Initial Studies in American Letters |
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Page 18
... character , their respect for learning , and the heroic mood which sustained them through the hardships and dangers of their great en- terprise are amply reflected in their own writings . If these are not so much literature as the raw ...
... character , their respect for learning , and the heroic mood which sustained them through the hardships and dangers of their great en- terprise are amply reflected in their own writings . If these are not so much literature as the raw ...
Page 32
... character and the completeness of its self - revelation , but to which it is as much inferior in historic interest as " the petty province here " was inferior in political and social importance to " Britain far away . " For the most ...
... character and the completeness of its self - revelation , but to which it is as much inferior in historic interest as " the petty province here " was inferior in political and social importance to " Britain far away . " For the most ...
Page 33
... character - sketches , and literary criticism . There was verse of a certain kind , but the most generous stretch of the term would hardly allow it to be called poetry . Many of the early divines of New England relieved their pens , in ...
... character - sketches , and literary criticism . There was verse of a certain kind , but the most generous stretch of the term would hardly allow it to be called poetry . Many of the early divines of New England relieved their pens , in ...
Page 37
... character , and he illustrates the develop- ment of the New England Englishman into the modern Yankee . Clear rather than subtle , without ideality or ro- mance or fineness of emotion or poetic lift , intensely practi- cal and ...
... character , and he illustrates the develop- ment of the New England Englishman into the modern Yankee . Clear rather than subtle , without ideality or ro- mance or fineness of emotion or poetic lift , intensely practi- cal and ...
Page 42
... character of the age was as distinctly political as that of the co- lonial era - in New England at least - was theological ; and lit- erature must still continue to borrow its interest from history . Pure literature , or what , for want ...
... character of the age was as distinctly political as that of the co- lonial era - in New England at least - was theological ; and lit- erature must still continue to borrow its interest from history . Pure literature , or what , for want ...
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Common terms and phrases
afterward American literature ballad beauty Blithedale Romance Boston Bret Harte Bryant captain Channing character Church cities civil colony Concord Cotton Mather death Deerslayer divine Edgar Poe Emerson England English essays eyes famous feeling fiction frog G. P. Putnam's Sons Hartford Harvard College Hawthorne Hawthorne's heart Henry Holmes humor imagination Indian Irving Irving's John kind letters literary living Longfellow Lowell magazines Marble Faun Margaret Fuller Massachusetts Mather ment N. P. Willis narrative Nathaniel Hawthorne nature never night novels o'er orator passage passion Philadelphia philosophy pieces Poe's poems poet poetic poetry political popular prose published Puritan river romance satire says ship side sketches slavery Smiley song soul speech spirit story thee thing Thoreau thou thought tion took town transcendentalism transcendentalists Unitarian verse Virginia volume Whittier Winthrop words writings written wrote York young
Popular passages
Page 13 - I thank God, there are no free schools nor printing, and I hope we shall not have these hundred years. For learning has brought disobedience and heresy, and sects into the world, and printing has divulged them, and libels against the best government. God keep us from both"!
Page 251 - TO HELEN. Helen, thy beauty is to me Like those Nicean barks of yore, That gently, o'er a perfumed sea, The weary, way-worn wanderer bore To his own native shore. On desperate seas long wont to roam, Thy hyacinth hair, thy classic face, Thy Naiad airs have brought me home To the glory that was Greece And the grandeur that was Rome.
Page 248 - 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 Crier on his round Through the town. But now he walks the streets, And he looks at all he meets Sad and wan, And he shakes his feeble head, That it seems as if he said, "They are gone.
Page 110 - The hand that rounded Peter's dome, And groined the aisles of Christian Rome, Wrought in a sad sincerity: Himself from God he could not free; He builded better than he knew : The conscious stone to beauty grew.
Page 147 - I am in earnest. I will not equivocate — I will not excuse — I will not retreat a single inch. AND I WILL BE HEARD.
Page 232 - Where are the flowers, the fair young flowers, that lately sprang and stood In brighter light, and softer airs, a beauteous sisterhood ? Alas ! they all are in their graves, the gentle race of flowers Are lying in their lowly beds, with the fair and good of ours. The rain is falling where they lie, but the cold November rain Calls not from out the gloomy earth the lovely ones again.
Page 235 - Give me health and a day, and I will make the pomp of emperors ridiculous. The dawn is my Assyria; the sunset and moonrise my Paphos, and unimaginable realms of faerie; broad noon shall be my England of the senses and the understanding; the night shall be my Germany of mystic philosophy and...
Page 233 - To be a brother to the insensible rock And to the sluggish clod, which the rude swain Turns with his share and treads upon. The oak Shall send his roots abroad, and pierce thy mould. 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, Fair forms, and hoary seers of ages past, All in one mighty sepulchre.
Page 248 - 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!
Page 154 - The wind-flower and the violet, they perished long ago, And the brier-rose and the orchis died amid the summer glow; But on the hill the golden-rod, and the aster in the wood, And the yellow sun-flower by the brook, in autumn beauty stood, Till fell the frost from the clear cold heaven, as falls the plague on men, And the brightness of their smile was gone, from upland, glade, and glen.