928 The Age of Romant~c~sm presence to listen (the lingering remnant of human frailty), and then, with a fine military elevation of the head, and with a voice that might be heard in every part of that numerous assembly, he pronounced the word--
"Here!"
A movement so entirely unexpected, and the air of grandeur and humility which were so remarkably united in the mien of the trapper, together with the clear and uncommon force of his utterance, produced a short period of confusion in the faculties of all present. When
Middleton and Hard-Heart, each of whom had involuntarily extended a hand to support the form of the old man, turned to him again, they found that the subject of their interest was removed forever beyond the necessity of their care. They mournfully placed the body in its seat, and Le Balafrй arose to announce the termination of the scene to the tribe. The voice of the old Indian seemed a sort of echo from that invisible world to which the meek spirit of the trapper had just departed.
"A valiant, a just, and a wise warrior, has gone on the path which will lead him to the blessed grounds of his people!" he said. "When the voice of the Wahcondah called him, he was ready to answer. Go, my children; remember the just chief of the pale-faces, and clear your own tracks from briers!"
The grave was made beneath the shade of some noble oaks. It has been carefully watched to the present hour by the Pawnees of the Loups, and is often shown to the traveller and the trader as a spot where a just white man sleeps.
In due time the stone was placed at its head, with the simple inscription which the trapper had himself requested. The only liberty taken by Middleton was to add, "May no wanton hand ever disturb his remains!"
1 8~5-1 827
I794-I878
1826
When he was around eight years old, William Cullen Bryant "began to make verses, some of which," he later recalled, "were utter nonsense."
But others revealed a genuine poetic talent, and they forecast the eventualfulfillment of Bryant's childhood prayers that he be given the "gift of poetic genius and write verses that might endure." He was descended from a line of New England ministers and raised amid the dominant
Calvinist orthodoxies of his birthplace at Cummington, in rural Massachusetts. His earliest juvenile poems were devotional rimes and versifications of Old Testament passages. They revealed a familiarity with the Bible and classical poetry, a knowledge of Shakespeare,
Milton, and the poets of eighteenth-century England, and they re~ected a devout high-mindedness that remained in Bryant throughout his life.
Hisfirst published poem appeared in a local Massachusetts newspaper in
I 807.
Bryant wrote the poem when he was nine and recited it at a school assembly, riming out the development of American education and exhorting his classmates to "tread, as lowly Jesus trod,lThe path that leads the sinner to his God." From the age of five, Bryant had been an avid reader of conservative New England newspapers. With the aid of his father, a physician and a Federalist politician, he wrote a long poem that was modeled on the political satires of eighteenth-century
England. The poem presented a malicious attack on President Thomas Jefferson, his administration, and other "pimps of France." It was published and hawked on the streets of Boston in
I 808, and when a second edition was
13RYANT
929
~rinted thefollowingyear, it contained a testament certifying that the poem's cleverscurrility was indeed the work of a thirteen-year-old.
In
I 8I 0
Bryant entered Williams College in Massachusetts, but in his sophomore year he left (after composing a rimed satire on the college) and began the study of the law In I8rs Bryant was admitted to the bar and began to practice in Great Barrington, Massachusetts. He considered abandoning poetry to concentrate on his profession, but in
I 8I 7 his poem "Thanatopsis" was published in The North American
Review-despite the editors' doubts that such notable poetry could be the work of an American~nd Bryant decided to continue his efforts to write enduring verse.
His early poetry had used the heroic couplets and commonplace artiJ7ces oJ Augustan English poetry. It had reftected the Calvinist religion of his New England upbringing, the classic~sm of h~s educat~on, and the conservat~ve politics of his family. But "Thanatops~s" was an announcement of change. Inspired by English "Graveyard" poets, Bryant celebrated death, immortality, and the emotions of bereavement. In
"Thanatopsis" he rejected the prevailing Christian idea of the afterlife and displayed instead a pagan stoic, and pantheistic faith in man's ultimate "communion with the visible forms of nature. ~
The poems that followed won increasing recognition for their gladdening treatment of the beauties of Amer~can nature. In
I 82 I
Bryant published the first collected edition of his work, and in
I 825 he turned from his life as a country lawyer and left Massachusetts for the l~terary and journalistic world of New York City. There, his literary reputation won him a position on the editorial staff of the New York Evening
Post. Eventually he became part-owner and edltor-m-chief, a position he held for half a century.
Editions of Bryant's poetry appeared throughout his life, along with books of travel and , hterary critlc~sm, but the bulk of his best poetry had been written by the
I 840S, and in his l~tter years he devoted his talents largely to crusading for political reform. His political uleals had moved from the conservative Federalism of his youth to a faith in political liberalism and the rights of the common man. As editor of the Post he campaigned vigorously for the abolition of slavery, for the rights of organized labor, andforfree trade,free speech and a free press. In an effort to foster political reform, he helped found the Republican party and became a powerful supporter of Lincoln and the Union cause during the Civil War. By the end of his life he was a public institution, a national oracle, "thefirst citizen of` New York." When he died, in
I 878, the city's ~ags were lowered to half-mast and storefronts were draped in black.
Bryant was the first native Amerzcan poet to gam worldwlde Jame. H~s best poetry had been written not of European nightingales and Roman or
Greek landscapes but of
American sparrows, and of American prairies, and of the trees and fнowers and grass of
New England. Like the

romantic landscapes of his friend, the painter Thomas Cole, Bryant's nature often d~ssolved into a misty softness. That amiable nature is evident in the soothing wilderness described in his "Inscription for the Entrance to a Wood," and it is evident in "A Forest Hymn," which portrayed nature's groves as temples more noble than man's cathedrals.
Bryant's harmonious ana amelloralzngscenes conveyea l~ e oJ me complex reac~es zmo philosophy achieved by the best of the American romantics who followed him, and in his last years he turned once again toward the poetic and religious orthodoxies of his youth Throughout his life, he had held the classical view that literature should aim at the moral perfection of its audience, and his greatest poetry retained a neoclassic restraint and serenity that led Lowell to describe him as a poet who was "as quiet, as cool, and as dignified,lAs a smooth, silent iceberg, that never is ignified." Bryant's departures from the trotting regularity of Augustan poetry, and his treatment of death, the past, and
American nature were essentlal contributions to the development of American literature. He was thefirst American romantic poet, thefirst native American bard. In the minds of his compatriots

The A~e of Romanticism
930 hefilled the role of a patriarch, a prophet whose bearded portrait, looking down from the walls of the nation's schoolrooms, reflected the ideals, the certitude, and the aspirations of an age.
FURTHER READING The Life ar~l Works of William Cullen B1yant, ed. P. Godwin, 6 vols.,
1883--1884 ,Let~erso fWilliamCullenBryant,4vols.,eds.W.BryantandT.Voss, 1975-l984; William Cullen B~yant, Representative Selec~ions, ed. T. McDowell, 1
935; H . Peckham, Gotham Yankee, A Biography of William Cullen Bryant, 1 950 ; C. Johnson, Politics and a Bellyfull, 1 962; A. McLean, William Cullen
Bryant, 1964; C. Brown, William Cullen B~yant, 1971; William Cullen B1yant and Hi~ America, ed. S. Brodwin and M. D'Innocenzo, 1983.
TEXT The Poetical Works of William Cullen Bryant, ed. P. Godwin, 2 vols., 1883.
~. .
THANATOPSISl
To him who in the love of Nature holds Communion with her visible forms, she speaks A various language; for his gayer hours She has a voice of gladness, and a smile And eloquence of beauty, and she glides Into his darker musings, with a mild And healing sympathy, that steals away Their sharpness, ere he is aware. When thoughts Of the last bitter hour come like a blight Over thy spirit, and sad images Of the stern agony, and shroud, and pall, And breathless darkness, and the narrow house, Make thee to shudder, and grow sick at heart;--Go forth, under the open sky, and list To Nature's teachings, while from all around--Earth and her waters, and the depths of air--Comes a still voice.--
Yet a few days, and thee The all-beholding sun shall see no more In all his course; nor yet in the cold ground, Where thy pale form was laid, with many tears, Nor in the embrace of ocean, shall exist Thy image. Earth, that nourished thee, shall claim Thy growth, to be resolved to earth again, And, lost each human trace, surrendering up Thine individual being, shalt thou go To mix for ever with the elements, To be a brother to the insensible rock And to the sluggish clod, which the rude swain Turns with his share
2 and treads upon. The oak Shall send his roots abroad, and pierce thy mould.
"~
~o
~o
IBryant's most famous poem, "Thanatopsis" (Greek for ~meditation on death"), shows his reiectlon of Christian orthodoxy and his move toward the Unitarianism of his later life. The poem was written around 18~5 and first published in 1817. Bryant later revised it (for publication in 182~), adding the introduction (lines l-17) and the conclusion (lines 66-81).
2plowshare.
B~YANT / 7 hanatopsis
Yet not to thine eternal resting-place Shalt thou retire alone, nor couldst thou wish Couch more magnificent. Thou shalt lie down With patriarchs of the infant world--with kings, The powerful of the earth--the wise, the good, Falr forms, and hoary seers of ages past, All in one mighty sepulchre. The hills Rock-ribbed and ancient as the sun,--the vales Stretching in pensive quietness between The venerable woods--rivers that move In majesty, and the complaining brooks That make the meadows green; and, poured round all, Old Ocean's gray and melancholy waste,--Are but the solemn decorations all Of the great tomb of man. The golden sun The planets, all the infinite host of heaven,
Are shining on the sad abodes of death Through the still lapse of ages. All that tread The globe are but a handful to the tribes T hat slumber in its bosom.--Take the wings C)f morning, pierce the Barcan wilderness,3 Or lose thyself in the continuous woods Where rolls the Oregon,4 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.
So shalt thou rest, and what if thou withdraw In silence from the living, and no friend Take note of thy departure? All that breathe Will share thy destiny. The gay will laugh When thou art gone, the solemn brood of care
Plod on, and each one as before will chase His favorite phantom; yet all these shall leave Their mirth and their employments, and shall come
And make their bed as thee. As the long train Of ages glides away, the sons of men The youth in life's fresh spring, and he who goes In the full strength of years, matron and maid, The speechless babe, and the gray-headed man--Shall one by one be gathered to thy side, By those, who in their turn shall follow them.
So live, that when thy summons comes to join
The innumerable caravan, which moves
To that mysterious realm, where each shall take
His chamber in the silent halls of death
Thou go not, like the quarry-slave at night,
Scourged5 to his dungeon, but, sustained and soothed
By an unfaltering trust, approach thy grave,
`I rhe desert region of Barca, or Bargah, in Libya, North Africa.
An Indian name for the Columbia River. 5Whipped.
9~ 1
40
50

60
70

~4
I Mal~shy.
The Age of Romantlc~sm
Whither, 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.
Seek'st thou the plashyl brink
Of weedy lake, or marge of river wide,
Or where the rocking billows rise and sink
On the chafed ocean-side?
I here is a Power whose care
T eaches thy way along that pathless coast--
The desert and illimitable air--
Lone wandering, but not lost.
All day thy wings have fanned,
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.
Thou'rt gone, the abyss of heaven
Hath swallowed up thy form; yet, on my heart
Deeply has sunk the lesson thou hast given,
And shall not soon depart.
He who, from zone to zone,
Guides through the boundless sky thy certain flight,
In the long way that I must tread alone,
Will lead my steps aright.
815
1818, 1821
Oh fairest of the rural maids!
Thy birth was in the forest shades;
"~
~o
30
BRYANI / A Forest Hymn
Green boughs, and glimpses of the sky Were all that met thine illfant eye.
Thy sports, thy wanderings, when a child, Were ever in the sylvan~ wild; And all the beauty of the pla~:e Is in thy heart and on thy I`ace.
The twilight of the trees and ro( ks Is in the light shade of thy locks; Thy step is as the wind, tllat weaves Its playful way among the leaves.

Thine eyes are springs, in whose serene And silent waters heaven is seen; Their lashes are the herbs that look On their young figures in the brook.
The forest depths, by foot unplessed, Are not more sinless than thy bleast; The holy peace, that fills the air Of those calm solitudes, is there.
1 820 1 8~2,2
A FORES'r HYMN
The groves were God's first temples. Ere mal1 learned
To hew the shaft,' and lay the architrave,"
And spread the roof above them~le he fralned
The lofty vault,3 to gather and roll back
The sound of anthems; in the darkling wood
Amid the cool and silence, he knelt down,
And offered to the Mightiest solemn thatlks
And supplication. For his simple heart
Might not resist the sacred influence
Which, from the stilly twilight of the place,
And from the gray old trunks that high in heaven
Mingled their Inossy boughs, alld from the sound
Of the invisible breath that swayed at once
All their green tops, stole over him, and bowed
His spirit with the thought of boundless power
And inaccessible majesty. Ah, why
Should we, in the world's riper years, neglect
God's ancient sanctuaries, and adore
93~
10
20
10
Woodland.
IColumn.
2Part of the entablature, or upper wall, supported by colurnlls irl the al-chitecture of classical Creek temples.
3An arched ceiling, as in a Cothic cathedral.

The A~e of Romanticism
1736 out of the dry leaf of an old table of apple-tree wood, which had stood in a farmer's kitchen for sixty years, first in Connecticut, and afterward in Massa
~usetts,--from an egg deposited in the living tree many years earlier still, as appeared by counting the annual layers beyond it; which was heard gnawing out for several weeks, hatched perchance by the heat of an urn. Who does not feel his faith in a resurrection and immortality strengthened by hearing (~f this?
Who knows what beautiful and winged life, whose egg has been buried for ageS under many concentric layers of woodenness in the dead dry life of Society, deposited at first in the alburnum3Y Of the green and living tree, which has been gradually converted into the semblance of its well-seasoned tomb,--heard perchance gnawing out now for years by the astonished family of man, as they sat round the festive board,--many unexpectely come forth from amidst society~s most trivial and handselled furniture,33 to enjoy its perfect summer lite at last!
I do not say thatJohn orJonathan34 will realize all this; but such is the character of that morrow which mere lapse of time can never make to dawn. The light which puts out our eyes is darkness to us. Only that day dawns to which we are awake.
There is more day to dawn. The sun is but a morning star.
1 846
I807-I882
Lon~fellow was one of America's literarv Brahmins, a title derivedfrom the highest, prie~stly caste of the Hindus and humorously applied to aristocratic New Englander.s of the nineteenth century. Like his fellow Brahmins Lowell and Holmes, Longfellow was a professor at
Harvard, and his life was rooted in Cambridge and Boston. H~s greatfame began with the publication of his first volume of poems, Voices of the Night (I
39), hich contained "A Psalm of Lifeh ohne °pfpteharance of Ballads (I84I)~ which In rhe
"The Village Blacksmith." Then came Evangeline
(I847);
Hiawatha ( I855), Courtship of Miles Standish
(I 858); and Tales of a Wayside Inn
(I 863).
Poe disparaged Longfellow as a plagiarist who borrowed heavilyfromforelgn litera ure, but Hawthorne placed him at "the head of our list of native poets," voiclng the opiniOn of the vast number of readers who made Longfellow the most popular poet of h~s age Hiawatha sold
30,ooo copies in s x months. When The Courtship of Miles Stan s published more than I5'°°~fCh°Pbliesthday was celebrated bySchoolchihdrehats in hi d h out the nation; people rose when he entered a room; gentlemen took off t elr presence. His poetry was t1-anslated throughout Europe; he was rev e ' where his popularity exceeded even that of Tennyson and Brownlng; and after 15 his home became an American literary shrine.
Longfellow transmitted European culture to his countrymen, popularized na i ican themes, and helped establish a national literature. H~s work was muslc,
33Furniture that has been "given away," hence: shabby, of little value.
34John Bull the Britisher and Brother Jonathan the American.
LONGFELLOW / A Psalm of Lif и dl
1 7~7
=~ =
TEX I The Com~lete Work~ of ~len~y Wadsworth I.o~lgfиllow, 1 I vo1s., 1886.
WHAT TH~ Hk:ART OF ~H~: YC)UN(~ MAN SAID rl O THE PSALMIST
Iel! rne not, in mournf`ul numbers,'
Llfe
IS but an empty dreaнn!--
For the soul is dead that slumbels
And tllings are not what thev seem.
Lif`e is real! I ife is earnest!

And tlle grave is not its goal
I)ust thou art, to dust returnest,~
Was not spoken of the soul.
Not enjoyment, and not sorrow
Is our destined end or way
But to act, that each to-morrow
Find us farther than to-day.
Art is long, and Time is fleeting,3
And our hearts, though stout and brave
Still, like muMed drums, are beating
Funeral marches to the ~rave.
In the world's broad field of battle
In the bivouac of Life
Be not like dumb, driven cattle!
Be a hero in the strife!
~o( ~iC meters, rhythms.
-~cl~ tedfronlthe AphOnsmso f Hl!p thoureturn Genesis3-~9
I()
L~o

1738
Trust no Future, howe'er pleasant!
Let the dead Past bury its dead!
Act,--act in the living Present!
Heart withiIl, alld (~od o'erhead!
Lives of great mell all re~ ld us
We can make our lives sublime,
And, departillg, leave behind us
Footprints on the sallds ~f Lime;
Footprints, that perhaps allother,
Sailing ~'er life's s~lemn ll~ain,
A forlorn and shipwlecked brother,
Seeing, shall take heart again.
Let us, thell, be up ~nd doing,
With a heart f`or any f`ate;
Still achieving, still pursuing,
Learn to labor and to w~it.
8 38
'A~7ra~rL71, rpнAA~os.~
The Age of Ro~lant~cism
838
I heard the trailing g~rlllellts of the Night Sweep through her marble halls!
I saw her sable~ skilts all fril~ged with light From the ~elestial walls!
I f`elt her presence, by its spell of mig}lt, Stoop o'er me f`rom above;
The calm, majestic presence of the Night, As of the one I love.
I heard the sounds of
SOI I`OW and delight, The mallif`old, soft chin1es,
That fill the haunted chan1bers of the Night, Like some old poet's r hymes.
From the cool cisterrls of the midnight air My spirit drank repose;
The fountain of pel petual peace flows there,--From those deep cisterns flows.
O holy Night! from thee I learll to bear Wh~ m~n has borne before!
Greek: "Welcome, thrice payed f`or." lliad, sook Vlll, line 488.
2Black.
30
I(~
LO~GFELLOW /
The Arsenal at Sprin~мeld
Thou layest thy finger on the lips of Care, And they complain no more.
Peace! Peace! Orestes-like3 I breathe this prayer!
Descend with broad-winged flight,
The welcome, the thrice-prayed for, the most fair, The best-beloved Night!
1 839
8
20
WRITTEN AT BOPPARD ON THE RHINE, AUGUST 25, 1842
JUST BEFORE LEAVING FOR HOME.

Half of my life is gone, and I have let
The years slip from me and have not fulfilled
The aspiration of my youth, to build
Some tower of song with lofty parapet.
Not indolence, nor pleasure, nor the fret
Of restless passions that would not be stilled,
But sorrow, and a care that almost killed,2
Kept me from what I may accomplish yet;
Though, half-way up the hill, I see the Past
Lying beneath me with its sounds and sights,--
A city in the twilight dim and vast,
With smoking roofs, soft bells, and gleaming lights,--
And hear above me on the autumnal blast
The cataract of Death far thundering from the heights.
842
This is the Arsenal. From floor to ceiling,
Like a huge organ, rise the burnished arms;2
But from their silent pipes no anthem pealing
Startles the villages with strange alarms.
Ah! what a sound will rise, how wild and dreary,
When the death-angel touches those swift keys!
I o fi
In The Eumenides (458
B.C.) by Aeschylus, Orestes prays for an end to the torments inflicted upon hlm by the ~uries.
I-ongfellow took his title from the first line of Dante's Inferno: "Nel mezzo del cammin di nostra vita" ( Mldway in the journey of our life"). When Longfellow wrote his poem he was thirty-five, half of the Biblical allotment of three score years and ten.
-Longfellow s fi~st wife had died in 1835. 2Longfellow visited the United States Arsenal at Springfield,
Massachusetts, in 1843. I.e., gun barrels.

1750
So nature deals with us, and takes away
Our playthings one by one, and by the hand
The Age of Romanticism
Leads us to rest so gently, that we go
Scarce knowing if we wish to go or stay
Being too full of sleep to understand
How far the unknown transcends the what we know.
875?
1 875
In the long, sleepless watches of the night A gentle face--the face of one long deadl--Looks at me from the wall, where round its head The night-lamp casts a halo of pale light.
Here in this room she died; and soul more white
Never through martyrdom of fire was led
To its repose; nor can in books be read
The legend of a life more benedight.2
There is a mountain in the distant West That, sun-defying, in its deep ravines Dlsplays a cross of snow upon its side.
Such is the cross I wear upon my breast
These eighteen years, through all the changing scenes
And seasons, changeless since the day she died
879
1 886
The tide rises, the tide falls,
The twilight darkens, the curlew calls
Along the sea-sands damp and brown
The traveller hastens toward the town
And the tide rises~ the tide falls.
Darkness settles on roofs and walls
But the sea, the sea in the darkness calls;
The little waves, with their soft, white hands
Efface the footprints in the sands
And the tide rises, the tide falls.
The morning breaks; the steeds in their stalls
Stamp and neigh, as the hostler calls;
The day returns, but nevermore
Longfellow's second wife had died, by fire, in 1861.
~BIessed.
10
I~
10
WHI~TIER
Returns the traveller to the shore,
And the tide rises, the tide falls.
879 1 880
I 807-I 892
1 7.~1
Whittier first won fame as a youthful village poet, a rustic bard. He had absorbed the folktales and legends of his boyhood home near
Haverhill, Massachusetts, north of Boston, and his knack for casting rhymes allowed him to grind out easy verses that delighted his readers.
Whittier'sfirst published poem so impressed the editor of the newspaper that printed it that he traveled to the Whittier farm to confront

Whittier's father and urge him to grant his son "every facility for the development of his remarkable genius." But as the son of a poor and frugalfarmer, Whittier had little chance for a college education. After two brief terms of academy schooling, which hefinanced by schoolteachingand shoemaking, Whittier managed to secure a position as editor of a Boston weekly. He continued to write local color poems for newspapers and magazines, and in
I 83 I he published his first volume, Legends of New England, a mixture of prose and verse based on the lore of his New England home.
Whittier was known as a writer of "wood hymns," picturesque and anecdotal verses describing his native region, but he also had a talent for writing caustic prose and verse that he used in the cause of social justice. He was a Quaker whose intense humanitarianism led him to champion "the common man." He became a political activist and joined the radical abolitionist movement that preceded the Civil War. For over sixty years Whittier battled against social injustice, writing militant essays and verses that appeared in numerous periodicals and in such collections of his work as Voices of Freedom
(I 846),
Songs of Labor
(I 850), and In War Time
(I 863).
The height of Whittier's fame came in the
I 880S.
As one of America's "Schoolroom" or "Fireside" poets, he was venerated for his piety, his compassion, and his power to evoke feelings of nostalgia and goodness. His verses were memorized for countless classroom declamations and printed in the anthologies and elegant gift-books that graced the parlor tables of homes throughout America. Most of his work was provincial, sentimental, monotonous~ as dated as the topical issues that stirred his zeal. But in his antislavery poems Whittier made a signifмcant contribution to the protest literature of America. He advanced the cause of reform and helped bring about the election of Lincoln.
And in such popular works as "Telling the Bees"
(I858) and in hisfinest and most admired work, SnowBound
(I 866),
Whittier establi hed himself as an acute recorder of American life and a~ a pioneer of American literary regionalism.
FURTHER READING John Greenleaf Whittier~s Poetry, ed. R. Warren, 1971; The Poetical Works of Whittier, 1975; The Letters of John
Greenleaf Whittier, 3 vols., ed. J. Pickard, 1975; A. Mordell, Quaker Militant, John Greenleaf Whittier, 1933; W. Bennet, Whittier, Bard of
Freedom, 1941; G. Arms, The Eields Were Green, 1953; L. Leary, John Greenleaf Whittier,
196l; J. Pickard, John Greenleaf Whittier, 1961; E. Wagenknecht, John Greenleaf Whittier, A Portrait in Paradox, 1967; Critical Essays on John
Greenleaf Whittier, ed . J. Kribbs, 1980.
TEXT The Writings of John Greenleaf Whittier, 7 vols., 1888-1889.

1752 The Age of Rornantic~sm
The blast from Freedom's Northern hills, upon its Southern way, Bears greeting to Virginia from Massachusetts Bay: No word of haughty challenging, nor battle bugle's peal, Nor steady tread of marching files, nor clang of horsernen's steel.
No trains of deep-mouthed cannon along our highways go; Around our silent arsenals untrodden lies the snow; And to the land-breeze of OUI ports, upon their errands far, A thousand sails of commerce swell, but none are spread for war.
We hear thy threats, Virginia! thy stormy woods and high
Swell harshly on the Southern winds which melt along our sky;
Yet, not one brown, hard hand foregoes its honest labor here,
No hewer of our mountain oaks suspends his axe in fear.
,0
Wild are the waves which lash the reefs along St. George's bank;2 Cold on the shores of Labrador the fog lies white and dank; Through storm, and wave, and blinding mist, stout are the hearts which man The fishing-smacks of Marblehead, the sea-boats of Cape Ann.3
The cold north light and wintry sun glare on their icy forms,
Bent grimly o'er their straining lines or wrestling with the storms;
Free as the winds they drive before, rough as the waves they roam,
They laugh to scorn the slaver's threat against their rocky home.
2()
What means the Old Dominion?4 Hath she forgot the day When o'er her conquered valleys swept the Briton's steel array?
How side by side, with sons of hers, the Massachusetts men Encountered Tarleton's charge of fire, and stout Cornwallis,5 then?
Forgets she how the Bay State,6 in answer to the call Of her old House of Burgesses,~ spoke out from Faneuil Hall?8
When, echoing back her Henry's9 cry, came pulsing on each breath Of Northern winds the thrilling sounds of "Liberty or Death!"
I"Written on reading an account of the proceedings of the citizens of Norfolk, Va., in reference to George Latimer, the alleged fugitive slave, who was seized in Boston without warrant at the request of James B. Grey, of Norfolk, claiming to be his master. The case caused great excitement North and South, and led to the presentation of a petition to
Congress, signed by more than fifty thousand citizens of Massachusetts, calling for such laws and proposed amendments to the Constitution as should relieve the Commonwealth from all further participation in the crime of oppression George Latimer himself was finally given free papers for the sum of four hundred dollars."--Whittier's note.
20ff
Newfoundland.
30n the Massachusetts coast. 4Virginia.
5Commanders of British forces in Virginia during the American Revolution.
6Massachusetts.
7Lower house of Virginia's colonial legislature.
8Meeting hall in Boston.
9Patrick Henry of Vir~inia.
WHITTIER / Massachusetts to Virg~nia
What asks the Old Dominion? If now her sons have proved False to their fathers' memory, false to the faith they loved; If she can scoff at
Freedom, and its great charter'° spurn, Must we of Massachusetts from truth and duty turn?
We hunt your bondmen,l~ flying from Slavery's hatefull hell; Our voices, at your bidding, take up the bloodhound's yell: We gather, at your summons, above our fathers' graves.
From Freedom's holy altar-horns~2 to tear your wretched slaves!
1 7.~.~
30
Thank God! not yet so vilely can Massachusetts bow; The spirit of her early time is with her even now; Dream not because her Pilgrim blood moves slow and calm and cool, She thus can stoop her chainless neck, a sister's slave and tool!
All that a sister State should do, all that a free State may, Heart, hand, and purse we proffer, as in our early day; But that one dark loathsome burden ye must stagger with alone, And reap the bitter harvest which ye yourselves have sown!
40
Hold, while ye may, your struggling slaves, and burden God's free air With woman's shriek beneath the lash, and manhood's wild despair;
Cling closer to the "cleaving curse"'3 that writes upon your plains The blasting of Almighty wrath against a land of chains.
Still shame your gallant ancestry, the cavaliers of old, By watching round the shambles'4 where human flesh is sold; Cloat o'er the new-born child, and count his market value, when The maddened mother's cry of woe shall pierce the slaver's den!
Lower than plummetl5 soundeth, sink the Virginia name; Plant, if ye will, your fathers' graves with rankest weeds of shame: Be, if ye will, the scandal of God's fair universe; We wash our hands forever of your sin and shame and curse.
A voice from lips whereon the coal from Freedom's shrine hath been,l6 Thrilled, as but yesterday, the hearts of Berkshire's'7 mountain men:
The echoes of that solemn voice are sadly lingering still In all our sunny valleys, on every wind-swept hill.
60

0The Declaration of Independence.
IIThe Fugitive Slave Laws required northern states to capture al1d return escaped slaves to the South.
121n the Old Testament, fugitives seeking asylum grasped the horns projecting irom the corners of the altars of the Israelites. I Kings 1:50-53 and 2:28.
3"There shall cleave nought of the cursed thing to thine nana. L~eu~eronomy ~3:14.
4A slaughterhouse and meat market.
A lead weight for measuring (sounding) depths
16"Then flew one of the seraphims unto me, havi~ .v.~. lll ll.~ ll~.ll~., .. ~.. ~ .. ~..
~_ with tongs from off the altar: And he laid it upon my mouth, and said, Lo, this hath touched thy lips; and thine iniquity is taken away, and thy sin purged." Isaiah 6:6-7.
I7County in Massachusetts, as are Essex, Middlesex, Norfolk, Plymoutl Bristol, Hampden, and Hampshire, below.

1754 The Age of Romarltic2sm
And when the prowling man-thiefl8 came hunting for his prey Beneath the very shadow of Bunker's shaftl9 of gray, How, through the free lips of the son, the father's warning spoke; How, from its bonds of trade and sect, the Pilgrim city broke!
A hundred thousand right arms were lifted up on high, A hundred thousand voices sent back their loud reply; Through the thronged towns of
Essex the startling summons rang, And up the bench and loom and wheel her young mechanics sprang!
The voice of free, broad Middlesex, of thousands as of one, The shaft of Bunker calling to that of Lexington; From Norfolk's ancient villages, from Plymouth's rocky bound Tf~ whf~r~ N~ntll~ket20 feels the arms of ocean close her round;
From rich and rural Worcester, where through the calm repose
Of cultured vales and fringing woods the gentle Nashua2' flows,
To where Wachuset's22 wintry blasts the mountain larches stir,
Swell up to Heaven the thrilling cry of "God save Latimer!"23
And sandy Barnstable rose up, wet with the salt sea spray; And Bristol sent her answerin~ shout down Narragansett Bay!
Along the broad
Connecticut2~ old Hampden felt the thrill, And the cheer of Hampshire's woodmen swept down from Holyoke Hill.
The voice of Massachusetts! Of her free sons and daughters, Deep calling unto deep aloud, the sound of many waters!25
Against the burden of that voice what tyrant power shall stand?
No fetters in the Bay State! No slave upon her land!
Look to it well, Virginians! In calmness we have borne,
In answer to our faith and trust, your insult and your scorn;
You've spurned our kindest counsels; you've hunted for our lives;
And shaken round our hearts and homes your manacles and gyves!
We wage no war, we lift no arm, we fling no torch within The fire-damps27 of the quaking mine beneath your soil of sin; We leave ye with your bondmen, to wrestle, while ye can, With the strong upward tendencies and godlike soul of man!
But for us and for our children, the vow which we have given For freedom and humanity is registered in heaven;
7
90
'8Slave catcher.
19Monument commemorating the Battle of Bunker Hill in the American Revolution.
201sland off the Massachusetts coast.
21River in Massachusetts. 22Massachusetts mountain.
23George Latimer. 24River that Iqows through Massachusetts.
2~"Deep calleth unto deep at the noise of thy waterspouts." Psalms 42:7. "His voice was like a nolSe of many waters." Ezekiel 43:2.
2fiFetters, chains for the feet. 27Explosive gas formed in mines.
WHITTIER / Proem
No slave-hunt in our borders,--no pirate on our strand!
No fetters in the Bay State,--no slave upon our land!
842
I love the old melodious lays
Which softly melt the ages through,
The songs of Spenser's golden days,
Arcadian Sidney's2 silvery phrase,
Sprinkling our noon of time with freshest morning dew.
Yet, vainly in my quiet hours
To breathe their marvellous notes I try;
I feel them, as the leaves and flowers
In silence feel the dewy showers,
And drink with glad, still lips the blessing of the sky.
The rigor of a frozen clime,
The harshness of an untaught ear,
The jarring words of one whose rhyme
Beat often Labor's hurried time,
Or Duty's rugged march through storm and strife, are here.
Of mystic beauty, dreamy grace,

No rounded art the lack supplies;
Unskilled the subtle lines to trace,
Or softer shades of Nature's face,
I view her common forms with unanointed eyes.
Nor mine the seer-like power to show
The secrets of the heart and mind;
To drop the plummet-line below
Our common world of joy and woe,
A more intense despair or brighter hope to find.
Yet here at least an earnest sense
Of human right and weal is shown;
A hate of tyranny intense,
And hearty in its vehemence,
As if my brother's pain and sorrow were my own.
O Freedom! if to me belong
Nor mighty Milton's gift divine,
Nor Marvell's wit and graceful song,
7
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30
I.e., preface. The poem was written to introduce a collection of Whittier's poems published in 848 but dated ~ 849.
2Sir Philip Sidney (1554-1586), English author of "Arcadia," a miscellany ol prose and poetry.

1756
Still with a love as deep and strong
The A~e of Romantic?sm
As theirs, I lay, like them, my best gifts on thy shrine.
[ 1 848~ 1 ~49
So fallen! so lost! the light withdrawn Which once he wore!
The glory from his gray hairs gone2 Forevermore !
Revile him not, the Tempter hath A snare for all;
And pitying tears, not scorn and wrath, ~fit hi.~ fall!
Oh, dumb be passion's stormy rage, When he who might
Have lighted up and led his age, Falls back in night.
Scorn! would the angels laugh, to mark A bright soul driven,
Fiend-goaded, down the endless dark, From hope and heaven!
Let not the land once proud of him Insult him now,
Nor brand with deeper shame his dim, I)i.~honored brow.
But let its humbled sons, instead, From sea to lake,
A long lament, as for the dead, In sadness make.
Of all we loved and honored, naught Save power remains:
A fallen angel's pride of thought, Still strong in chains.
All else is gone; from those great eyes The soul has fled:
When faith is lost, when honor dies, The man is dead!
10
2()
30
IHebrew: glory is departed. Whittier refers to Daniel Webster, who, although a senator from Massachusetts, supported the passage of the proslavery Fugitive Slave Law (18~0).
2"And she named the child Ichabod, sayin~, The ~lory is departed from Israel." I Samuel 4:21.
WHITTIER / Maud Muller
Then, pay the reverence of old days To his dead fame;
Walk backward, with averted gaze,3 And hide the shame!
1 8~o
Maud Muller on a summer's day Raked the meadow sweet with hay.
Beneath her torn hat glowed the wealth Of simple beauty and rustic health.
Singing, she wrought, and her merry glee Thf~ m(~k-hir~ ho~ from his tree.
Bu~ when she glanced to the far-off town,
White from its hill-slope looking down,
The sweet song died, and a vague unrest
And a nameless longing tilled her breast,--
A wish that she hardly dared to own, For something better than she had known.
The Judge rode slowly down the lane, Smoothing his horse's chestnut mane.
He drew his bridle in the shade
Of the apple-trees, to greet the maid,
And asked a draught from the spring that flowed Through the meadow across the road.

She stooped where the cool spring bubbled up,
And filled for him her small tin cup,
And blushed as she gave it, looking down On her feet so bare, and her tattered gown.
"Thanks!" said the Judge; "a sweeter draught From a fairer hand was never quaffed."
He spoke of the grass and flowers and trees, Of the sin~ing birds and the humming bees;
1 7.~7
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3A reference to the children of Noah who walked backwards, averting their eyes from the sight of their father Iying drunk and naked in his tent. Genesis 9:20-23.
I Mockingbird.

1758 The A~e of Romantic~sm
Then talked of the haying, and wondered whether The cloud in the west would bring foul weather.
And Maud forgot her brier-torn gown, And her graceful ankles bare and brown;
And listened, while a pleased surprise Looked from her long-lashed hazel eyes.
At last, like one who for delay Seeks a vain excuse, he rode away.
Maud Muller looked and sighed: "Ah me!
That I the Judge's bride might be!
"He would dress me up in silks so fine, And praise and toast me at his wine.
"My father should wear a broadcloth coat, My brother should sail a painted boat.
"I'd dress my mother so grand and gay, And the baby should have a new toy each day.
"And I'd feed the hungry and clothe the poor And all should bless me who left our door."
The Judge looked back as he climbed the hill, And saw Maud Muller standing still.
"A form more fair, a face more sweet, Ne'er hath it been my lot to meet.
"And her modest answer and graceful air Show her wise and good as she is fair.
"Would she were mine, and I to-day, Like her, a harvester of hay;
"No doubtful balance of rights and wrongs, Nor weary lawyers with endless tongues,
"But low of cattle and song of birds, And health and quiet and loving words."
But he thought of his sisters, proud and cold, And his mother, vain of her rank and gold.
So, closing his heart, the Judge rode on, An~ M~ w~ lef~ in the fiel~l alone.
But the lawyers smiled that afternoon,
5()
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30
4
WHIrrlER / Maud Muller
When he hummed in court an old love-tune;
And the young girl mused beside the well Till the rain on the unraked clover fell.
He wedded a wife of richest dower, Who lived for fashion, as he for power.
Yet oft, in his marble hearth's bright glow, He watched a picture come and go;
And Sweet Maud Muller's hazel eyes Looked out in her innocent surprise.
Oft, when the wine in his glass was red, He longed for the wayside well instead;
And closed his eyes on his garnished rooms To dream of meadows and clover-blooms.
And the proud man sighed, with a secret pain, "Ah, that I were free again!
"Free as when I rode that day, Where the barefoot maiden raked her hay."
She wedded a man unlearned and poor, And many children played round her door.
But care and sorrow, and childbirth pain, Left their traces on heart and brain.

And oft, when the summer sun shone hot On the new-mown hay in the meadow lot,
And she heard the little spring brook fall Over the roadside, through the wall,
In the shade of the apple-tree again ~hf- c~w ~ ri~lPr ~ir~w his rein:
And, gazing down with timid grace, She felt his pleased eyes read her face.
Sometimes her narrow kitchen walls Stretched away into stately halls;
The weary wheel to a spinnet turned, The tallow candle an astral burned,2
21.e.. burned like a star.
~11
~ 1~
1759
70
80
90

1760
And for him who sat by the chimney lug,3
The Age of Romantic~sm
Dozing and grumbling o'er pipe and mug,
A manly form at her side she saw, And joy was duty and love was law.
Then she ~ook up her burden of life again Saying only, "It might have been."
Alas for maiden, alas for Judge, For rich repiner and household drudge!
God pity them both! and pity us all, Who vainly the dreams of youth recall.
For of all sad words of tongue or pen, The saddest are these: "It mi~ht have been!"
Ah, well! for us all some sweet hope lies Deeply buried from human eyes;
And, in the hereafter, angels may Roll the stone from its grave away!
Of all the rides since the birth of time,
Told in story or sung in rhyme--
On Apuleius's Golden Ass,
Or one-eyed Calender's horse of brass,3
Witch astride of a human back,
Islam's prophet on Al-Borбk,4--
The strangest ride that ever was sped
Was Ireson's, out from Marblehead!5
Old Floyd Ireson, for his hard heart,
Tarred and feathered and carried in a cart By the women of Marblehead!
Body of turkey, head of owl,
Wings a-droop like a rained-on fowl,
1 854
100
, ...
10
3Rod that holds a kettle over the fire.
IBased on a folk ballad that told of the punishment given a sea captain who abandoned his sinking ship.
2The Golden Ass, by the Roman satirist Lucius Apuleius (second century
B.C.), tells of the journeys of a young man who is turned into a "golden" (or "excellent") ass.
31n one of the tales of the Arabian Night5, a calender (or dervish) killed the owner of a horse of brass and later lost an eye.
4Legendary winged animal that carried Mohammed to the seventh (highest) heaven.
5Massachusetts seaport.
WHIrrlER / Ski'pper Ireson s Ride
Feathered and ruffled in every part, Skipper Ireson stood in the cart.
~cores of women, old and young, Strong of muscle, and glib of tongue,
Pushed and pulled up the rocky lane, Shouting and singing the shrill refrain: "Here's Flud Oirson, fur his horrd horrt, Torr'd an' futherr'd an' corr'd in a corrt By the women o' Morble'head!"
Wrinkled scolds with hands on hips, Girls in bloom of cheek and lips, Wild-eyed, free-limbed, such as chase Bacchus round some antique vase, Brief of skirt, with ankles bare, Loose of kerchief and loose of hair, With conch-shells blowing and fish-hornsfi twang, Over and over the Mжnads7 sang:
"Here's Flud Oirson, fur his horrd horrt, Torr'd an' futherr'd an' corr'd in a corrt By the women o' Morble'head!"
Small pity for him!--He sailed away From a leaking ship in Chaleur Bay,8--Sailed away from a sinking wreck, With his own town's-people on her deck!
"Lay by! lay by!" they called to him.
Back he answered, "Sink or swim!
Brag of your catch of fish again!" And off he sailed through the fog and rain!
Old Floyd Ireson, for his hard heart, Tarred and feathered and carried in a cart By the women of Marblehead!
Fathoms deep in dark Chaleur That wreck shall lie forevermore.
Mother and sister, wife and maid, Looked from the rocks of Marblehead
Over the moaning and rainy sea,--Looked for the coming that might not be!
What did the winds and the sea-birds say Of the cruel captain who sailed away?--Old Floyd Ireson, for his hard heart, Tarred and feathered and carried in a cart By the women of Marblehead!
Through the street, on either side, Up flew windows, doors swung wide;

fiFish-peddlers' horns.
7Wildly emotional female attendants of Bacchus, Roman god of wine.
81n the Gulf of St. Lawrence.
1 7fil
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40
50

1780
A stranger to the heathen Nine,67 Sang, with a somewhat nasal whine, The wars of David and the Jews.
At last the floundering carrier bore
The village paper to our door.
Lo! broadening outward as we read, To warmer zones the horizon spread In panoramic length unrolled We saw the marvels that it told.
Before us passed the painted Creeks,68 And daft McGregor69 on his raids In Costa Rica's everglades.
And up
Taygetos'° winding slow
Rode Ypsilanti's Mainote Creeks, A Turk's head at each saddle-bow!7' Welcome to us its week-old news, Its corner for the rustic Muse, Its monthly gauge of snow and rain, lts record, mingling in a breath The wedding bell and dirge of death: Je~t, anecdote, and love-lorn tale, The latest culprit sent to jail; Its hue and cry of stolen and lost, Its vendue7'~ sales and goods at cost, And traffic calling loud for gain.
We felt the stir of hall and street, The pulse of life that round us beat; The chill embargo of the snow Was melted in the genial glow; Wide swung again our ice-locked door, And all the world was ours once more!
Clasp, Angel of the backward look
And folded wings of ashen gray
And voice of echoes far away,
The brazen covers of thy book;
The weird palimpsest73 old and vast,
Wherein thou hid'st the spectral past;
Where, closely mingling, pale and glow
The characters of joy and woe;
The monographs of outlived years,
Or smile-illumed or dim with tears,
Green hills of life that slope to death,
And haunts of home, whose vistaed trees
The Age of Romanticism fisn
700
7 1(~
720
67The nine muses of Greek mythology.
fi8The Creek Indians, defeated in the Creek War (1813-1814), were moved from their homes m Ceorgia and Alabama to Indian Territory, present-day Oklahoma.
69Sir Gregor MacGregor, English adventurer who failed in an attempt to colonize Costa Rica in
70Greek mountain where Alexander Ypsilanti (1792-1828) led Greek soldiers from the nearby town of Maina against the Turks (1820) in the Greek War of Independence.
71Defeated Turkish soldiers were decapitated, and their heads were carried as trophies.
72Auction. 73A reused parchment on which the original writing is still faintly visible.
~(~1 MF.~
Shade off to mournful cypresses
With the white amaranths74 underneath.
Even while I look, I can but heed
The restless sands' incessant fall, Importunate hours that hours succeed, Each clamorous with its own sharp need
And duty keeping pace with all.
Shut down and clasp the heavy lids; I hear again the voice that bids The dreamer leave his dream midway For larger hopes and graver fears: Life greatens in these later years, The century's aloe75 flowers to-day!
Yet, haply, in some lull of life,
Some Truce of God which breaks its strife
The worldling's eyes shall gather dew
Dreaming in throngful city ways Of winter joys his boyhood knew; And dear and early friends--the few Who yet remain--shall pause to view
These Flemish pictures76 of old daysSit with me by the homestead hearth, And stretch the hands of memory forth
To warm them at the wood-fire's blaze!
And thanks untraced to lips unknown Shall greet me like the odors blown From unseen meadows newly mown Or lilies floating in some pond Wood-fringed, the wayside gaze beyond; The traveller owns the grateful sense Of sweetness near, he knows not whence And, pausing, takes with forehead bare The benediction of the air.
864-1 865
1 Xfifi
I 809-I 894
1781
7.~0
740
750 had s an aUthent!C New England BrahmindellhHolmes lived ln cambridge and Bosto never read novels on Sunday "until after sundown." Yet

he was also a scientific ona ist with a skeptical contempt for what he saw as humanity's crippling submission u worn traditions, particularly the remnants of Puritan Calvinism.
74Legendary immortal flowers
",A plant said to bloom once each century.
emish seventeenth-century art was noted for its portrayal of domestic scenes.

1782 The Age of Romanticism
Holmes was a professor of anatomy at the Harvard Medical School and a physician renowned in American medical history for his contributions to the struggle against infectious disease. Literature zvas merely his avocation, but it brought him his greatest fame.
At twenty-one he gained national attention as the author of "Old Ironsides," the poem that helped save the U.S. frigate Constitution from demolition. His "Deacon's Masterpiece," with its versified description of the collapse of the "wonderful one-hoss shay," has remained an
American lмterary favorite for over a century, and his essays, especially his "Autocrat" papers, still amuse readers with their witty raillery and their vivid pictures of New England life and characters.
Called "the most intelligent man in New England," Holmes had a wide-ranging and inventive mind. He provided medical science with the terms "anaesthetic" and "anaesthesia." He helped to organize New England's most distinguished literary journal and named it The Atlantic
Monthly, and he was the~rst to apply the name "Brahmin" to the upper-class New Englanders who saw themselves as the epitome of nineteenth-century American accomplishment and distinguished good taste.
He wrote society verse, in a neoclassical style that reftected his conservatism and his devotion to the literary and social ideals of eighteenth-century England. Much of his poetry was occasional, intended to commemorate civic events--jubilees, births, weddings, funerals, reunions, and graduations--and like all his writing it was refined, civilized, and limited--"humble instruments" with "a few ringing couplets" devised, as he said, to give the solid mercantile community to which he belonged a "slight passing spasm of pleasure."
FURTHER READING The Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes, 1975; J. MOrSe, The Liff~ and Letters of Oliver Wendell Holmes, 2 VOIS., 1896; E.
T;ltOn, Amiable Autocrat, 1947; M. Small, Oliver Wendell Holmes, 1962; P. OberndOrf, The Psychiatric Novels of Oliver Wendell Holmes, 1943; E. HOYt,
Improper Bostonian, Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes, 1979.
TEXT The Complete Writin~s of Oliver Wendell Holmes, 13 VOIS., 1891.
Ay, tear her tattered ensign2 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' blood,
Where knelt the vanquished foe,
When winds were hurrying o'er the flood,
And waves were white below,
No more shall feel the victor's tread, lo
Or know the conquered knee;
IIn 1830 Holmes read of plans to demolish the U.S. Con~stitution, the frigate that had defeated the British Guerriиre in the War of 1 8 1 2. The resulting poem was widely reprinted and created a respOnse that saved the ship.
2Flag.
HOLMES / MY Aunt
The harpies3 of the shore shall pluck The eagle of the sea!
Oh, better that her shattered hulk
Should sink beneath the wave;
Her thunders shook the mighty deep, And there should be her grave;
Nail to the mast her holy flag
Set every threadbare sail
And give her to the god of storms, The lightning and the gale!
1 830
MY AIJNT
My aunt! my dear unmarried aunt!
Long years have o'er her flown;
Yet still she strains the aching clasp'
That binds her virgin zone;2
I know it hurts her,--though she looks
As cheerful as she can
Her waist is ampler than her life
For life is but a span.3
My aunt! my poor deluded aunt!

Her hair is almost gray
Why will she train that w;nter curl
In such a spring-like way?
How can she lay her glasses down,
And say she reads as well
When through a double convex lens
She just makes out to spell?
Her father--grandpapa! forgive
This erring lip its smiles--
Vowed she should make the finest girl
Within a hundred miles
He sent her to a stylish school
'T was in her thirteenth June
And with her, as the rules required,
"Two towels and a spoon."
They braced my aunt against a board,
To make her straight and tall
They laced her up, they starved her down
To make her light and small;
1783
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5Mon~ters in Greek myth who snatch away those who offend the gods and carry the offenders
IBuckle.
2A wide belt or waistband traditionally worn by unmarried young women days of our yлars are threescore years and ten." Psalrns go lo.

1 784
The A~e of Romanticism
They pinched her feet, they singed her hair,
They screwed it up with pins;--
Oh, never mortal suffered more
In penance for her sins.
So, when my precious aunt was done,
My grandsire brought her back;
(By daylight, lest some rabid youth
Might follow on the track;)
"Ah!" said my grandsire, as he shook
Some powder in his pan,4
"What could this lovely creature do
Against a desperate man!"
Alas! nor chariot, nor barouche,5
Nor bandit cavalcade,
Tore from the trembling father's arms
His all-accomplished maid.
For her how happy had it been!
And Heaven had spared to me
To see one sad, ungathered rose
On my ancestral tree.
I saw him once before, As he passed by the door, And again The pavement stones resound, As he totters o'er the ground With his cane.
They say that in his prime, Ere the pruning-knife of Time Cut him down, Not a better man was found By the Crier2 on his round Through the town.
183 1
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But now he walks the streets, And he looks at all he meets Sad and wan,
41.e., primed his musket. 5Fashionable four-wheeled carriages.
I"This poem was suggested by the appearance in one of our streets of a venerable relic of the Revolution, said to be one of the party who threw the tea overboard in Boston Harbor.
He was a fine monumental specimen in his cocked hat and knee breeches, with his buckled shoes and his sturdy cane.... an honoured fellow-citizen whose costume was out of date, but whose patriotism never changed with years." Holmes's note. The subject of the poem was Major Thomas Melvil e (17~1-1832), Herman Melville's grandfather.
~Town crier, who made public announcements.
HOLMES / The Chambered Nautil~bs
And he shakes his feeble head
That it seems as if he said "They are gone."
The mossy marbles rest
On the lips that he has prest
In their bloom
And the names he loved to hear
Have been carved for many a year
On the tomh
My grandmamma has said--
Poor old lady, she is dead
Long ago--
That he had a Roman nose
And his cheek was like a rose
In the snow

But now his nose is thin,
And it rests upon his chin
Like a staff,
And a crook is in his back,
And a melancholy crack In his laugh.
I know it is a sin
For me to sit and grin At him here;
But the old three-cornered hat
And the breeches,3 and all that Are so queer!
And if I should live to be
The last leaf upon the tree In the spring, Let them smile, as I do now, At the old forsaken bough Where I cling.
1 83 1
This is the ship of pearl, which, poets feign
2
Sails the unshadowed main,--
The venturous bark3 that flings
1 7~
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3Knee breeches
O~er sec~ion, or chamber, in which it lives The GareSekhsab bl Uildd its 5PIirdal shell retend. Venturesome ship.

1 7~fi
The A~e of Romantic2sm
On the sweet summer wind its purpled wings
In gulfs enchanted, where the Siren4 sings, And coral reefs lie bare,
Where the cold sea-maids5 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 irised6 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 wreathиd horn!7
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,
Leavin~ thine outgrown shell by life's unresting sea!
" 1
OR, THE WONDERFUL ' ONE-HOSS SHAY
A LOGICAL STORY
Have you heard of the wonderful one-hoss shay, That was built in such a logical way
4A creature in Greek myth whose singing lured sailors to their destruction.
5Mermaids.
fiRainbow colored.
7Triton, the sea god of Greek myth, is often shown blowing a conch shell.
IA chaise, a two-wheeled, horse-drawn buggy.
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HOLMES / The Deacon's Masterpiece
It ran a hundred years to a day, And then, of a sudden, it--ah, but stay I'll tell you what happened without delay Scaring the parson into fits,
Frightening people out of their wits,--Have you ever heard of that, I say?
Seventeen hundred and fifty-five.
Georgius Secundus2 was then alive,--Snuffy old drone from the German hive.
That was the year when
Lisbon-town Saw the earth open and gulp her down,3 And Braddock's4 army was done so brown Left without a scalp to its crown.
It was on the terrible Earthquake-day That the Deacon finished the one-hoss shay.
Now in building of chaises, I tell you what,
There is always somewhere a weakest spot,--
In hub, ire, felloe,5 in spring or thill,6
In panel, or crossbar, or floor, or sill,
In screw, bolt, thoroughbrace,7--lurking still,
Find it somewhere you must and will,--
Above or below, or within or without,--
And that's the reason, beyond a doubt,
That a chaise breaks down. but doesn't wear ~mt
But the Deacon swore (as Deacons do, With an "I dew vum,"8 or an "I tell yeou") He would build one shay to beat the taown 'N' the keounty
'n' all the kentry raoun'; It should be so built that it couldn' break daown: "Fur," said the Deacon, "'t's mighty plain Thut the weakes' place mus' stan' the strain 'N' the way t' fix it, uz I maintain, Is only jest T' make that place uz stron~ uz the rest."

So the Deacon inquired of the village folk
Where he could find the strongest oak
That couldn't be split nor bent nor broke
That was for spokes and floor and sills;
He sent for lancewood to make the thills;
The crossbars were ash, from the straightest trees,
1 7x7
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40 aGeorge II, the German-born King of England from 1727 to 1760.
The Lisbon earthquake of 1755.
h. Edward Braddock (1695-1755), commander of British forces in America. He was killed when s army was defeated by the French and Indians in July 1755.
~ooden rim of a wheel.
70ne of the two shafts between which a horse is harnessed.
8"LIeadther strap that holds the carriage body to the springs.

1788
The Age of Romantic7sm
The panels of white-wood, that cuts like cheese, But lasts like iron for things like these; The hubs of logs from the "Settler's ellum,"9 L.ast of its timber,--they couldn't sell 'em, Never an axe had seen their chips, Дсd the wedges flew from between their lips, Their blunt ends frizzled like celery-tips; Step and prop-iron, bolt and screw, Spring, tire, axle, and linchpinl° too, Steel of the finest, bright and blue; Thoroughbrace bison-skin, thick and wide; Boot, top, dasher,~l from tough old hide Found in the pit when the tanner died.
That was the way he "put her through." "There!" said the Deacon, "naow she'll dew!"
Do! I tell you, I rather guess She was a wonder, and nothing less!
Colts grew horses, beards turned gray, Deacon and deaconess dropped away, Children and grandchildren--where were they?
But there stood the stout old one-hoss shay A~ fresh as on Lisbon-earthquake-day!
EI~HIEEN HUNL)RED;--it came and found The Deacon's masterpiece strong and sound.
Eighteen hundred increased by ten;--"Hahnsum kerridge" they called it then.
Eighteen hundred and twenty came;--Running as usual; much the same.
Thirty and forty at last arrive, And then come fifty and FIFTY-FIVE.
Little of all we value here Wakes on the morn of its hundredth year Without both feeling and looking queer.
In fact, there's nothing that keeps its youth, So far as I know, but a tree and truth.
(This is a moral that runs at large; Take it.--You're welcome.--No extra charge.)
FIRST OF NOVEMBER,--the Earthquake-day,--
There are traces of age in the one-hoss shay,
A general flavor of mild decay,
But nothing local, as one may say.
There couldn't be,--for the Deacon's art
Had made it so like in every part
That there wasn't a chance for one to start.
For the wheels were just as strong as the thills,
And the floor was just as strong as the sills,
7~
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6(1
91.e., an elm planted by the first settler. '°Pin holding the wheel to the axle. IlDashboard
I.(~WFT ~
And the panels just as strong as the floor And the whipple-tree'2 neither less nor more And the back crossbar as strong as the fore And spring and axle and hub encore.
And yet, as a whole, it is past a doubt In another hour it will be worn out!
First of November, 'Fifty-five!
This morning the parson takes a drive.
Now, small boys, get out of the way!
Here comes the wonderful one-hoss shay
Drawn by a rat-tailed, ewe-necked bay.'3
"Huddup!" said the parson.--Off went they.
The parson was working his Sunday's text,--
Had got tofifthly, and stopped perplexed
At what the--Moses--was coming next.
All at once the horse stood still
Close by the meet'n'-house on the hill.
First a shiver, and then a thrill,
14
Then something decidedly like a spill,--
And the parson was sitting upon a rock,
At half past nine by the meet'n'-house clock,--
Just the hour of the Earthquake shock!
What do you think the parson found
When he got up and stared around?
The poor old chaise in a heap or mound
As if it had been to the mill and ground!
You see, of course, if you're not a dunce
How it went to pieces all at once,--
All at once, and nothing first,--
Just as bubbles do when they burst.

End of the wonderful one-hoss shay.
Logic is logic. That's all I say.
18~,8
1789
100
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I 8I 9--I 89 I
As a poet, essayist, editor, and public gentleman, James Russell Lowell reftected the taste of nineteenth-century America. Like Longfellow and Holmes he was one of the literary
Brahmins who thought themselves to be the "untitled aristocracy" of Boston--and hence of all America. Lowell was born in Cambrid~e, Massachusetts, into an honored New
Pivoted bar to which the horse's harness is attached.
A reddlsh-brown horse with a thin neck and a hairмess tail like a rat's

1790 The Age of Romantic sm
England family. At Harvard he was the class poet, and not long after his graduation he published hisfirst volume of poetry, A Year's Life
(I
84I).
In a single year,
I 848, he established himselffirmly in New England's literary hierarchy by publishingfour volumes that represented his most notable literary achievement: Poems: Second Series; A Fable for Critics; The Biglow Papers; and The Vision of Sir Launfal, a
Christian parable in verse that became his most frequently reprinted work.
As a young man Lowell was an ardent reformer; he crusaded for abolition, temperance, vegetarianism, and women's rights. But as he grew older he became a conservative spokesman for the dominant and comfortable society that honored him. For thirty years he was a professor of literature at Harvard, filling the position vacated by the poet Longfellow.
He was the first editor of the Atlantic Monthly and editor of the prestigious North American Review. He received honorary degrees from both Oxford and Cambridge.
Andfor his political service to the
Republican party he was made United States ambassador to Spain
(I 877--~880) and England
(I 880--I 885).
Through his lifetime Lowell was a prolific writer of poems, essays, and literary criticism, and in his last years he was considered to be
America's most distinguished man of letters.
His poetry was fi uent, cultivated, andfacile; his dialect verse and his rhymed satire crackled with witty commenta~y on the follies of his age and on the character of h~s literary contemporaries, among them Poe, who was "three fifths of him genius and twofifths sheer fudge," and Thoreau, who "watched Nature like a detective." Yet Lowell's preference was for the mannered elegance of a poetryfilled with "classic niceties. " Hi life and his writings were detachedfrom the human concerns of such writers a~
Whitman, whom Lowell thought a humbug. As a result, hi own efforts to unite art and ethics produced a moralizing literature in m~ny ways typical of New England's "schoolroom" poets, gentlemen who, once exalted in reputation, are best understood today as emblems of the orthodoxy and the genteel hopes of an age that has long since passed away.
FURTHER READING The Complete Poetical Works of James Ru~sell Lowell, ed. H. SCUdder, 1897; James Russell Lowell's The Biglow Papers [Firs~
Ser7es], ed. T. Wortham, 1977; R. C. Beatty, James Russell Lowell, 1942; L. Howard, Victor~an Knight-Errant, a Study of the Early Literary Career of
James Russell Lowell, 1952; M. Duberman, James Russell Lowell, 1966; C. McGlinchee, James Russell Lowell, 1967; E. Wagenknecht, James Russell Lowell,
1971; C. Heymann, American Aristocracy, 1980.
TEXT The Wr~tin~s of ~ames Russell Lowell, IO VOIS., 1890.
Dear common flower, that grow'st beside the way,
Fringing the dusty road with harmless gold,
First pledge of blithesome May,
Which children pluck, and full of pride uphold,
High-hearted buccaneers, o'erjoyed that they
An Eldoradol in the grass have found,
Which not the rich earth's ample round
May match in wealth, thou art more dear to me
Than all the prouder summer-blooms may be.
Legendary city of gold.
LOWELL / To the Dandelion
Gold such as thine ne'er drew the Spanish prow
Through the primeval hush of Indian seas
Nor wrinkled the lean brow
Of age, to rob the lover's heart of ease;
'T is the Spring's largess, which she scatters now
To rich and poor alike, with lavish hand
Though most hearts never understand
To take it at God's value, but pass by
The offered wealth with unrewarded eye.
Thou art my tropics and mine Italy
To look at thee unlocks a warmer clime
The eyes thou givest me
Are in the heart, and heed not space or time:
Not in mid June the golden-cuirassed2 bee
Feels a more summer-like warm ravishment
In the white lily's breezy tent
His fragrant Sybaris,3 than I when first
From the dark ~reen thy yeliow circles burst.
Then think I of deep shadows on the grass
Of meadows where in sun the cattle graze
Where, as the breezes pass
The gleaming rushes lean a thousand ways

Of leaves that slumber in a cloudy mass
Or whiten in the wind, of waters blue
That from the distance sparkle through
Some woodland gap, and of a sky above
Where one white cloud like a stray lamb doth move.
1791
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My childhood's earliest thoughts are linked with thee
The sight of thee calls back the robin's song
Who, from the dark old tree
Beside the door, sang clearly all day long
And I, secure in childish piety
Listened as if I heard an angel sing
With news from heaven, which he could bring
Fresh every day to my untainted ears
When birds and flowers and I were happy peers.
How like a prodigal doth nature seem
When thou, for all thy gold, so common art!
Thou teachest me to deem
More sacredly of every human heart
Since each reflects in joy its scanty gleam
Of heaven, and could some wondrous secret show Did we but pay the love we owe
And with a child's undoubting wisdom look
On all these living pages of God's book.
2With gold coloring that resembles a cuirass (chest armor). Ancient Greek city renowned for its sensuous luxury.
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