Free eBooks - Poetry - American
Total eBooks in selected subject: 135 on 14 pages.
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PREFACE
In March, 1914, a volume appeared entitled "Des Imagistes." It was a collection of the work of various young poets, presented together as a school. This school has been widely discussed by those interested in new movements in the arts, and has already become a household word. Differences of taste and judgment, however, have arisen among the contributors to that book; growing tendencies are forcing ... more...
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I. The Old Woman (A Morality Play)
The Old Woman (A Morality Play)
Characters: The Woman The House The Doctor The Deacon The Landlady
Doctor: There is an old woman Who ought to die—
Deacon: And nobody knows But what she's ... more...
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Millay, Edna St. Vincent
Millay, Edna St. Vincent
American lyrical poet and playwright and the first woman to receive the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry. She was also known for her unconventional, bohemian lifestyle and her many love affairs. She used the pseudonym Nancy Boyd for her prose ...
Second Fig
Safe upon the solid rock the ugly houses stand: Come and see my shining palace built upon the sand!
Recuerdo
We were very tired, we were very merry— We had gone back and forth all night on the ferry. It was bare and bright, and smelled like a stable— But we looked into a fire, we leaned across a table, We ... more...
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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...
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Into My Own
ONE of my wishes is that those dark trees,So old and firm they scarcely show the breeze,Were not, as 'twere, the merest mask of gloom,But stretched away unto the edge of doom.I should not be withheld but that some dayInto their vastness I should steal away,Fearless of ever finding open land,Or highway where the slow wheel pours the sand.I do not see why I should e'er turn back,Or those should not ... more...
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Wharton, Edith
Wharton, Edith
American novelist, short story writer, and designer.
Wharton was friend and confidante to many gifted intellectuals of her time: Henry James, Sinclair Lewis, Jean Cocteau and Andre Gide were all guests of hers at one time or another. Bernard Berenson and Kenneth Clark were valued friends as well. Her meeting with F. Scott Fitzgerald is described by the editors of her letters as "one of the better-known failed encounters in the American literary annals".
The Age of Innocence (1920) won the 1921 Pulitzer Prize for literature, giving Wharton the honor of being the first woman to win the award. ...
ARTEMIS TO ACTAEON
THOU couldst not look on me and live: so runs The mortal legend—thou that couldst not live Nor look on me (so the divine decree)! That saw'st me in the cloud, the wave, the bough, The clod commoved with April, and the shapes Lurking 'twixt lid and eye-ball in the dark. Mocked I thee not in every guise of ... more...
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A FOREWORD
When the first Miscellany of American Poetry appeared in 1920, innumerable were the questions asked by both readers and reviewers of publishers and contributors alike. The modest note on the jacket appeared to satisfy no one. The volume purported to have no editor, yet a collection without an editor was pronounced preposterous. It was obviously not the organ of a school, yet it did not seem to have ... more...
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Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth
Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth
American poet and educator. Longfellow predominantly wrote lyric poems which are known for their musicality and which often presented stories of mythology and legend. He became the most popular American poet of his day and also had success overseas. His works include "Paul Revere's Ride", The Song of Hiawatha, and "Evangeline". He was also the first American to translate Dante Alighieri's The Divine Comedy and was one of the five Fireside Poets. ...
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...
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Holmes, Oliver Wendell
Holmes, Oliver Wendell
Essayist, novelist, and poet, was born of good Dutch and English stock at Cambridge, Massachusetts, the seat of Harvard, where he graduated in 1829. He studied law, then medicine, first at home, latterly in Paris, whence he returned in 1835, and practised in his native town. In 1838 he was appointed Prof. of Anatomy and Physiology at Dartmouth College, from which he was in 1847 transferred to a similar chair at Harvard. Up to 1857 he had done little in literature: his first book of poems, containing “The Last Leaf,” had been published But in that year the Atlantic Monthly was started with Lowell for ed., and H. was engaged as a principal contributor. In it ...
The Deacon’s Masterpiece
Have you heard of the wonderful one-hoss shay,That was built in such a logical wayIt ran a hundred years to a day,And then, of a sudden, it—ah, but stay,I’ll tell you what happened without delay,Scaring the parson into fits,Frightening people out of their wits,—Have you ever heard of that, I say?
Seventeen hundred and fifty-five,Georgius Secundus was then ... more...
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I. PRELUDE
Daughter of Psyche, pledge of that last nightWhen, pierced with pain and bitter-sweet delight,She knew her Love and saw her Lord depart,Then breathed her wonder and her woe forlornInto a single cry, and thou wast born?Thou flower of rapture and thou fruit of grief;Invisible enchantress of the heart;Mistress of charms that bring reliefTo sorrow, and to joy impartA heavenly tone that keeps it ... more...
