American Books

Sail on, O Ship of State!Sail on, O Union, strong and great!Humanity with all its fears,With all the hopes of future years,Is hanging breathless on thy fate!We know what Master laid thy keel,What Workmen wrought thy ribs of steel,Who made each mast, and sail, and rope,What anvils rang, what hammers beat,In what a forge and what a heatWere shaped the anchors of thy hope!Fear not each sudden sound and... more...

The Congo A Study of the Negro Race I. Their Basic Savagery Fat black bucks in a wine-barrel room,Barrel-house kings, with feet unstable, A deep rolling bass. Sagged and reeled and pounded on the table,Pounded on the table,Beat an empty barrel with the handle of a broom,Hard as they were able,Boom, boom, BOOM,With a silk umbrella and the handle of a broom,Boomlay, boomlay, boomlay, BOOM.THEN I had... more...

THE QUALITY OF THE WORKS OF EDWARD DOYLE The quality of Edward Doyle's work was appraised by Ella Wheeler Wilcox in the following article by Mrs. Wilcox which appeared in the New York Evening Journal and the San Francisco Examiner, in 1905: Shut your eyes and bind them with a black cloth and try for one hour to see how cheerful you can be. Then imagine yourself deprived for life of the light of... more...

TO VALERIA.Broideriesand ancient stuffs that some queenWore; nor gems that warriors’ hilts encrusted;Nor fresh from heroes’ brows the laurels green;Nor bright sheaves by bards of eld entrustedTo earth’s great granaries—I bring not these.Only thin, scattered blades from harvests gleanedErewhile I plucked, may happen thee to please.So poor indeed, those others had demeanedThemselves to cull; or... more...

INTRODUCTION. "Norman's Woe" is the picturesque name of a rocky headland, reef, and islet on the coast of Massachusetts, between Gloucester and Magnolia. The special disaster in which the name originated had long been lost from memory when the poet Longfellow chose the spot as a background for his description of the "Wreck of the Hesperus," and gave it an association that it will... more...

PREFACE The candlelight sweeps softly through the room,Filling dim surfaces with golden laughter,Touching with mystery each high hung rafter,Cutting a path of promise through the gloom. Slim little elves dance gently on each taper,Wistful, small ghosts steal out of shroudedcorners—And, like a line of vague enchanted mourners,Great shadows sway like wind-blown sheets of paper. Gently as fingers drawn... more...

BYTOWN. CHAPTER I. In '28, on Patrick's Day,At one p.m., there came this wayFrom Richmond, in the dawn of spring,He who doth now the glories singOf ancient Bytown, as 'twas then,A place of busy working men,Who handled barrows and pickaxes,Tamping irons and broadaxes,And paid no Corporation taxes;Who, without license onward carriedAll kinds of trade, but getting married;Stout, sinewy, and... more...

 Bring the good old bugle, boys, we’ll sing another song,Sing it with the spirit that will start the world along,—Sing it as we used to sing it, fifty thousand strong,While we were marching through Georgia. Chorus. “Hurrah! hurrah! we bring the Jubilee!Hurrah! hurrah! the flag that makes you free!”So we sang the chorus from Atlanta to the seaWhile we were marching through Georgia.How the... more...

Flag of The Free Flag of the free, our sable siresHave borne thee oft beforeInto hot battles' hell-lit fires,Against the fiercest foe.When first he shook his shaggy mein,And made the welkin ring,Brave Attucks fell upon the Plain,Thy stripes first crimsoning!Thy might and majesty we hurl,Against the bolts of Mars;And from thy ample folds unfurlThy field of flaming stars!Fond hope to nations in... more...

Introduction "Tell me, ye muses, what hath former agesNow left succeeding times to play upon,And what remains unthought on by those sagesWhere a new muse may try her pinion?" So Complained Phineas Fletcher in his Purple Island as long ago as 1633. Three centuries have brought to the development of lyric passion no higher form than that of the sonnet cycle. The sonnet has been likened to an... more...