	(1)
This was a Poet--It is That	365	(1)
This World is not Conclusion	366	(1)
At least--to pray--is left--is left--	367	(1)
He touched me, so I live to know	367	(1)
'Twas warm--at first--like Us--	368	(1)
I've seen a Dying Eye	368	(1)
The Brain, within its Groove	368	(1)
If I may have it, when it's dead	369	(1)
There is a pain--so utter--	370	(1)
The Trees like Tassels--hit--and swung--	370	(1)
It would have starved a Gnat--	371	(1)
They shut me up in Prose--	372	(1)
To know just how He suffered--would be dear--	372	(1)
I watched the Moon around the House	373	(1)
The Brain--is wider than the Sky--	374	(1)
I cannot live with You--	375	(1)
A Prison gets to be a friend--	376	(1)
The Name--of it--is ``Autumn''--	377	(1)
I dwell in Possibility--	378	(1)
One need not be a Chamber--to be Haunted--	378	(1)
My Life had stood--a Loaded Gun--	379	(1)
It was a quiet way--	380	(1)
A Pit--but Heaven over it--	380	(1)
I think the Hemlock like to stand	381	(1)
Dropped into the Ether Acre--	382	(1)
Publication--is the Auction	382	(1)
None can experience stint	383	(1)
A Light exists in Spring	383	(1)
The Wind begun to rock the Grass	384	(1)
Banish Air from Air--	384	(1)
Faith--is the Pierless Bridge	385	(1)
Struck, was I, not yet by Lightning--	385	(1)
Under the Light, yet under	386	(1)
A loss of something ever felt I--	387	(1)
Crumbling is not an instant's Act	387	(1)
There is a Zone whose even Years	388	(1)
I am afraid to own a Body	388	(1)
These are the Nights that Beetles love--	388	(1)
The Lightning is a yellow Fork	389	(1)
Like Rain it sounded till it curved	389	(1)
To pile like Thunder to its close	390	(1)
This dirty--little--Heart	390	(1)
Wonder--is not precisely Knowing	390	(1)
The Bat is dun, with wrinkled Wings--	391	(1)
What mystery pervades a well!	391	(1)
How brittle are the Piers	392	(1)
Death is the supple Suitor	393	(1)
Oh give it Motion--deck it sweet	393	(1)
Come show thy Durham Breast	393	(1)
Those--dying then	394	(1)
In Winter in my Room	394	(1)
Drowning is not so pitiful	395	(1)
There comes an hour when begging stops	396	(1)
Sarah Morgan Bryan Piatt (1836-1919)	397	(16)
The Palace-Burner	398	(1)
A Doubt	399	(1)
This World	400	(2)
In Her Prison	402	(1)
Answering a Child	403	(1)
No Help	404	(1)
In a Queen's Domain	405	(1)
If I Had Made the World	405	(2)
Stone for a Statue	407	(1)
Army of Occupation	407	(1)
A Lesson in a Picture	408	(1)
A Pique at Parting	409	(2)
Her Word of Reproach	411	(1)
Sad Spring-Song	412	(1)
Sidney Lanier (1842-1881)	413	(16)
Song for ``The Jacquerie''	414	(1)
Nirvana	415	(2)
To Beethoven	417	(2)
To Richard Wagner	419	(2)
The Revenge of Hamish	421	(4)
To Bayard Taylor	425	(4)
Edwin Arlington Robinson (1869-1935)	429	(10)
Walt Whitman	429	(1)
John Evereldown	430	(1)
Luke Havergal	431	(1)
Three Quatrains	432	(1)
The House on the Hill	433	(1)
Aaron Stark	434	(1)
Sonnet	434	(1)
Verlaine	435	(1)
Richard Cory	435	(1)
Cliff Klingenhagen	436	(1)
Reuben Bright	436	(1)
The Tavern	437	(1)
Octaves XV, XIX, XX	437	(2)
Explanatory Notes	439