The Courtship of Miles Standish, and Other Poems. by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow.

Предна корица
Scholarly Publishing Office, University of Michigan Library, 1859 - 232 страници

Между кориците на книгата

Избрани страници

Често срещани думи и фрази

Популярни откъси

Страница 180 - And slow, as in a dream of bliss, The speechless sufferer turns to kiss Her shadow, as it falls Upon the darkening walls. » As if a door in heaven should be Opened and then closed suddenly, The vision came and went, The light shone and was spent. On England's annals, through the long Hereafter
Страница 143 - All is of God! If he but wave his hand, The mists collect, the rain falls thick and loud, Till, with a smile of light on sea and land, Lo ! he looks back from the departing cloud. Angels of Life and Death alike are his ; Without his leave they pass no threshold o'er ; Who, then,
Страница 111 - and Isaac, Old and yet ever new, and simple and beautiful always. Love immortal and young in the endless succession of lovers* So through the Plymouth woods passed onward the bridal procession. BIRDS OF PASSAGE. . . come i gru van cantando lor lai } Facendo in aer di sé lunga riga. DANTE.
Страница 165 - And with joy that is almost pain My heart goes back to wander there, And among the dreams of the days that were, I find my lost youth again. And the strange and beautiful song, The groves are repeating it still :
Страница 15 - wish a thing to be well done, You must do it yourself, you must not leave it to others!" All was silent again ; the Captain continued his reading. Nothing was heard in the room but the hurrying pen of the stripling Writing epistles important to go next day by the May Flower,
Страница 147 - base. The very names recorded here are strange, Of foreign accent, and of different climes ; Alvares and Rivera interchange With Abraham and Jacob of old times. "Blessed be God! for he created Death!" The mourners said, " and Death is rest and peace " ; Then added, in the certainty of faith, " And giveth Life that never more shall
Страница 39 - JOHN ALDEN. INTO the open, air John Alden, perplexed and bewildered. Rushed like a man insane, and wandered alone by the sea-side ; Paced up and down the sands, and bared his head to the east-wind, Cooling his heated brow, and the fire and fever within him. Slowly as out of the heavens, with apocalyptical splendors,
Страница 101 - together at last, at their trysting-place in the forest ; So these lives that had run thus far in separate channels. Coming in sight of each other, then swerving and flowing asunder, Parted by barriers strong, but drawing nearer and nearer, Rushed together at last, and one was lost in the other.
Страница 122 - ^irrevocable Past, As wholly wasted, wholly vain, If, rising on its wrecks, at last To something nobler we attain. THE PHANTOM SHIP. IN Mather's Magnalia Christi, Of the old colonial time, May be found in prose the legend That is here set down in rhyme. A ship sailed from New Haven, And the keen and frosty airs, That filled her sails at parting,
Страница 180 - her speech and song, That light its rays shall cast From portals of the past. A Lady with a Lamp shall stand In the great history of the land, A noble type of good, Nor even shall be wanting here The palm, the lily, and the spear, The symbols that of yore Saint Filomena bore. 16* THE DISCOVERER OF THE NORTH CAPE. A LEAF

Информация за автора (1859)

During his lifetime, Longfellow enjoyed a popularity that few poets have ever known. This has made a purely literary assessment of his achievement difficult, since his verse has had an effect on so many levels of American culture and society. Certainly, some of his most popular poems are, when considered merely as artistic compositions, found wanting in serious ways: the confused imagery and sentimentality of "A Psalm of Life" (1839), the excessive didacticism of "Excelsior" (1841), the sentimentality of "The Village Blacksmith" (1839). Yet, when judged in terms of popular culture, these works are probably no worse and, in some respects, much better than their counterparts in our time. Longfellow was very successful in responding to the need felt by Americans of his time for a literature of their own, a retelling in verse of the stories and legends of these United States, especially New England. His three most popular narrative poems are thoroughly rooted in American soil. "Evangeline: A Tale of Acadie" (1847), an American idyll; "The Song of Hiawatha" (1855), the first genuinely native epic in American poetry; and "The Courtship of Miles Standish" (1858), a Puritan romance of Longfellow's own ancestors, John Alden and Priscilla Mullens. "Paul Revere's Ride," the best known of the "Tales of a Wayside Inn"(1863), is also intensely national. Then, there is a handful of intensely personal, melancholy poems that deal in very successful ways with those themes not commonly thought of as Longfellow's: sorrow, death, frustration, the pathetic drift of humanity's existence. Chief among these are "My Lost Youth" (1855), "Mezzo Cammin" (1842), "The Ropewalk" (1854), "The Jewish Cemetery at Newport" (1852), and, most remarkable in its artistic success, "The Cross of Snow," a heartfelt sonnet so personal in its expression of the poet's grief for his dead wife that it remained unpublished until after Longfellow's death. A professor of modern literature at Harvard College, Longfellow did much to educate the general reading public in the literatures of Europe by means of his many anthologies and translations, the most important of which was his masterful rendition in English of Dante's Divine Comedy (1865-67).

Библиография