Selections from American Poetry

By Carhart, Margeret Sprague

Book Id: WPLBN0000611667
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Title:	Selections from American Poetry
Author:	Carhart, Margeret Sprague
Volume:
Language:	English
Subject:	Literature & thought, Literature and history, Literature & philosophy
Collections:	Classic Literature Collection, Project Gutenberg Consortia Center
Historic Publication Date:
Publisher:	Project Gutenberg Consortia Center


Citation APA MLA Chicago Sprague Carhart, B. M. (n.d.). Selections from American Poetry. Retrieved from https://self.gutenberg.org/

Excerpt
Puritan life was severe. It was warfare, and manual labor of a most exhausting type, and loneliness, and devotion to a strict sense of duty. It was a life in which pleasure was given the least place and duty the greatest. Our Puritan ancestors thought music and poetry dangerous, if not actually sinful, because they made men think of this world rather than of heaven. When Anne Bradstreet wrote our first known American poems, she was expressing English thought; ?The tenth muse? was not animated by the life around her, but was living in a dream of the land she had left behind; her poems are faint echoes of the poetry of England. After time had identified her with life in the new world, she wrote ?Contemplations,? in which her English nightingales are changed to crickets and her English gilli-flowers to American blackberry vines. The truly representative poetry of colonial times is Michael Wigglesworth?s ?Day of Doom. This is the real heart of the Puritan, his conscience, in imperfect rhyme. It fulfills the first part of our definition, but shows by its lack of beautiful style that both elements are necessary to produce real poetry.

Table of Contents
CONTENTS: Introduction ANNE BRADSTREET Contemplation MICHAEL WIGGLESWORTH The Day of Doom PHILLIP FRENEAU The Wild Honeysuckle To a Honey Bee The Indian Burying Ground Eutaw Springs FRANCIS HOPKINSON The Battle of the Kegs JOSEPH HOPKINSON Hail Columbia ANONYMOUS The Ballad of Nathan Hale A Fable 3