Great Spiritual Writers of AmericaP. Elder, 1916 - 163 pages |
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American authors American literature American writer anti-slavery appeal beauty BOOKMAN Bret Harte California character charm Cooper critics death devoted early Edition Edwin Markham England English essays F. H. Underwood fame famous finest force genius gives greatest Harpers Harte's Hawthorne's Henry James Henry Wadsworth Longfellow Huckleberry Finn humor humorist impressed Indian issued James Russell Lowell keen Leatherstocking Leatherstocking tales Leaves of Grass lectures Letters series Literary Friends living Lowell Lowell's M. A. De Wolfe magazine Mark Twain melody Mifflin Nathaniel Hawthorne nature never novel Oliver Wendell Holmes painting passion pathos PHOTOGRAPH TAKEN pioneer Poe's poems poet poetical poetry popular prose published Puritan reader romance San Francisco Scarlet Letter short stories sketches style things Thoreau thought verse volumes Walden Walt Whitman Washington Irving Whittier William Dean Howells words written wrote young youth
Popular passages
Page 65 - Were half the power, that fills the world with terror, Were half the wealth, bestowed on camps and courts, Given to redeem the human mind from error, There were no need of arsenals or forts; The warrior's name would be a name abhorred!
Page 36 - Of many far wiser than we — And neither the angels in heaven above, Nor the demons down under the sea, Can ever dissever my soul from the soul Of the beautiful ANNABEL LEE, For the moon never beams, without bringing me dreams Of the beautiful ANNABEL LEE; And the stars never rise, but I see the bright eyes Of the beautiful ANNABEL LEE; And so, all the night-tide, I lie down by the side Of my darling — my darling — my life and my bride, In the sepulchre there by the sea, In her tomb by the sounding...
Page 66 - THERE is no flock, however watched and tended, But one dead lamb is there ! There is no fireside, howsoe'er defended, But has one vacant chair ! The air is full of farewells to the dying, And mournings for the dead; The heart of Rachel, for her children crying, Will not be comforted...
Page 84 - Tic-tac! tic-tac! go the wheels of thought; our will cannot stop them ; they cannot stop themselves ; sleep cannot still them ; madness only makes them go faster ; death alone can break into the case, and, seizing the ever-swinging pendulum, which we call the heart, silence at last the clicking of the terrible escapement we have carried so long beneath our wrinkled foreheads.
Page 75 - Great captains, with their guns and drums, Disturb our judgment for the hour, But at last silence comes; These all are gone, and, standing like a tower, Our children shall behold his fame, The kindly-earnest, brave, foreseeing man, Sagacious, patient, dreading praise, not blame, New birth of our new soil, the first American.
Page 140 - The emptiness of ages in his face, And on his back the burden of the world. Who made him dead to rapture and despair, A thing that grieves not and that never hopes, Stolid and stunned, a brother to the ox? Who loosened and let down this brutal jaw? Whose was the hand that slanted back this brow? Whose breath blew out the light within this brain?
Page 75 - O'er such sweet brows as never other wore, And letting thy set lips, Freed from wrath's pale eclipse, The rosy edges of their smile lay bare, What words divine of lover or of poet Could tell our love and make thee know it, Among the Nations bright beyond compare? What were our lives without thee ? What all our lives to save thee ? We reck not what we gave thee; We will not dare to doubt thee, But ask whatever else, and we will dare...
Page 140 - BOWED by the weight of centuries he leans Upon his hoe and gazes on the ground, The emptiness of ages in his face, And on his back the burden of the world. Who made him dead to rapture and despair, A thing that grieves not and that never hopes, Stolid and stunned, a brother to the ox?
Page 19 - I am he that walks with the tender and growing night, I call to the earth and sea half-held by the night. Press close bare-bosom'd night — press close magnetic nourishing night! Night of south winds — night of the large few stars! Still nodding night — mad naked summer night.
Page 101 - He would be a poet who could impress the winds and streams into his service, to speak for him; who nailed words to their primitive senses, as farmers drive down stakes in the spring which the frost has heaved; who derived his words as often as he used them, transplanted them to his page with earth adhering to their roots; whose words were so true, and fresh, and natural that they would appear to expand like the buds at the approach of spring...