The Poets and Poetry of America: To the Middle of the Nineteenth Century

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A. Hart, 1852 - American poetry - 550 pages

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Page 168 - midst falling dew, While glow the heavens with the last steps of day, Far, through their rosy depths, dost thou pursue Thy solitary way ! Vainly the fowler's eye Might mark thy distant flight to do thee wrong, As, darkly painted on the crimson sky, Thy figure floats along.
Page 319 - Toiling, — rejoicing, — sorrowing, Onward through life he goes ; Each morning sees some task begin, Each evening sees it close ; Something attempted, something done, Has earned a night's repose. Thanks, thanks to thee, my worthy friend, For the lesson thou hast taught ) Thus at the flaming forge of life Our fortunes must be wrought ; Thus on its sounding anvil shaped Each burning deed and thought.
Page 364 - AY, tear her tattered ensign down! Long has it waved on high, And many an eye has danced to see That banner in the sky; Beneath it rung the battle shout, And burst the cannon's roar; — The meteor of the ocean air Shall sweep the clouds no more. Her deck, once red with heroes...
Page 168 - At that far height, the cold, thin atmosphere, Yet stoop not, weary, to the welcome land, Though the dark night is near. And soon that toil shall end; Soon shalt thou find a summer home and rest, And scream among thy fellows; reeds shall bend Soon o'er thy sheltered nest.
Page 420 - Be that word our sign of parting, bird or fiend!' I shrieked, upstarting 'Get thee back into the tempest and the Night's Plutonian shore! Leave no black plume as a token of that lie thy soul hath spoken! Leave my loneliness unbroken! - quit the bust above my door! Take thy beak from out my heart, and take thy form from off my door!
Page 160 - 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 419 - Then this ebony bird beguiling my sad fancy into smiling By the grave and stern decorum of the countenance it wore, — "Though thy crest be shorn and shaven, thou," I said, "art sure no craven, Ghastly grim and ancient Raven wandering from the Nightly shore: Tell me what thy lordly name is on the Night's Plutonian shore!
Page 320 - This was the peasant's last Good-night, A voice replied, far up the height, Excelsior ! At break of day, as heavenward The pious monks of Saint Bernard Uttered the oft-repeated prayer, A voice cried through the startled air Excelsior ! A traveller, by the faithful hound, Half-buried in the snow was found, Still grasping in his hand of ice, That banner with the strange device Excelsior ! There in the twilight cold and gray, Lifeless, but beautiful, he lay, And from the sky, serene and far, A voice...
Page 319 - It sounds to him like her mother's voice, Singing in Paradise! He needs must think of her once more, How in the grave she lies; And with his hard, rough hand he wipes A tear out of his eyes.
Page 190 - WHEN Freedom from her mountain height Unfurled her standard to the air, She tore the azure robe of night, And set the stars of glory there. She mingled with its gorgeous dyes The milky baldric of the skies, And striped its pure celestial white With streakings of the morning light; Then from his mansion in the sun She called her eagle bearer down, And gave into his mighty hand The symbol of her chosen land.

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