Chapter L: Mifflin

NOTES.

American poetry before Bryant was considerable in amount, but, with few exceptions, it must be looked for by the curious student in the graveyard of old anthologies. Who now reads "The Simple Cobbler of Agawam in America," "The Tenth Muse Lately Sprung up in America," "The Day of Doom," "M'Fingal," or "The Columbiad?" Skipping a generation from Barlow's death, who reads with much seriousness any one of the group of poets of which Bryant in his earliest period was the centre: Halleck, Pierpont, Sprague, Drake, Dana, Percival, Allston, Brainard, Mrs. Osgood, and Miss Brooks? A few of them, to be sure, are remembered by an occasional lyric,--Halleck by "Marco Bozzaris," a spirited ode in the manner of Campbell; Pierpont by his ringing lines, "Warren's Address to the American Soldiers;" Drake by "The American Flag," conventional but not commonplace, and marked by one very imaginative line; and Allston by two rather excellent lyrics, "Rosalie" and "America to Great Britain." The first poet to accomplish work of high sustained excellence was Bryant. His poetry, though never impassioned, is uniformly elegant. It is often as chaste as Landor at his best. But it never surprises; it is not emotional, personal, suggestively imaginative. In fact, Bryant's muse is not lyrical. With the exception of Pinkney and Hoffman, whose "Sparkling and Bright," if technically defective, is a true song, we must wait for our lyric poet till we reach Edgar Allan Poe, the greatest--one inclines to say the only--master of musical quality in verse whom America has produced.

_The Wild Honeysuckle._--Philip Freneau, born in 1752, was a soldier in the American Revolution. Though never rising quite into the highest class of poets, he is our first genuine singer. "The Indian Burying-ground" and "To a Honey-bee" are only less successful than the graceful lines quoted.

_A Health._--Poe was an enthusiastic admirer of this poem. He pronounced it, in his essay entitled "The Poetic Principle," "full of brilliancy and spirit," and added: "It was the misfortune of Mr. Pinkney to have been born too far south. Had he been a New Englander, it is probable that he would have been ranked as the first of American lyrists by that magnanimous cabal which has so long controlled the destinies of American Letters, in conducting the thing called _The North American Review_." This passage, very characteristic of Poe's criticisms, illustrates both his championship of favorites, and unmerciful scourging of foes.

_Unseen Spirits._--The earnest sincerity, evident in every line of this poem, removes it at once from the company of those gay society verses sparkling with conceits which won for Willis the satiric comment of Lowell in "A Fable for Critics:"

"There is Willis, all natty, and jaunty, and gay,
Who says his best things in so foppish a way,
With conceits and pet phrases so thickly o'erlaying 'em,
That one hardly knows whether to thank him for saying 'em;
Over-ornament ruins both poem and prose,--
Just conceive of a Muse with a ring in her nose!"

Had Willis written more such lyrics as "Unseen Spirits," his fame could hardly have proved so ephemeral. Poe considered this poem Willis's best, and I see no ground for calling the critic's judgment in question.

_To Helen._--This brief lyric, written in the poet's youth, is not only among the most exquisite from his pen, but it furnishes one of the most famous among current quotations:

"The glory that was Greece,
And the grandeur that was Rome."

_On the Death of Joseph Rodman Drake._--These manly lines have yielded another phrase to the world's memory. Hardly any quotation is more hackneyed than the last two verses of the first stanza. Drake was a young poet, the intimate friend and literary co-laborer of Halleck, who died September, 1820, in his twenty-fifth year.

_To the Fringed Gentian._--This lyric well illustrates what Mr. Stedman has aptly termed Bryant's "Doric simplicity." Nothing of Wordsworth's is freer from ornament or from the least trace of affectation.

_The Raven._--Though not belonging to the highest order of poetry, "The Raven" still maintains its position at the head of its class. No more astonishing _tour de force_ can be found in English literature.

_Nature._--Generally regarded, I think, the finest of Longfellow's, if not of American, sonnets.

_Ichabod._--Occasioned by the defection and fall of Daniel Webster. It is worthy a place by the side of Browning's "Lost Leader." In later years, Whittier wrote a poem on the theme, which, while not a retraction of his former position, is penned in a tenderer, more tolerant mood, "The Lost Occasion" is its title, and it is only just to the poet to read this second lyric, hardly less successful, in connection with the first.

_Old Ironsides._--"Old Ironsides" was the popular name for the frigate _Constitution_. Dr. Holmes's poem appeared in the Boston _Advertiser_ "at the time when it was proposed to break up the old ship as unfit for service."

_Bedouin Song._--One of the most spirited, most genuinely lyrical of American poems.

_Skipper Ireson's Ride._--These lines have an easy, swinging quality that is quite inimitable. One inclines to agree with Mr. Stedman: "Of all our poets he (Whittier) is the most natural balladist."

_The Village Blacksmith._--The directness and homely strength of "The Village Blacksmith" have made it deservedly popular. One questions whether the last stanza might not have been omitted with advantage both to the unity and force of the poem.

_The Last Leaf._--This masterpiece of mingled humor and pathos was a favorite poem of Abraham Lincoln.

_The Old Kentucky Home._--The sincere and tender sentiment of this song, no less than its popular melody, has made it for many years a favorite. Even better known is Foster's "Old Folks at Home," which is said to have had a larger sale than any other American song.

_Carolina._--The concluding lines of this lyric have an imaginative vigor rare in American poetry. Four stanzas are omitted.

_Dirge for a Soldier._--Boker's Dirge was written in memory of General Philip Kearney.

_Battle-hymn of the Republic._--Written in December, 1861, while Mrs. Howe was on a visit to Washington. Soon after the writer's return to Boston the lines were accepted for publication in the _Atlantic Monthly_ by James T. Fields, who suggested the title of the poem. The song did not at first receive much notice, but before the Civil War was over had become very popular.

_My Maryland._--A poem of great strength and beauty, though of uneven merit. It is unfortunately marred by a few rather intemperate expressions. The sincerity of feeling is everywhere so evident, however, that these must be forgiven. The lines were written by a native of Baltimore, Prof. James Randall, and were first published in April, 1861. The author of the famous song was teaching in a Louisiana college when he read in a New Orleans paper the news of the attack on the Massachusetts troops as they passed through Baltimore. This newspaper account inspired the verses.

_In the Hospital._--This poem, which has enjoyed at best a newspaper immortality, deserves to be more widely known. Its simplicity, directness, and truth of feeling are quite beyond praise. According to a story which one dislikes to believe apocryphal, these lines were found under the pillow of a wounded soldier near Port Royal, South Carolina, in 1864.

_Days._--Regarded from the point of view of artistic form, perhaps nothing of Emerson's is quite so flawless as "Days," a poem which for conciseness and polish is worthy to be called classic.

_A Death-bed._--This is a worthy companion-piece to that other miniature classic, Thomas Hood's song, beginning, "We watched her breathing through the night."

_Telling the Bees._--"A remarkable custom, brought from the Old Country, formerly prevailed in the rural districts of New England. On the death of a member of the family, the bees were at once informed of the event, and their hives dressed in mourning. The ceremonial was supposed to be necessary to prevent the swarms from leaving their hives and seeking a new home." This poem of Whittier's is almost his highest achievement. Lowell said, in writing of the Quaker poet (Appleton's Cyclopedia of American Biography, VI.): "Many of his poems (such for example as 'Telling the Bees'), in which description and sentiment mutually inspire each other, are as fine as any in the language." I often think, however, that Whittier will live longest by his hymns and poems of purely religious devotion. I know of nothing similar in English that surpasses "The Eternal Goodness," and perhaps half a dozen other poems.

_Katie._--About one-third of Timrod's graceful poem which bears this title. This is one of the few cases where I have ventured to make omissions.

_Thalatta._--Regarding this poem, Thomas Wentworth Higginson says, in "The New World and the New Book:" "Who knows but that, when all else of American literature has vanished in forgetfulness, some single little masterpiece like this may remain to show the high-water mark, not merely of a single poet, but of a nation and a generation?" The author of "Thalatta" was a Dartmouth graduate, a teacher, and a disciple of Emerson.

_The Fall of the Leaf._--Thoreau's prose is known universally; his verse has not won as yet the recognition it deserves. It has little lyrical quality, but for unconventionality, charming turns of phrase, and the intimate knowledge of Nature it reveals, it is almost alone in American poetry.

_The Rhodora._--"The Rhodora" has a conciseness and unity too rare in Emerson's poetry, which, beautiful in details, is strangely uneven. We sigh as we think what an unrivalled lyric poet Emerson would have been had he been sustained at the heights he was capable of reaching. No one surpasses Emerson at his best; he is almost a great poet.

_The Chambered Nautilus._--Many think this Holmes's finest poem. It is taken from "The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table," 1858.

_Thought._--Helen Jackson is, perhaps, the most gifted of American women poets. Emily Dickinson is more imaginative, but her utter scorn of form in composition makes her work, unique as it is, less satisfying. Mrs. Jackson was a favorite with Emerson, and he is said to have liked best among her poems this sonnet, "Thought."

_On a Bust of Dante._--Parsons, one of the best of American poets, is one of the most neglected. Stedman is inclined to think "On a Bust of Dante" the finest of American lyrics (see "The Nature of Poetry," 254).

_The Port of Skips._--In a recent review of American Literature in the London _Athaeneum_ occurs this sentence: "In point of power, workmanship, and feeling, among all poems written by Americans, we are inclined to give first place to the 'Port of Ships,' of Joaquin Miller."

_Evening Song._--No poem of Lanier is more free from his characteristic faults. One regrets that so much of his work, highly imaginative as it is, is marred by over-elaboration and artificiality.

_A Woman's Thought._--The striking reality and directness of this lyric, its immense emotional undercurrent, and its abrupt, almost gasping metre, admirably suited to the impassioned mood of the speaker,--these are a few of the qualities that combine to make "A Woman's Thought" one of the most remarkable poems in the book.

_The White Jessamine._--One of the most charming of Father Tabb's lyrics. The verse of this poet is uneven in merit. He is too prone to merely fanciful conceits. But at his best Tabb is imaginative, as, for example, in the lines where he says of Angelo that he--

"From the sterile womb of stone,
Raised children unto God."

Always artistic, Tabb's verse usually suggests workmanship; it is more thoughtful than spontaneous. His religious poetry presents, in the main, a rather striking similarity to the work of George Herbert.

_The Battle-field._--Miss Dickinson has much of the witchcraft and subtlety of William Blake. Many verses of the shy recluse, whom Mr. Higginson so happily has introduced to the world, are not only daring and unconventional, but recklessly defiant of form. But, as her editor has well said, "When a thought takes one's breath away, a lesson on grammar seems an impertinence." Emily Dickinson had more than a message, more than the charm of unexpectedness, more than the gift of phrase,--she had (and of how many Americans can this be said?) an intense imagination.

_Fertility._--This selection appears in the collected poems of Maurice Thompson (Houghton, Mifflin & Co., 1892), under the title of "A Prelude."

_Sesostris._--Of this poem Mr. Stoddard has the high praise that in imaginative quality it is unequalled in nineteenth century literature, unless by Leigh Hunt's sonnet on the Nile. The same critic does not scruple to declare of Mr. Mifflin that he has a "glorious imagination," and to prophesy for him a distinguished future. Seldom indeed has a first book of verse won such instant and universal appreciation as Mr. Mifflin's volume of sonnets, just issued as the "American Treasury" goes to press.

INDEX TO FIRST LINES.

A blight, a gloom, I know not what; 242

All that thou art not, makes not up the sum; 267

All the long August afternoon; 223

A man said unto his angel; 211

Another lamb, O Lamb of God, behold; 266

Around the rocky headlands, far and near; 271

As a fond mother, when the day is o'er; 63

As a twig trembles, which a bird; 145

At midnight, in the month of June; 57

At sea are tossing ships; 149

At the king's gate the subtle noon; 183

Ay, tear her tattered ensign down; 76

Be thou a bird, my soul, and mount and soar; 282

Because I could not stop for Death; 264

Bedtime's come fu' little boys; 225

Behind him lay the gray Azores; 199

Beneath the warrior's helm, behold; 248

Birds are singing round my window; 193

Burly, dozing bumble-bee; 169

By the rude bridge that arched the flood; 74

Chaos, of old, was God's dominion; 256

Close his eyes; his work is done; 106

Dark as the clouds of even; 100

Daughters of Time, the hypocritic Days; 126

Dear common flower, that grow'st beside the way; 175

Dear yesterday, glide not so fast; 155

Do you remember, father; 291

England, I stand on thy imperial ground; 273

Fair flower that dost so comely grow; 1

Farragut, Farragut; 110

From the Desert I come to thee; 85

"Give us a song!" the soldiers cried; 119

Green be the turf above thee; 36

Helen, thy beauty is to me; 31

Her hands are cold; her face is white; 124

Here is the place; right over the hill; 137

Her suffering ended with the day; 136

How dear to this heart are the scenes of my childhood; 8

I am a woman--therefore I may not; 227

I fill this cup to one made up; 12

I have a little kinsman; 150

I knew she lay above me; 235

I lay me down to sleep; 122

I saw him once before; 95

I saw the twinkle of white feet; 64

I stand upon the summit of my years; 154

I waited in the little sunny room; 247

In a still room at hush of dawn; 298

In Heaven a spirit doth dwell; 21

In May, when sea-winds pierced our solitudes; 165

In the greenest of our valleys; 26

In the summer even; 202

It may be through some foreign grace; 140

It was many and many a year ago; 10

It was nothing but a rose I gave her; 196

It was the schooner Hesperus; 80

Just where the Treasury's marble front; 188

Lear and Cordelia! 'twas an ancient tale; 78

Let me come in where you sit weeping,--aye; 263

Let me move slowly through the street; 42

Lo! Death has reared himself a throne; 15

Look off, dear Love, across the sallow sands; 215

Look out upon the stars, my love; 14

Men say the sullen instrument; 158

Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord; 108

My books I'd fain cast off, I cannot read; 172

My heart, I cannot still it; 192

My life closed twice before its close; 252

My life is like the summer rose; 4

My mind lets go a thousand things; 241

Nightingales warble about it; 290

No matter how the chances are; 275

Not a hand has lifted the latchet; 236

Not a kiss in life; but one kiss, at life's end; 209

Not as all other women are; 142

Now at last I am at home; 260

O Death, when thou shalt come to me; 233

O fairest of the rural maids; 6

O marvel, fruit of fruits, I pause; 167

O messenger, art thou the king, or I; 180

O Nature! I do not aspire; 166

Of all the rides since the birth of time; 87

Oh, inexpressible as sweet; 289

Oh, the shambling sea is a sexton old; 277

Oh, who would stay indoor, indoor; 251

_Oh, what's the way to Arcady_; 243

Old Sorrow I shall meet again; 230

Once it smiled a silent dell; 38

Once this soft turf, this rivulet's sands; 54

Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered, weak and weary; 45

Out of the hills of Habersham; 268

Prithee tell me, Dimple-Chin; 194

See, from this counterfeit of him; 185

Sence little Wesley went, the place seems all so strange and still; 280

Sky in its lucent splendor lifted; 238

So fallen! so lost! the light withdrawn; 69

Sole Lord of Lords and very King of Kings; 300

Southward with fleet of ice; 71

Sparkling and bright in liquid light; 32

Spirit that moves the sap in spring; 294

Still in thy love I trust; 218

Such special sweetness was about; 224

The apples are ripe in the orchard; 117

The dawn came in through the bars of the blind; 213

The day is done, and the darkness; 66

The despot treads thy sacred sands; 104

The despot's heel is on thy shore; 113

The evening of the year draws on; 162

The handful here, that once was Mary's earth; 147

The little toy dog is covered with dust; 231

The moonbeams over Arno's vale in silver flood were pouring; 296

The new moon hung in the sky; 221

The pines were dark on Ramoth hill; 130

The royal feast was done; the King; 205

The shadows lay along Broadway; 24

The sky is dark, and dark the bay below; 217

The sun shines bright in the old Kentucky Home; 98

The tide rises, the tide falls; 161

The wind from out the west is blowing; 216

There are gains for all our losses; 129

There is a city, builded by no hand; 201

These are the days when birds come back; 265

This bronze doth keep the very form and mold; 207

This I beheld, or dreamed it in a dream; 283

This is Palm Sunday; mindful of the day; 198

This is the Burden of the Heart; 197

This is the ship of pearl, which poets feign; 178

Thou blossom bright with autumn dew; 40

Thou unrelenting Past; 18

Thou wast all that to me, love; 34

Thought is deeper than all speech; 181

Three roses, wan as moonlight, and weighed down; 210

Under a spreading chestnut-tree; 92

Upon a cloud among the stars we stood; 229

Vast hollow voids, beyond the utmost reach; 257

We sat within the farmhouse old; 133

What, cringe to Europe! Band it all in one; 75

What may we take into the vast Forever?; 219

When first the bride and bridegroom wed; 153

When I was a beggarly boy; 128

_When the Sultan Shah-Zaman_; 253

While May bedecks the naked trees; 287

Whither, midst falling dew; 29

Who has robbed the ocean cave; 3

Wind of the North; 258

Wynken, Blynken, and Nod one night; 284

Years have flown since I knew thee first; 208

You know the old Hidalgo; 127

INDEX TO AUTHORS.

James Aldrich, 1810-1856, 136

Thomas Bailey Aldrich, 1836-; 210, 221, 241, 242, 248, 253

George Henry Boker, 1823-1890; 75, 78, 100, 106

Joseph Brownlee Brown, 1824-1888; 154

William Cullen Bryant, 1794-1878; 6, 18, 29, 40, 42, 54

Henry Cuyler Bunner, 1855-1896; 209, 213, 233, 243

Bliss Carman, 1861-; 277, 298

Christopher Pearse Cranch, 1813-1892; 181

Emily Dickinson, 1830-1886; 252, 264, 265

Paul Lawrence Dunbar, 1872-; 225

Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1803-1882; 74, 126, 165, 169

Eugene Field, 1850-1896; 231, 284

Annie Adams Fields, 1834-; 218

Stephen Collins Foster, 1826-1864; 98

William Prescott Foster, 18-; 271

Philip Freneau, 1752-1832; 1

Richard Watson Gilder, 1844-; 207, 208, 216, 217, 227

Louise Imogen Guiney, 1861-; 211

Fitz-Greene Halleck, 1790-1867; 36

Charles Fenno Hoffman, 1806-1884; 32

Oliver Wendell Holmes, 1809-1894; 76, 95, 124, 178

Richard Hovey, 1864-; 251

Julia Ward Howe, 1819-; 108

William Dean Howells, 1837-; 223

Mary Woolsey Howland, 1832-1864; 122

Helen Hunt Jackson, 1831-1885; 155, 167, 180, 183

Sidney Lanier, 1842-1881; 215, 268

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, 1807-1882; 63, 66, 71, 80, 92, 133, 161

James Russell Lowell, 1819-1891; 64, 128, 142, 145, 158, 175, 192

Charles Henry Lueders, 1858-1891; 258

William Tuckey Meredith, 1839-; 110

Lloyd Mifflin, 18-; 229, 256, 257, 300

Cincinnatus Hiner (Joaquin) Miller, 1841-; 199

Louise Chandler Moulton, 1835-; 236

Thomas William Parsons, 1819-1892; 147, 185, 198, 201

John James Piatt, 1835-; 149

Edward Coate Pinkney, 1802-1828; 12, 14

Edgar Allan Poe, 1809-1849; 10, 15, 21, 26, 31, 34, 38, 45, 57

James Ryder Randall, 1839-; 113

Lizette Woodworth Reese, 1860-; 224

Hiram Rich, 1832-; 275

James Whitcomb Riley, 1853-; 263, 280

John Shaw, 1778-1809; 3

Edward Rowland Sill, 1841-1887; 205, 219, 238, 247, 283

Harriet Prescott Spofford, 1835-; 196, 202

Edmund Clarence Stedman, 1833-; 150, 188, 194

Richard Henry Stoddard, 1825-; 127, 129, 153, 193

John Banister Tabb, 1845-; 230, 235, 266, 267

Bayard Taylor, 1825-1878; 85, 119

Maurice Thompson, 1844-; 294

Henry David Thoreau, 1817-1862; 162, 166, 172

Henry Timrod, 1829-1867; 104, 140

L. Frank Tooker, 18-; 260

Henry Van Dyke, 1852-; 287, 291, 296

John Greenleaf Whittier, 1807-1892; 69, 87, 130, 137

Richard Henry Wilde, 1789-1847; 4

Nathaniel Parker Willis, 1806-1867; 24

Byron Forceythe Willson, 1837-1867; 197

William Winter, 1836-; 117

George Edward Woodberry, 1855-; 273, 289, 290

Samuel Woodworth, 1785-1842; 8