American Literature

Front Cover
Maynard, Merrill, 1902 - American literature - 510 pages
 

Other editions - View all

Common terms and phrases

Popular passages

Page 390 - From the Desert I come to thee On a stallion shod with fire; And the winds are left behind In the speed of my desire. Under thy window I stand, And the midnight hears my cry: I love thee, I love but thee, With a love that shall not die Till the sun grows cold, And the stars are old, And the leaves of the Judgment Book unfold!
Page 319 - But our love it was stronger by far than the love Of those who were older than we, Of many far wiser than we ; And neither the angels in heaven above, Nor the demons down under the sea, Can ever dissever my soul from the soul Of the beautiful Annabel Lee.
Page 134 - 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.
Page 336 - Out of the hills of Habersham, Down the valleys of Hall, I hurry amain to reach the plain, Run the rapid and leap the fall, Split at the rock and together again, Accept my bed, or narrow or wide, And flee from folly on every side With a lover's pain to attain the plain Far from the hills of Habersham, Far from the valleys of Hall. All down the hills of Habersham, All through the valleys of Hall, The rushes cried Abide, abide...
Page 109 - Our day of dependence, our long apprenticeship to the learning of other lands, draws to a close. The millions that around us are rushing into life, cannot always be fed on the sere remains of foreign harvests.
Page 93 - FAIR flower, that dost so comely grow, Hid in this silent, dull retreat, Untouched thy honied blossoms blow, Unseen thy little branches greet: No roving foot shall crush thee here, No busy hand provoke a tear. By Nature's self in white arrayed, She bade thee shun the vulgar eye, And planted here the guardian shade, And sent soft waters murmuring by; Thus quietly thy summer goes, Thy days declining to repose. Smit with those charms, that must decay, I grieve to see your...
Page 243 - I LOVE the old melodious lays Which softly melt the ages through, The songs of Spenser's golden days, Arcadian Sidney's 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...
Page 179 - His eye for a fine, telling phrase that will carry true is like that of a backwoodsman for a rifle ; and he will dredge you up a choice word from the mud of Cotton Mather himself. A diction at once so rich and so homely as his I know not where to match in these days of writing by the page ; it is like homespun cloth-of-gold.
Page 336 - Tolerant plains, that suffer the sea and the rains and the sun, Ye spread and span like the catholic man who hath mightily won The Marshes of Glynn 1429 God out of knowledge and good out of infinite pain And sight out of blindness and purity out of a stain.
Page 189 - He had caught his English at its living source, among the poets and prosewriters of its best days; his literature was extensive and recondite; his quotations are always nuggets of the purest ore: there are sentences of his as perfect as anything in the language, and thoughts as clearly crystallized; his metaphors and images are always fresh from the soil...

Bibliographic information