Initial Studies in American Letters |
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Page 34
... his gloomy poem which hold it far above contempt , and easily account for its universal currency among a people like the Puritans . • One stanza has been often quoted for its grim 34 INITIAL STUDIES IN AMERICAN LETTERS .
... his gloomy poem which hold it far above contempt , and easily account for its universal currency among a people like the Puritans . • One stanza has been often quoted for its grim 34 INITIAL STUDIES IN AMERICAN LETTERS .
Page 43
... universal and perma- nent , explains why so few speeches are really literature . If this is true , even where the words of an orator are preserved exactly as they were spoken , it is doubly true when we have only the testimony of ...
... universal and perma- nent , explains why so few speeches are really literature . If this is true , even where the words of an orator are preserved exactly as they were spoken , it is doubly true when we have only the testimony of ...
Page 84
... universal love of a story is perennial . We devour them when we are boys , and if we do not often return to them when we are men , that is per- haps only because we have read them before , and " know the ending . " They are good yarns ...
... universal love of a story is perennial . We devour them when we are boys , and if we do not often return to them when we are men , that is per- haps only because we have read them before , and " know the ending . " They are good yarns ...
Page 87
... universal in their appeal take their place in literature . But of such de- tachable passages there are happily many in Webster's ora- tions . One great thought underlay all his public life , the thought of the Union - of American ...
... universal in their appeal take their place in literature . But of such de- tachable passages there are happily many in Webster's ora- tions . One great thought underlay all his public life , the thought of the Union - of American ...
Page 94
... universal inquiry and exper- iment , which marked the third and fourth decades of this cent- ury in America , and especially in New England . The move- ment was contemporary with political revolutions in Europe and with the preaching of ...
... universal inquiry and exper- iment , which marked the third and fourth decades of this cent- ury in America , and especially in New England . The move- ment was contemporary with political revolutions in Europe and with the preaching of ...
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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.