patriotic appeal. It is vivid and spirited, and sincerely reflects the circumstances under which it was written.

CLEMENT CLARKE MOORE

23. A Visit from St. Nicholas. Few poems have ever surpassed this in giving voice to the innocent, excited, and expectant joyousness of children at Christmas time. The verses trip along gayly, and the imagination is kept on the alert. All hearts are moved by the spirit of Christmas, and any piece of literature that makes a direct, graceful, and sincere appeal to this feeling is sure of popularity.

JOHN PIERPONT

25. The Exile at Rest. European themes were very rarely handled by the poets of the Early Period. The recent death and burial of Napoleon at St. Helena, however, did not fail to excite the public mind. In this poem allusions are made to Napoleon's battles in Egypt near the pyramids, as well as to his disastrous Russian campaign. The use by Pierpont of such worn phrases as "eagle flag" and "martial form" places him at once among the many imitators of Campbell and Byron. But the poem has compactness and proportion, and some lines are musical,

The mournful murmur of the surge,

The cloud's deep voice, the wind's low sigh.

And it has at least one flash of imagination,

As round him heaved, while high he stood,
A stormy and inconstant world.

26. Warren's Address to the American Soldiers. This is an imaginary address of General Joseph Warren to his soldiers on the eve of the battle of Bunker Hill, in 1775. Warren was killed in this battle. He was a physician in Boston when the war broke out, and was one of the most ardent patriots of the Revolution. Pierpont's poem expresses well the feeling of the time, and it has directness and vividness.

SAMUEL WOODWORTH

27. The Old Oaken Bucket. Despite its poverty of literary merit, this poem lives because it expresses a sentiment felt by all. Fondness for the recollections of childhood is not so strong as many other feelings, but it is universal.

RICHARD HENRY WILDE

29. My Life is like the Summer Rose. This popular lyric expresses the gentle melancholy that was made popular both in England and America

by Byron. Our grandfathers were no more melancholy at heart than we of to-day, but when they put pen to paper they followed the literary fashion of the time. These stanzas of Wilde's are graceful in conception, smooth in meter, and sustained in sentiment. This line has been justly praised, –

On that lone shore loud moans the sea.

JOHN HOWARD PAYNE

30. Home, Sweet Home. These verses are commonplace in both thought and language, but they give expression in a simple way to the homing instinct, and this is the vital spark that keeps them alive. The words, too, have become so intertwined with the music that both bid fair to last together.

FITZ-GREENE HALLECK

31. On the Death of Joseph Rodman Drake. The genuine and almost romantic friendship that existed between Halleck and Drake is exquisitely set forth in this little elegy. The first stanza, by far the best, is happily phrased and shows real and deep feeling. In lyric quality and in genuine emotion, this poem marks a step in advance of the poetry already considered. The poem as a whole is very uneven, however, both in meter and language. Then, too, in the following couplet,

we have an example of that exaggerated sentiment which so pleased Halleck's generation.

32. Marco Bozzaris. The struggles of the Greeks to keep their land out of the clutches of the Turks aroused the sympathy of the civilized world in the first quarter of the nineteenth century. The most spectacular thing that Byron ever did was to lay down his life for Grecian liberty. In this country the cause of Greece was espoused by such ardent young orators as Daniel Webster and Henry Clay. It is small wonder, then, that Halleck's poem should have been so popular in its day; and it still holds the attention by its fire, vividness, and intense love of liberty. It is pitched in an oratorical key like Campbell's Hohenlinden, and, like the latter, it lends itself easily to schoolboy declamation.

33:2. Suliote band. A band of Grecian troops from the city of Souli. Bozzaris, who lead this Grecian band, was killed in 1823.

33: 5. the Persian's thousands. The Persian army of Xerxes was defeated at the battle of Platea (B.C. 479) by the Spartans and other Greeks. This was one of a series of victories which rid Greece of the Persians for all time.

JOSEPH RODMAN DRAKE

36. The American Flag. Some of the crudities of this poem may be set down to the fact that Drake wrote it before he was twenty-four years of age. The first stanza, with its strained metaphors, comes perilously near being bombast. But the poem broadens and becomes more simple and direct as it goes on. In the stanza next to the last it approaches real imaginative power. As a whole, it is the stirring martial ring of the poem that makes the most lasting impression.

EDWARD COATE PINKNEY

39, 40. A Health. A Serenade. In metrical finish, in lyric ease, in graceful fancy, and in delicate feeling, these two songs far surpass anything written in America before Pinkney's time. They were not, however, indigenous to the soil. They are clearly a reflection of the English Cavalier poets; they have something of the airy charm of Lovelace and the sweet graciousness of Waller and Herrick; but in lyric quality they mark progressive development and point forward to Poe. A Health was written in honor of Mrs. Rebecca Somerville, of Baltimore; A Serenade in honor of Miss Georgianna McCausland, whom the poet afterwards married.

GEORGE POPE MORRIS

41. Woodman, spare that Tree! Simple ballads, if aptly expressed, are sure to find lasting recognition if there runs through them a thread of universal sentiment, no matter how fragile this thread may be. Such a ballad is Woodman, spare that Tree! The appeal which it makes is simple and homely, but it is effective.

ALBERT GORTON GREENE

42. The Baron's Last Banquet. In the feudal setting of this poem, as well as in its conventional phraseology, there is a reminiscence of Sir Walter Scott; and in its vividness, compactness, and dramatic force, the influence of Byron can be clearly seen. It is an encouraging sign to see American poetry practicing its hand at several varieties of verse; it is training itself for more powerful expression in the next generation.

43: 7. Paynim, pagan.

43:18. Gothic hall, a hall built in the medieval style of architecture. 43: 22. Armed cap-a-pie, armed from head to foot.

NATHANIEL PARKER WILLIS

45. Unseen Spirits. In serious work, this poem shows Willis at his best. It has happy phrasing and imagination. It also touches human conduct more closely than any poem yet considered; it gets nearer to what Professor Wendell calls "God's eternities." American poetry was beginning to shake off surface sentiment and to take hold of life seriously.

46. Spring. Willis's lightness of touch and sprightliness of fancy give this worn theme a new charm. He also shows in the poem an appreciation of nature not very common in his forerunners. The end is marked by that sentimental moralizing which was extremely popular in Willis's day.

CHARLES FENNO HOFFMAN

47. Monterey. Monterey was one of the earlier battles of the Mexican War. Hoffman's poem is full of martial spirit, fittingly expressed, and it is free from the boastfulness and extravagance which mar so many battle songs. It has simplicity, directness, real feeling, and that fine restraint which is a sure mark of good taste.

SAMUEL FRANCIS SMITH

49. America. It is sometimes the fashion to speak lightly of this hymn. Its literary merits, to be sure, are not of the highest; but any song which fairly sings itself, and which is embedded in the hearts of a people, deserves more than flippant consideration.

PARK BENJAMIN

50. The Old Sexton. In these verses there is a relapse into that very serious mood which early American writers got from Cowper and Gray. We catch here "a breath from the land of graves." The treatment of the subject, however, is a little out of the ordinary manner, and it has some traces of imagination. The theme is commonplace, but it is never lacking in vital interest.

EPES SARGENT

51. A Life on the Ocean Wave. Sargent has put into these verses something of the spontaneousness and freedom of the sea. Life on the open seas makes its appeal to the imagination of a great number of people; even those who do not care for the "deep" when it is "rolling" like to read about it.

PHILIP PENDLETON COOKE

52. Florence Vane. Gentle sentiment, running off into sentimentality, characterizes this lyric; but it has a charm which comes from delicacy of feeling and grace of expression. It lacks depth of feeling, but it is free from the sickly and feeble sentiment which marked so much of the verse of this period; it is winning in its very simplicity and gentleness. It first appeared in the Gentleman's Magazine during the editorship of Poe.

THOMAS DUNN ENGLISH

54. Ben Bolt. Barring the touch of sentimentality in the first stanza, this song rings true throughout. The poet strikes a falsetto note when he asks his old friend, Ben Bolt, if he does not remember sweet Alice,

Who wept with delight when you gave her a smile,
And trembled with fear at your frown.

The remainder of the poem deals with those common but vital interests the old mill, the old schoolhouse, the shaded nook, the friendships of youth that have a lasting hold on the human heart. When we remember that these themes are handled with entire sincerity and genuineness of feeling, we do not wonder that the song, aided by the music, has kept its popularity. It is scarcely enough to dismiss it by saying that it was a popular concert-hall song in its day. Du Maurier used both the words and music effectively in Trilby; and to-day few songs in the English language are more widely known.

MIDDLE PERIOD

THE seven names Bryant, Emerson, Longfellow, Whittier, Poe, Holmes, and Lowell — stand out as the foremost men of letters yet produced in America. All of them were born in New England; and all of them lived and died there except Bryant and Poe.

The last fifty years of Bryant's life was spent in New York. He left there the impress of a great editor and of a high-minded citizen. But Bryant, the poet, belongs to New England. It was there that he received his early inspiration, and there he wrote much of his best poetry. In New York there was always about him a certain aloofness of manner and temper that seemed to indicate that he regarded his poetic side as something apart from the busy life of the metropolis. Poe, on the other hand, though a Bostonian by accident of birth, was just as distinctly not a New Englander. By ancestry, by training, by affiliation, and by temperament, Poe was a child of the South; but his poetry is of such a peculiar kind that it might have been written anywhere.