Selections from American poetry Part 38

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 p.r.o.nunciation 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, Cla.s.sical 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 n.o.blest 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, Ma.s.s., 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, Ma.s.s., 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.