Chapter 18

The night came down. The ghostly dark, Made ghostlier by its sheet of snow, Wailed round them its tempestuous wo, Like Death's announcing courier! "Hark There, heard you not the alp-hound's bark? And there again! and there! Ah, no, 'Tis but the blast that mocks us so!"

Then through the thick and blackening mist Death glared on them, and breathed so near, Some felt his breath grow almost warm, The while he whispered in their ear Of sleep that should out-dream the storm. Then lower drooped their lids,--when, "List! Now, heard you not the storm-bell ring? And there again, and twice and thrice! Ah, no, 'tis but the thundering Of tempests on a crag of ice!"

Death smiled on them, and it seemed good On such a mellow bed to lie The storm was like a lullaby, And drowsy pleasure soothed their blood. But still the sturdy, practised guide His unremitting labour plied; Now this one shook until he woke, And closer wrapt the other's cloak,-- Still shouting with his utmost breath, To startle back the hand of Death, Brave words of cheer! "But, hark again,-- Between the blasts the sound is plain; The storm, inhaling, lulls,--and hark! It is--it is! the alp-dog's bark And on the tempest's passing swell-- The voice of cheer so long debarred-- There swings the Convent's guiding-bell, The sacred bell of Saint Bernard!"

DRIFTING

My soul to-day Is far away, Sailing the Vesuvian Bay; My winged boat A bird afloat, Swings round the purple peaks remote:--

Round purple peaks It sails, and seeks Blue inlets and their crystal creeks, Where high rocks throw, Through deeps below, A duplicated golden glow.

Far, vague, and dim, The mountains swim; While an Vesuvius' misty brim, With outstretched hands, The gray smoke stands O'erlooking the volcanic lands.

Here Ischia smiles O'er liquid miles; And yonder, bluest of the isles, Calm Capri waits, Her sapphire gates Beguiling to her bright estates.

I heed not, if My rippling skiff Float swift or slow from cliff to cliff; With dreamful eyes My spirit lies Under the walls of Paradise.

Under the walls Where swells and falls The Bay's deep breast at intervals At peace I lie, Blown softly by, A cloud upon this liquid sky.

The day, so mild, Is Heaven's own child, With Earth and Ocean reconciled; The airs I feel Around me steal Are murmuring to the murmuring keel.

Over the rail My hand I trail Within the shadow of the sail, A joy intense, The cooling sense Glides down my drowsy indolence.

With dreamful eyes My spirit lies Where Summer sings and never dies, O'erveiled with vines She glows and shines Among her future oil and wines.

Her children, hid The cliffs amid, Are gambolling with the gambolling kid; Or down the walls, With tipsy calls, Laugh on the rocks like waterfalls.

The fisher's child, With tresses wild, Unto the smooth, bright sand beguiled, With glowing lips Sings as she skips, Or gazes at the far-off ships.

Yon deep bark goes Where traffic blows, From lands of sun to lands of snows; This happier one,-- Its course is run From lands of snow to lands of sun.

O happy ship, To rise and dip, With the blue crystal at your lip! O happy crew, My heart with you Sails, and sails, and sings anew!

No more, no more The worldly shore Upbraids me with its loud uproar With dreamful eyes My spirit lies Under the walls of Paradise!

WALT WHITMAN

PIONEERS! O PIONEERS!

(Selection)

Come, my tan-faced children, Follow well in order, get your weapons ready; Have you your pistols? have you your sharp-edged axes? Pioneers! O pioneers!

For we cannot tarry here; We must march, my darlings, we must bear the brunt of danger, We the youthful sinewy races, all the rest on us depend, Pioneers! O pioneers

O you youths, Western youths, So impatient, full of action, full of manly pride and friendship, Plain I see you, Western youths, see you tramping with the foremost, Pioneers! O pioneers

Have the elder races halted? Do they droop and end their lesson, wearied over there beyond the seas? We take up the task eternal, and the burden and the lesson, Pioneers! O pioneers!

All the past we leave behind, We debouch upon a newer mightier world, varied world; Fresh and strong the world we seize, world of labor and the march, Pioneers! O pioneers

We detachments steady throwing, Down the edges, through the passes, up the mountains steep, Conquering, holding, daring, venturing as we go the unknown ways, Pioneers! O pioneers!

We primeval forests felling, We the rivers stemming, vexing and piercing deep the mines within, We the surface broad surveying, we the virgin soil upheaving, Pioneers! O pioneers!

Colorado men are we; From the peaks gigantic, from the great Sierras and the high plateaus, From the mine and from the gully, from the hunting trail, we come, Pioneers! O pioneers!

From Nebraska, from Arkansas, Central inland race are we, from Missouri, with the continental blood intervein'd; All the hands of comrades clasping, all the Southern, all the Northern, Pioneers! O pioneers!

O resistless restless race! O beloved race in all! O my-breast aches with tender love for all! O I mourn and yet exult, I am rapt with love for all, Pioneers! O pioneers!

Raise the mighty mother mistress, Waving high the delicate mistress, over all the starry mistress (bend your heads all), Raise the fang'd and warlike mistress, stern, impassive, weapon'd mistress, Pioneers! O pioneers!

See, my children, resolute children, By those swarms upon our rear we must never yield or falter, Ages back in ghostly millions frowning there behind us urging, Pioneers! O pioneers!

On and on the compact ranks, With accessions ever waiting, with the places of the dead quickly fill'd, Through the battle, through defeat, moving yet and never stopping, Pioneers! O pioneers!

Minstrels latent on the prairies (Shrouded bards of other lands, you may rest, you have done your work), Soon I hear you coming warbling, soon you rise and tramp amid us, Pioneers! 0 pioneers!

Not for delectations sweet, Not the cushion and the slipper, not the peaceful, and the studious, Not the riches safe and palling, not for us the tame enjoyment, Pioneers! O Pioneers!

Do the feasters gluttonous feast? Do the corpulent sleepers sleep? have they lock'd and bolted doors? Still be ours the diet hard, and the blanket on the ground, Pioneers! O pioneers!

Has the night descended? Was the road of late so toilsome? did we stop discouraged nodding on our way? Yet a passing hour I yield you in your tracks to pause oblivious, Pioneers! 0 pioneers

Till with sound of trumpet, Far, far off the daybreak call--hark! how loud and clear I hear it wind! Swift! to the head of the army!--swift! Spring to your places, Pioneers! O pioneers!

O CAPTAIN! MY CAPTAIN!

O Captain! My Captain! our fearful trip is done The ship has weather'd every rack; the prize we sought is won; The port is near, the bells I hear, the people all exulting, While follow eyes the steady keel, the vessel grim and daring. But O heart! heart! heart! O the bleeding drops of red, Where on the deck my Captain lies, Fallen cold and dead.

O Captain! my Captain! rise up and hear the bells; Rise up--for you the flag is flung--for you the bugle trills-- For you bouquets and ribbon'd wreaths--for you the shores a-crowding For you they call, the swaying mass, their eager faces turning. Here, Captain! dear father! This arm beneath your head! It is some dream that on the deck You've fallen cold and dead.

My Captain does not answer, his lips are pale and still; My father does not feel my arm, he has no pulse nor will. The ship is anchor'd safe and sound, its voyage closed and done; From fearful trip the victor ship comes in with object won. Exult, O shores! and ring, O bells! But I with mournful tread Walk the deck my Captain lies, Fallen cold and dead.

NOTES

ANNE DUDLEY BRADSTREET

"One wishes she were more winning: yet there is no gainsaying that she was clever; wonderfully well instructed for those days; a keen and close observer; often dexterous in her verse--catching betimes upon epithets that are very picturesque: But--the Tenth Muse is too rash."

--DONALD G. MITCHELL.

Born in England, she married at sixteen and came to Boston, where she always considered herself an exile. In 1644 her husband moved deeper into the wilderness and there "the first professional poet of New England" wrote her poems and brought up a family of eight children. Her English publisher called her the "Tenth Muse, lately sprung up in America."

CONTEMPLATION

2. Phoebus: Apollo, the Greek sun god, hence in poetry the sun. 7. delectable giving pleasure. 13. Dight: adorned.

MICHAEL WIGGLESWORTH (1631-1705)

"He was, himself, in nearly all respects, the embodiment of what was great earnest, and sad, in Colonial New England.... In spite, however, of all offences, of all defects, there are in his poetry an irresistible sincerity, a reality, a vividness, reminding one of similar qualities in the prose of John Bunyan."

M. C. TYLER.

Born in England, he was brought to America at the age of seven. He graduated from Harvard College and then became a preacher. He later added the profession of medicine and practiced both professions.

THE DAY of DOOM

There seems to be no doubt that this poem was the most popular piece of literature, aside from the Bible, in the New England Puritan colonies. Children memorized it, and its considerable length made it sufficient for many Sunday afternoons. Notice the double attempt at rhyme; the first, third, fifth, and seventh lines rhyme within themselves; the second line rhymes with the fourth, the sixth with the eighth. The pronunciation in such lines as 35, 77, 79, 93, 99, 105, and 107 requires adaptation to rhyme, as does the grammar in line 81, for example.

3. carnal: belonging merely to this world as opposed to spiritual.

11-15. See Matthew 25: 1-13.

40. wonted steads: customary places

PHILIP FRENEAU (1752-1832)

"The greatest poet born in America before the Revolutionary War.... His best poems are a few short lyrics, remarkable for their simplicity, sincerity, and love of nature."

-REUBEN P. HALLECK.

Born in New York, he graduated from Princeton at the age of nineteen and became school teacher, sea captain, interpreter, editor, and poet. He lost his way in a severe storm and was found dead the next day.

TO A HONEY BEE

29-30. Pharaoh: King of Egypt in the time of Joseph, who perished in the Red Sea. See Exodus, Chapter xiv.

34. epitaph: an inscription in memory of the dead.

36. Charon: the Greek mythical boatman on the River Styx.

EUTAW SPRINGS

Eutaw Springs. Sept. 8th 1781, the Americans under General Greene fought a battle which was successful for the Americans, since Georgia and the Carolinas were freed from English invasion.

21. Greene: Nathanael Greene of Rhode Island was one of the men who became a leader early in the war and who in spite of opposition and failure stood by the American cause through all the hard days of the war.

25. Parthian: the soldiers of Parthia were celebrated as horse-archers. Their mail-clad horseman spread like a cloud round the hostile army and poured in a shower of darts. Then they evaded any closer conflict by a rapid flight, during which they still shot their arrows backwards upon the enemy. See Smith, Classical Dictionary.

FRANCIS HOPKINSON (1737-1791)

He was "a mathematician, a chemist, a physicist, a mechanician, an inventor, a musician and a composer of music, a man of literary knowledge and practice, a writer of airy and dainty songs, a clever artist with pencil and brush, and a humorist of unmistakable power."

--MOSES COLT TYLER.

Born in Philadelphia, he graduated from the College of Philadelphia and began the practice of law. He signed the Declaration of Independence and held various offices under the federal government. "The Battle of the Kegs" is his best-known production.

THE BATTLE of THE KEGS

59. Stomach: courage.

JOSEPH HOPKINSON (1770-1842)

"His legal essays and decisions were long accepted as authoritative; but he will be longest remembered for his national song, 'Hail Columbia,' written in 1798, which attained immediate popularity and did much to fortify wavering patriotism."

--NEW INTERNATIONAL ENCYCLOPEDIA

THE BALLAD of NATHAN HALE

For the story of Nathan Hale see any good history of the American Revolution. He is honored by the students of Yale as one of its noblest graduates, and the building in which he lived has been remodeled and marked with a memorial tablet, while a bronze statue stands before it. This is the last of Yale's old buildings and will now remain for many years.

31. minions: servile favorites.

48. presage: foretell.

TIMOTHY DWIGHT (1752-1817)

"He was in many ways the first of the great modern college presidents; if his was the day of small things, he nevertheless did so many of them and did them so well that he deserves admiration."

--WILLIAM P. TRENT.

Born in Northampton, Mass., he graduated from Yale and was then made a tutor there. He became an army chaplain in 1777, but his father's death made his return home necessary. He became a preacher later and finally president of Yale. His hymn, "Love to the Church," is the one thing we most want to keep of all his several volumes.

SAMUEL WOODWORTH (1785-1842)

"Our best patriotic ballads and popular lyrics are, of course, based upon sentiment, aptly expressed by the poet and instinctively felt by the reader. Hence just is the fame and true is the love bestowed upon the choicest songs of our 'single-poem poets': upon Samuel Woodworth's 'Old Oaken Bucket,' etc." --CHARLES F. RICHARDSON.

Born at Scituate, Mass., he had very little education. His father apprenticed him to a Boston printer while he was a young boy. He remained in the newspaper business all his life, and wrote numerous poems, and several operas which were produced.

WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT (1794-1878)

"A moralist, dealing chiefly with death and the more sombre phases of life, a lover and interpreter of nature, a champion of democracy and human freedom, in each of these capacities he was destined to do effective service for his countrymen, and this work was, as it were, cut out for him in his youth, when he was laboring in the fields, attending corn-huskings and cabin-raisings, or musing beside forest streams."

--W. P. TRENT.

Born in a mill-town village in western Massachusetts, he passed his boyhood on the farm. Unable to complete his college course, he practiced law until 1824, when he became editor of the New York Review. He continued all his life to be a man of letters.

The poems by Bryant are used by permission of D. Appleton and Company, authorized publishers of his works.

THANATOPSIS

34. patriarchs of the infant world: the leaders of the Hebrews before the days of history.

61. Barcan wilderness: waste of North Africa.

54. Why does Bryant suggest "the wings of the morning" to begin such a survey of the world? Would he choose the Oregon now?

28. ape: mimic.

This poem is very simple in its form and is typical of Bryant's nature poems. First, is his observation of the waterfowl's flight and his question about it. Secondly, the answer is given. Thirdly, the application is made to human nature. Do you find such a comparison of nature and human nature in any other poems by Bryant?

9. plashy: swampy.

15. illimitable: boundless.

GREEN RIVER

Green River, flows near Great Barrington where Bryant practised law.

33. simpler: a collector of herbs for medicinal use.

58. This reference to Bryant's profession is noteworthy. His ambition for a thorough literary training was abandoned on account of poverty. He then took up the study of law and practiced it in Great Barrington, Mass., for nine years. His dislike of this profession is here very plainly shown. He abandoned it entirely in 1824 and gave himself to literature. "I Broke the Spell That Held Me Long" also throws a light on his choice of a life work.

THE WEST WIND

With this may be compared with profit Shelley's "Ode to the West Wind" and Kingsley's "Ode to the Northeast Wind." State the contrast between the ideas of the west wind held by Shelley and by Bryant.

A FOREST HYMN

2. architrave: the beam resting on the top of the column and supporting the frieze.

5. From these details can you form a picture of this temple in its exterior and interior? Is it like a modern church?

darkling: dimly seen; a poetic word. Do you find any other adjectives in this poem which are poetic words?

23. Why is the poem divided here? Is the thought divided? Connected? Can you account in the same way for the divisions at lines 68 and 89?

34. vaults: arched ceilings.

44. instinct: alive, animated by.

66. emanation: that which proceeds from a source, as fragrance is an emanation from flowers.

89. This idea that death is the source of other life everywhere in nature is a favorite one with Bryant. It is the fundamental thought in his first poem, "Thanatopsis" (A View of Death), which may be read in connection with "The Forest Hymn."

96. Emerson discusses this question in "The Problem," See selections from Emerson.

THE DEATH OF THE FLOWERS

26. Bryant's favorite sister, Mrs. Sarah Bryant Shaw, died shortly after her marriage, of tuberculosis. This poem alludes to her and is in its early lines the saddest poem Bryant ever wrote. Notice the change of tone near the end.

29. unmeet: unsuitable.

THE GLADNESS OF NATURE

b. hang-bird: the American oriole, which hangs its nest from a branch.

8. wilding: the wild bee which belongs to no hive.

To THE FRINGED GENTIAN

No description of this flower can give an adequate idea of its beauty. The following account, from Reed's "Flower Guide, East of the Rockies," expresses the charm of the flower well: "Fringed Gentian because of its exquisite beauty and comparative rarity is one of the most highly prized of our wild flowers." "During September and October we may find these blossoms fully expanded, delicate, vase-shaped creations with four spreading deeply fringed lobes bearing no resemblance in shape or form to any other American species. The color is a violet-blue, the color that is most attractive to bumblebees, and it is to these insects that the flower is indebted for the setting of its seed.... The flowers are wide open only during sunshine, furling in their peculiar twisted manner on cloudy days and at night. In moist woods from Maine to Minnesota and southwards."

This guide gives a good colored picture of the flower as do Matthews' "Field Guide to American Wildflowers" and many other flower books.

8. ground-bird: the vesper sparrow, so called because of its habit of singing in the late evening. Its nest is made of grass and placed in a depression on the ground.

11. portend: indicate by a sign that some event, usually evil, is about to happen.

16. cerulean: deep, clear blue.

SONG of MARION'S MEN

4. Marion, Francis (1732-1795), in 1750 took command of the militia of South Carolina and carried on a vigorous partisan warfare against the English. Colonel Tarleton failed o find "the old swamp fox," as he named him, because the swamp paths of South Carolina were well known to him. See McCrady, "South Carolina in the Revolution," for full particulars of his life.

21. deem: expect.

30. up: over, as in the current expression, "the time is up."

41. barb: a horse of the breed introduced by the Moors From Barbary into Spain and noted for speed and endurance.

49. Santee: a river in South Carolina.

32. throes: agony.

44. Compare this final thought with the solution in "To a "Waterfowl."

THE CROWDED STREET

32. throes: agony

44. Compare this final thought with the solution in "To a Waterfowl."

THE SNOW-SHOWER

All the New England poets felt the charm of falling snow, and several have written on the theme. In connection with this poem read Emerson's "Snow-Storm" and Whittier's "The Frost Spirit." The best known of all is Whittier's "Snow-Bound "; the first hundred and fifty lines may well be read here.

9. living swarm: like a swarm of bees from the hidden chambers of the hive.

12. prone: straight down.

17. snow-stars: what are the shapes of snowflakes

20. Milky way: the white path which seems to lead acre. The sky at night and which is composed of millions of stars.

21. burlier: larger and stronger.

35. myriads: vast, indefinite number.