Four American poets

Do you know what is meant by “the love of Nature”? Yes? But are you quite sure? Think a little. It is not an easy thing to understand, and many older people than you do not know...

Bryant was the first great American poet, having been born fourteen years before Longfellow. Like Longfellow, he could trace his descent (on his mother’s side) from John Alden a...

Life in the time of Bryant’s boyhood was rather hard and rough. New England country life was never easy. The chairs were very straight-backed, the beds were hard, and the food w...

Bryant’s poetic career began when he was twelve years old. Besides some “Enigmas” and a translation from the Latin of Horace, he made a copy of verses to be recited at the close...

Every child at school becomes familiar with this grand poem, because it is in many of the higher readers. But that is not enough. You should learn to understand its meaning. As...

Always of a studious turn, always reading in his father’s well-stocked library, or wandering through the woods and writing poetry, Bryant naturally tended towards some learned p...

Gradually Bryant had become known in the small literary circle that had sprung up around the _North American Review_, though his name was not known outside this small circle in...

Bryant’s life work proved to be, not writing poetry, but editing a great New York daily paper. For many years he went to his office at seven o’clock every morning. He was never...

We have already seen that Bryant was born a poor country boy; that his father was so poor he could not send his son to college more than a year; and that Bryant himself, when he...

When Bryant went to New York it was a comparatively small city. As years passed, it grew in size and wealth, and its newspapers became more important. We have seen how Bryant be...

Among the remaining important events of the poet’s life, we must first speak of the publication of his poems. In 1822, the year after his marriage and while he was trying to pra...

We have seen that Bryant was not only a great poet, but a great newspaper editor, an eloquent orator, and a rich man. So he came to be a noted public character, one of the leadi...

It is not uncommon to hear young people say, “I don’t like poetry at all. It is dry, horrid stuff, and I don’t understand it.” No doubt some of you will say or think this about...

You doubtless remember how Robinson Crusoe one day found footprints in the sand on the shore of his desert island. “I am not alone!” said he to himself. “Another human being has...

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow belonged to a good old New England family. His father was a lawyer in Portland, Maine; his grandfather had been a schoolmaster; and his great-grandfat...

Our poet seems to have been a quiet, well behaved child, rather slight, but always standing up perfectly straight. He was careful of his clothes, and learned his lessons well. S...

In the days when Longfellow was a child, people were just changing from the old fashioned style of living to ways that were new and more modern. The older men wore knee breeches...

Longfellow went to college when he was very young, indeed only fourteen years old. In those days the requirements for entering college were not so severe as they are now; yet th...

When Longfellow graduated from college he was a young man of nineteen, slender, well built, and graceful. He had blue eyes and light-brown hair which he wore rather heavy about...

When he had been a professor at Bowdoin College but little over a year, Longfellow married a young lady named Mary Storer Potter. She was the daughter of a well-known judge who...

Longfellow came back from Europe and was installed as professor of modern languages and belles-lettres at Harvard College, in the beautiful town of Cambridge, two miles from Bos...

Now began the finest years of Longfellow’s life. It was in the early years at the Craigie House that he wrote the “Psalm of Life” and most of his other world-famous and world-lo...

When Longfellow went to live in Cambridge he was just thirty years old. He had not then written any of the poems that are famous to-day, but he began at once to produce most of...

We have already often spoken of the “Psalm of Life,” perhaps the greatest poem Longfellow ever wrote. He composed it in his room at the Craigie House, which had been Washington’...

You will remember that at the time his first wife died Longfellow was in Holland. For a long time after that he kept very much secluded, and in the “Footsteps of Angels” we have...

After his first marriage we have seen that Longfellow wrote his most famous short poems. After his second marriage he wrote his most famous long poems. The first was “Evangeline...

Longfellow was one of the best-natured men in the world. He was always pleasant and obliging to everybody who came to see him. He wrote his autograph for all the children who as...

The Quaker, with his broad-brimmed hat, his queer, old-fashioned coat, and his habit of saying “thee must” and “thee must not,” was not only an honest man, but a good-natured, s...

The first Thomas Whittier, after he married, built a log house, not far from the present Whittier homestead; but when he grew old and became well-to-do he put up what was then a...

Most people are blessed with brothers and sisters, with whom they grow up. First one and then the other is sent away to school. Soon they are all out in the world, earning livin...

The Whittiers seem to have been a simple-minded family. Some stories told of the poet in his childhood would almost make you think him stupid, but no one seems ever to interpret...

Brisk wielder of the birch and rule, The master of the district school Held at the fire his favored place. Its warm glow lit a laughing face, Fresh-hued and fair, where scarce a...

It was a happy day for Whittier when his sister sent that stolen poem to the paper edited by William Lloyd Garrison, for Garrison immediately took a fancy to the author. After p...

If Whittier ever had a real love affair, no one seems to have known about it. The fact is, he was not of the passionate kind. But all his life his best friends were women, and m...

Young Whittier remained at Haverhill academy only two terms. We have seen that he paid for the first one by making shoes. The second he paid for by teaching school. When he went...

It is altogether probable that Whittier would have been elected to Congress, and have had perhaps a great political career, had it not been for an act of genuine sacrifice on hi...

We must now mention a few exciting events in which Whittier himself took part. At the time of the occurrences referred to in the last chapter, George Thompson, an eloquent Engli...

It is not necessary to tell all the events of those years of struggle and hardship and poverty. Whittier wrote a great many poems on slavery. A volume containing one hundred of...

Before closing this short biography we must refer briefly to one or two interesting anecdotes and circumstances. Whittier was color-blind, at least as to red and green. He could...

Oliver Wendell Holmes was the humorist among American poets, always with a smile around his mouth and a twinkle in his eye, and a kindly little half-hidden joke in everything he...

“In the last week of August used to fall Commencement day at Cambridge,” remarks the doctor. “I remember that week well, for something happened to me once at that time, namely,...

Oliver Wendell Holmes belonged to one of the most aristocratic families of Boston, and he seemed proud of it. But he was an aristocrat of the right sort. Said he: “I go for the...

Holmes, the poet, was born and brought up in a poetic town. The old, yellow, hip-roofed house stood close beside the grounds of Harvard College; and all around were homes of men...

When young Oliver was ten, he was sent about a mile away to a school where one of the pupils was Margaret Fuller, who afterwards became a famous writer. As a girl, says Holmes,...

Holmes was not only born within the present grounds of Harvard, he grew up there, was a student of Harvard, and a loyal member of the “famous class of ’29,” a lecturer and profe...

We have already seen in one of Holmes’s letters to Phineas Barnes that while in college he was “writing poetry like mad.” In the appendix to the latest complete edition of his p...

Young Mr. Holmes wrote so much poetry he had little time for law during the twelve months after his graduation. So at the end of the year he gave up law and began to study medic...

In 1852 Holmes delivered a course of lectures on the “English Poets of the Nineteenth Century,”—Wordsworth, Moore, Keats, Shelley, and others. At the end of each lecture he read...

Holmes was the poet of the occasional, if ever there was one. If anybody held a meeting about anything, and Holmes was asked to read a poem, he kindly consented to do so. Who ev...

In 1858 Holmes moved from his house in Montgomery Place to 21 Charles street, near the Charles River; and here he was neighbor to Governor Andrew, the war governor of Massachuse...

The life of Oliver Wendell Holmes flowed like a placid river, with scarcely a ripple upon its surface. He was born and grew up and passed all his life near that “hub” he has mad...