Initial Studies in American Letters |
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Page 9
... wrote ; those " stern men with empires in their brains " had more pressing work to do than the making of books . The first settlers , indeed , were brought face to face with strange and exciting conditions- the sea , the wilderness ...
... wrote ; those " stern men with empires in their brains " had more pressing work to do than the making of books . The first settlers , indeed , were brought face to face with strange and exciting conditions- the sea , the wilderness ...
Page 11
... wrote Smith . Many circumstances in The Tempest were doubtless suggested by the wreck of the Sea Venture on " the still vext Bermoothes , " as described by William Strachey in his True Reportory of the Wrack and Redemption of Sir Thomas ...
... wrote Smith . Many circumstances in The Tempest were doubtless suggested by the wreck of the Sea Venture on " the still vext Bermoothes , " as described by William Strachey in his True Reportory of the Wrack and Redemption of Sir Thomas ...
Page 23
... wrote Mather , “ a little before the second coming of our Lord . The evening wolves will be much abroad when we are near the evening of the world . ” This belief culminated in the horrible witchcraft delusion at Salem in 1692 , that ...
... wrote Mather , “ a little before the second coming of our Lord . The evening wolves will be much abroad when we are near the evening of the world . ” This belief culminated in the horrible witchcraft delusion at Salem in 1692 , that ...
Page 28
... wrote not after the preacher , yet such was his attention and such his retention in hearing , that he repeated unto his family the sermons which he had heard in the con- gregation . " These discourses were commonly of great length ...
... wrote not after the preacher , yet such was his attention and such his retention in hearing , that he repeated unto his family the sermons which he had heard in the con- gregation . " These discourses were commonly of great length ...
Page 29
... wrote in the full and pregnant style of Taylor , Milton , Brown , Fuller , and Burton , a style ponderous with learning and stiff with allusions , digressions , conceits , anecdotes , and quotations from the Greek and the Latin . A page ...
... wrote in the full and pregnant style of Taylor , Milton , Brown , Fuller , and Burton , a style ponderous with learning and stiff with allusions , digressions , conceits , anecdotes , and quotations from the Greek and the Latin . A page ...
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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.