18Th & 19th Century American Poetry

* Emily Dickenson (1830-1886)

“Because I could not stop for Death”

Because I could not stop for Death -- He kindly stopped for me -- The Carriage held but just Ourselves -- And Immortality.

We slowly drove -- He knew no haste And I had put away My labor and my leisure too, For His Civility --

We passed the School, where Children strove At Recess -- in the Ring -- We passed the Fields of Gazing Grain -- We passed the Setting Sun --

Or rather -- He passed Us -- The Dews drew quivering and chill -- For only Gossamer, my Gown -- My Tippet -- only Tulle --

We paused before a House that seemed A Swelling of the Ground -- The Roof was scarcely visible -- The Cornice -- in the Ground --

Since then -- 'tis Centuries -- and yet Feels shorter than the Day I first surmised the Horses' Heads Were toward Eternity –

"I reason earth is short"

I reason, Earth is short -- And Anguish -- absolute -- And many hurt, But, what of that?

I reason, we could die -- The best Vitality Cannot excel Decay, But, what of that?

I reason, that in Heaven -- Somehow, it will be even -- Some new Equation, given -- But, what of that?

"If I can stop one heart from breaking"

If I can stop one Heart from breaking I shall not live in vain If I can ease one Life the Aching Or cool one Pain

Or help one fainting Robin Unto his Nest again I shall not live in Vain.

"That after Horror—that ‘twas us"

That after Horror -- that 'twas us -- That passed the mouldering Pier -- Just as the Granite Crumb let go -- Our Savior, by a Hair --

A second more, had dropped too deep For Fisherman to plumb -- The very profile of the Thought Puts Recollection numb --

The possibility -- to pass Without a Moment's Bell -- Into Conjecture's presence -- Is like a Face of Steel --

That suddenly looks into ours With a metallic grin -- The Cordiality of Death -- Who drills his Welcome in –

Oliver Wendell Holmes (1809-1894)

was a physician by profession but achieved fame as a writer; he was one of the best regarded American poets of the 19th century. He first attained national prominence with his poem "Old Ironsides" about the 18th century battleship USS Constitution, which was to be broken up for scrap; the poem generated public sentiment that resulted in the historic ship being preserved as a monument. One of his most popular works was The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table.

In 1846, in a letter to William T. G. Morton, the dentist who was the first practicioner to publicly demonstrate the use of ether during surgery, Holmes coined the word anæsthesia.

"THE CHAMBERED NAUTILUS"

This is the ship of pearl, which, poets feign, Sail the unshadowed main,-- The venturous bark that flings On the sweet summer wind its purpled wings In gulfs enchanted, where the Siren sings, And coral reefs lie bare, Where the cold sea-maids rise to sun their streaming hair.

Its webs of living gauze no more unfurl; Wrecked is the ship of pearl! And every chambered cell, Where its dim dreaming life was wont to dwell, As the frail tenant shaped his growing shell, Before thee lies revealed,-- Its irised ceiling rent, its sunless crypt unsealed!

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.

Thanks for the heavenly message brought by thee, Child of the wandering sea, Cast from her lap, forlorn! From thy dead lips a clearer note is born Than ever Triton blew from wreathed horn; While on mine ear it rings, Through the deep caves of thought I hear a voice that sings:--

Build thee more stately mansions, O my soul, As the swift seasons roll! Leave thy low-vaulted past! Let each new temple, nobler than the last, Shut thee from heaven with a dome more vast, Till thou at length art free, Leaving thine outgrown shell by life's unresting sea!

William Dean Howells (1837-1920)

For the sake of the GRE, you need only know that Howells was a late 19th, and early 20th century critic.

Howells was an American realist author. He wrote for various magazines, including Atlantic Monthly and Harper's Magazine. He wrote his first novel, The Wedding Journey, in 1872, but his career took off with his first realist novel, A Modern Instance. His most famous novel is The Rise of Silas Lapham.

Howells also wrote plays, criticism, and essays about contemporary literary figures such as Henrik Ibsen and Leo Tolstoy, which helped establish their reputation in the United States. Nevertheless, Howells's own reputation in American literature has waned somewhat, with his novels being considered "prudish." According to him, the vast majority of people who would read his works were women and he wrote in a way that would not offend them. He believed that literature was potentially injurious and devoid of thought.

Today, Howells is most famous for his literary criticism and his editorial support of authors like Mark Twain, Thorstein Veblen and Henry James.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

an American poet who wrote many poems that are still famous today, including The Song of Hiawatha, "Paul Revere's Ride" and Evangeline. He also wrote the first American translation of Dante Alighieri's Inferno. Longfellow is not a popular GRE poet, but his sonnet on Keats is a good one to know.

"Keats"

The young Endymion sleeps Endymion's sleep; The shepherd-boy whose tale was left half told! The solemn grove uplifts its shield of gold To the red rising moon, and loud and deep The nightingale is singing from the steep; It is midsummer, but the air is cold; Can it be death? Alas, beside the fold A shepherd's pipe lies shattered near his sheep. Lo! in the moonlight gleams a marble white, On which I read: "Here lieth one whose name Was writ in water." And was this the meed Of his sweet singing? Rather let me write "The smoking flax before it burst to flame Was quenched by death, and broken the bruised reed."

"Paul Revere's Ride"

a longish poem, it begins:

Listen my children and you shall hear Of the midnight ride of Paul Revere, On the eighteenth of April, in Seventy-five; Hardly a man is now alive Who remembers that famous day and year.

"Evangeline, A Tale of Acadie"

Evangeline, A Tale of Acadie is a poem by the American poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. It describes the betrothal of an Acadian peasant girl named Evangeline to her lover, Gabriel, and their separation as the British deport the Acadians from Canada in the Great Expulsion. The poem then follows Evangeline across the landscapes of America as she spends years in a search for him. Finally she settles in Philadelphia and, as an old woman, works as a nurse among the poor. While tending the dying during an epidemic she finds Gabriel among the sick, and he dies in her arms.

The prelude begins: This is the forest primeval. The murmuring pines and the hemlocks, Bearded with moss, and in garments green, indistinct in the twilight, Stand like Druids of eld, with voices sad and prophetic, Stand like harpers hoar, with beards that rest on their bosoms. Loud from its rocky caverns, the deep-voiced neighboring ocean Speaks, and in accents disconsolate answers the wail of the forest.

The first part begins: In the Acadian land, on the shores of the Basin of Minas,Distant, secluded, still, the little village of Grand-Pre Lay in the fruitful valley. Vast meadows stretched to the eastward, Giving the village its name, and pasture to flocks without number.

"The Song of Hiawatha"

The Song of Hiawatha is an epic poem by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow based on the legends of the Ojibway Indians. Longfellow credited as his source the work of pioneering ethnographer Henry Rowe SchoolcraftA short extract of 94 lines from the poem was and still is frequently anthologized under the title Hiawatha's Childhood (which is also the title of the longer 234-line section from which the extract is taken). This short extract is the most familiar portion of the poem. It is this short extract that begins with the famous lines:

By the shores of Gitche Gumee, By the shining Big-Sea-Water, Stood the wigwam of Nokomis, Daughter of the Moon, Nokomis. Dark behind it rose the forest, Rose the black and gloomy pine-trees, Rose the firs with cones upon them; Bright before it beat the water, Beat the clear and sunny water, Beat the shining Big-Sea-Water.

Walt Whitman (1819-1892)

For many, Walt Whitman and Emily Dickinson stand as the two giants of 19th-century American poetry. Whitman's poetry seems more quintessentially American; the poet exposed common America and spoke with a distinctly American voice, stemming from a distinct American consciousness. The power of Whitman's poetry seems to come from the spontaneous sharing of high emotion he presented. American poets in the 20th century (and now, the 21st) must come to terms with Whitman's voice, insofar as it essentially defined democratic America in poetic language. Whitman utilized creative repetition to produce a hypnotic quality that creates the force in his poetry, inspiring as it informs. Thus, his poetry is best read aloud to experience the full message.

"Song of Myself"

it begins: I CELEBRATE myself, and sing myself, And what I assume you shall assume,

For every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you.

I loafe and invite my soul, I lean and loafe at my ease observing a spear of summer grass.

My tongue, every atom of my blood, form'd from this soil, this air, Born here of parents born here from parents the same, and their parents the same,

I, now thirty-seven years old in perfect health begin, Hoping to cease not till death.

Creeds and schools in abeyance, Retiring back a while sufficed at what they are, but never forgotten, I harbor for good or bad, I permit to speak at every hazard, Nature without check with original energy. "Pioners! O Pioneers"

1 COME, my tan-faced children, Follow well in order, get your weapons ready; Have you your pistols? have you your sharp edged axes? Pioneers! O pioneers!

2 For we cannot tarry here, We must march my darlings, we must bear the brunt of danger, 5 We, the youthful sinewy races, all the rest on us depend, Pioneers! O pioneers!

3 O you youths, western youths, So impatient, full of action, full of manly pride and friendship, Plain I see you, western youths, see you tramping with the foremost, Pioneers! O pioneers

4 Have the elder races halted? 10 Do they droop and end their lesson, wearied, over there beyond the seas? We take up the task eternal, and the burden, and the lesson, Pioneers! O pioneers!

5 All the past we leave behind; We debouch upon a newer, mightier world, varied world, Fresh and strong the world we seize, world of labor and the march, Pioneers! O pioneers! 15

6 We detachments steady throwing, Down the edges, through the passes, up the mountains steep, Conquering, holding, daring, venturing, as we go, the unknown ways, Pioneers! O pioneers! pioneers.

“When I Heard the Learn’d Astronomer”

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.

“When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom’d”

a long poem, it begins:

When lilacs last in the dooryard bloom’d, And the great star early droop’d in the western sky in the night, I mourn’d, and yet shall mourn with ever-returning spring.

Ever-returning spring, trinity sure to me you bring, Lilac blooming perennial and drooping star in the west, And thought of him I love.

"Democratic Vistas"

Whitman did write prose, and if his prose shows up on the GRE, it will likely come from here:

In this essay, Whitman justly criticizes America for its "mighty, many-threaded wealth and industry" that mask an underlying "dry and flat Sahara" of soul. He calls for a new kind of literature to revive the American population ("Not the book needs so much to be the complete thing, but the reader of the book does").

It ends: "We see our land, America, her literature, esthetics, &c., as, substantially, the getting in form, or effusement and statement, of deepest basic elements and loftiest final meanings, of history and man -- and the portrayal, (under the eternal laws and conditions of beauty,) of our own physiognomy, the subjective tie and expression of the objective, as from our own combination, continuation, and points of view -- and the deposit and record of the national mentality, character, appeals, heroism, wars, and even liberties -- where these, and all, culminate in native literary and artistic formulation, to be perpetuated; and not having which native, first-class formulation, she will flounder about, and her other, however imposing, eminent greatness, prove merely a passing gleam; but truly having which, she will understand herself, live nobly, nobly contribute, emanate, and, swinging, poised safely on herself, illumin'd and illuming, become a full-form'd world, and divine Mother not only of material but spiritual worlds, in ceaseless succession through time -- the main thing being the average, the bodily, the concrete, the democratic, the popular, on which all the superstructures of the future are to permanently rest."