Term
› Edgar Allen Poe
› Emily Dickenson
› Walt Whitman
› Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
› Oliver Wendell Holmes
› William Dean Howells
› Ralph Waldo Emerson |
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Definition
| 19th Century American Poets |
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Term
Because I could not stop for Death --
He kindly stopped for me --
The Carriage held but just Ourselves --
And Immortality.
We slowly drove -- He knew no haste
And I had put away
My labor and my leisure too,
For His Civility --
We passed the School, where Children strove
At Recess -- in the Ring --
We passed the Fields of Gazing Grain --
We passed the Setting Sun --
.... |
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Definition
“Because I could not stop for Death”
Emily Dickenson |
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Term
I reason, Earth is short --
And Anguish -- absolute --
And many hurt,
But, what of that?
I reason, we could die --
The best Vitality
Cannot excel Decay,
But, what of that?
I reason, that in Heaven --
Somehow, it will be even --
Some new Equation, given --
But, what of that? |
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Definition
"I Reason Earth is Short"
Emily Dickenson |
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Term
If I can stop one Heart from breaking
I shall not live in vain
If I can ease one Life the Aching
Or cool one Pain
Or help one fainting Robin
Unto his Nest again
I shall not live in Vain. |
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Definition
"If I can stop one heart from breaking"
Emily Dickenson |
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Term
That after Horror -- that 'twas us --
That passed the mouldering Pier --
Just as the Granite Crumb let go --
Our Savior, by a Hair --
A second more, had dropped too deep
For Fisherman to plumb --
The very profile of the Thought
Puts Recollection numb -- |
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Definition
"That after Horror—that ‘twas us"
Emily Dickenson |
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Term
"Becuase I could not stop for Death"
"I reason earth is short"
"If I can stop one heart from breaking"
"That after Horror--that 'twas us" |
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Definition
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Term
Song of Myself
"Pioneers! O, Pioneers!"
“When I Heard the Learn’d Astronomer
“When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom’d”
Democratic Vistas |
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Definition
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1
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!
2
For we cannot tarry here,
We must march my darlings, we must bear the brunt of danger, 5
We, the youthful sinewy races, all the rest on us depend, Pioneers! O pioneers!
3
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!
4 |
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Definition
"Pioneers, Oh Pioneers"
Walt Whitman |
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Term
I CELEBRATE myself, and sing myself,
And what I assume you shall assume,
For every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you.
I loafe and invite my soul,
I lean and loafe at my ease observing a spear of summer grass.
My tongue, every atom of my blood, form'd from this soil, this air,
Born here of parents born here from parents the same, and their
parents the same, |
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Definition
"Song of Myself"
Walt Whitman |
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Term
When lilacs last in the dooryard bloom’d,
And the great star early droop’d in the western sky in the night,
I mourn’d, and yet shall mourn with ever-returning spring.
Ever-returning spring, trinity sure to me you bring,
Lilac blooming perennial and drooping star in the west,
And thought of him I love. |
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Definition
“When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom’d”
Walt Whitman |
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Term
| criticizes America for its "mighty, many-threaded wealth and industry" that mask an underlying "dry and flat Sahara" of soul. |
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Definition
Democratic Vistas
Walt Whitman |
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Term
"Keats"
"Paul Revere's Ride"
Evangeline
Song of Hiawatha |
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Definition
| Henry Wadsworth Longfellow |
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Term
The young Endymion sleeps Endymion's sleep;
The shepherd-boy whose tale was left half told!
The solemn grove uplifts its shield of gold
To the red rising moon, and loud and deep
The nightingale is singing from the steep;
It is midsummer, but the air is cold;
Can it be death? Alas, beside the fold
A shepherd's pipe lies shattered near his sheep.
Lo! in the moonlight gleams a marble white,
On which I read: "Here lieth one whose name
Was writ in water." And was this the meed
Of his sweet singing? Rather let me write:
"The smoking flax before it burst to flame
Was quenched by death, and broken the bruised reed." |
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Definition
"Keats"
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow |
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Term
Listen my children and you shall hear
Of the midnight ride of Paul Revere,
On the eighteenth of April, in Seventy-five;
Hardly a man is now alive
Who remembers that famous day and year.
.... |
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Definition
"Paul Revere's Ride"
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow |
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Term
The prelude begins:
This is the forest primeval. The murmuring pines and the hemlocks,
Bearded with moss, and in garments green, indistinct in the twilight,
Stand like Druids of eld, with voices sad and prophetic,
Stand like harpers hoar, with beards that rest on their bosoms.
Loud from its rocky caverns, the deep-voiced neighboring ocean
Speaks, and in accents disconsolate answers the wail of the forest.
Part the first begins:
In the Acadian land, on the shores of the Basin of Minas,
Distant, secluded, still, the little village of Grand-Pre
Lay in the fruitful valley. Vast meadows stretched to the eastward,
Giving the village its name, and pasture to flocks without number |
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Definition
Evangeline, A Tale of Acadie
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow |
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Term
By the shores of Gitche Gumee,
By the shining Big-Sea-Water,
Stood the wigwam of Nokomis,
Daughter of the Moon, Nokomis.
Dark behind it rose the forest,
Rose the black and gloomy pine-trees,
Rose the firs with cones upon them;
Bright before it beat the water,
Beat the clear and sunny water,
Beat the shining Big-Sea-Water. |
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Definition
The Song of Hiawatha
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow |
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Term
This is the ship of pearl, which, poets feign,
Sail the unshadowed main,--
The venturous bark that flings
On the sweet summer wind its purpled wings
In gulfs enchanted, where the Siren sings,
And coral reefs lie bare,
Where the cold sea-maids rise to sun their streaming hair.
Its webs of living gauze no more unfurl;
Wrecked is the ship of pearl!
And every chambered cell,
Where its dim dreaming life was wont to dwell,
As the frail tenant shaped his growing shell,
Before thee lies revealed,--
Its irised ceiling rent, its sunless crypt unsealed! |
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Definition
THE CHAMBERED NAUTILUS"
Oliver Wendell Holmes |
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Term
| was a late 19th, and early 20th century critic |
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Definition
William Dean Howells
(1837 – 1920) |
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Term
"Nature"
"The Poet"
"Self-Reliance"
"Two Rivers"
"Brahma"
The Dial |
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Definition
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Term
| quote: "Envy is ignorance, imitation is suicide." |
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Definition
From the essay "Self-Reliance”
Ralph Waldo Emerson |
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Term
Thy summer voice, Musketaquit,
Repeats the music of the rain;
But sweeter rivers pulsing flit
Through thee, as thou through the Concord Plain.
Thou in thy narrow banks art pent:
The stream I love unbounded goes
Through flood and sea and firmament;
Through light, through life, it forward flows.
I see the inundation sweet,
I hear the spending of the steam
Through years, through men, through Nature fleet,
Through love and thought, through power and dream.
... |
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Definition
"Two Rivers"
Ralph Waldo Emerson |
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Term
If the red slayer think he slays,
Or if the slain think he is slain,
They know not well the subtle ways
I keep, and pass, and turn again.
Far or forgot to me is near;
Shadow and sunlight are the same;
The vanished gods to me appear;
And one to me are shame and fame.
... |
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Definition
"Brahma"
Ralph Waldo Emerson |
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Term
| A trancendentalist peridodical |
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Definition
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