Preface
Acknowledgments
PART ONE: PRE-COLUMBIAN PERIOD TO 1800
Introduction
NATIVE-AMERICAN SONGS, RITUAL POETRY, AND LYRIC POETRY (Pre-1492–1800)
The Tree of the Great Peace [iroquois]
Sayatasha’s Night Chant [zuni]
Song [copper eskimo]
Love Song [aleut]
Song of Repulse to a Vain Lover [makah] To’ak
Formula to Secure Love [cherokee]
Formula to Cause Death [cherokee] A’yunini, or the Swimmer
Woman’s Song [chippewa]
Song of War [chippewa] Odjib’we
Song for Bringing a Child into theWorld [seminole]
Song for the Dying [seminole]
GASPAR PE´ REZ DE VILLAGRA´ (1555–1620)
from Historia de la Nueva Me´xico/ The History of New Mexico
Canto Primero/Canto 1
ANNE BRADSTREET (ca. 1612–1672)
The Prologue
An Epitaph on My Dear and Ever Honored Mother
The Author to Her Book
Contemplations
The Flesh and the Spirit
To Her Father with Some Verses
To My Dear and Loving Husband
A Letter to Her Husband, Absent upon Public Employment
Before the Birth of One of Her Children
In Reference to Her Children
For Deliverance from a Fever
In Memory of My Dear Grandchild Elizabeth Bradstreet
Verses upon the Burning of Our House
As Weary Pilgrim
MICHAEL WIGGLESWORTH (1631–1705)
from The Day of Doom
EDWARD TAYLOR (ca. 1642–1729)
from Preparatory Meditations
Prologue
Meditation 8 (First Series)
Meditation 16 (First Series)
Meditation 22 (First Series)
Meditation 39 (First Series)
Meditation 42 (First Series)
Meditation 150 (Second Series)
from God’s Determinations
The Preface
from Miscellaneous Poems
Upon a Spider Catching a Fly
Upon a Wasp Chilled with Cold
Huswifery
Upon Wedlock, and Death of Children
LUCY TERRY (ca. 1730–1821)
Bars Fight
PHILIP FRENEAU (1752–1832)
To Sir Toby
On the Emigration to America and Peopling the Western Country
The Wild Honey Suckle
The Indian Burying Ground
On Mr. Paine’s Rights of Man
PHILLIS WHEATLEY (ca. 1753–1784)
On Being Brought from Africa to America
To the University of Cambridge, in New England
On the Death of the Rev. Mr. George Whitefield, 1770
On Imagination
To the Right Honourable William, Earl of Dartmouth
To S. M., a Young African Painter, on Seeing His Works
To His Excellency General Washington
JOEL BARLOW (1754–1812)
from The Hasty Pudding
Canto 1
SONGS OF THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION AND NEW NATION
PATRIOT LYRICS
The Liberty Song
Chester
Alphabet
The King’s own Regulars; And their Triumphs over the Irregulars
The Irishman’s Epistle to the Officers and Troops at Boston
The Yankee’s Return from Camp
The Public Spirit of the Women
A Toast to Washington Francis Hopkinson
Adams and Liberty Thomas Paine
LOYALIST LYRICS
When Good Queen Elizabeth Governed the Realm
Song for a Fishing Party
Burrowing Yankees
A Refugee Song
PART TWO: EARLY TO MID-NINETEENTH CENTURY
Introduction
AFRICAN-AMERICAN SLAVE SONGS (1800–1863)
Go Down, Moses
Many Thousand Gone
Michael Row the Boat Ashore
Nobody Knows the Trouble I’ve Had
Roll, Jordan, Roll
There’s a Meeting Here To-Night
NATIVE-AMERICAN SONGS, RITUAL POETRY, AND LYRIC POETRY (1800–1900)
from The Mountain Chant [navajo]
One of the Awl Songs
Last Song of the Exploding Stick
from The Night Chant [navajo]
Song in the Rock
Last Song in the Rock
Prayer of First Dancers
Song of the Earth [navajo]
The Dancing Speech of O-No’-Sa [iroquois]
SIX DREAM SONGS
You and I Shall Go [wintu]
Minnows and Flowers [wintu]
Sleep [wintu]
Dandelion Puffs [wintu]
There Above [wintu]
Strange Flowers [wintu]
GHOST DANCE SONGS
[The Father Says So] [sioux]
[Give Me Back My Bow] [Sioux]
[The Whole World Is Coming] [sioux]
LYDIA HOWARD HUNTLEY SIGOURNEY (1791–1865)
The Suttee
Indian Names
WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT (1794–1878)
Thanatopsis
To a Waterfowl
An Indian Story
A Scene on the Banks of the Hudson
Hymn of the City
The Death of Lincoln
GEORGE MOSES HORTON (ca. 1797–1883)
On Liberty and Slavery
JANE JOHNSTON SCHOOLCRAFT [BAME-WA-WA-GE-ZHIK-A-QUAY, WOMAN OF THE STARS RUSHING THROUGH THE SKY] (1800–1841)
To Sisters on a Walk in the Garden, after a Shower
from The Forsaken Brother, a Chippewa Tale
Neesya, neesya, shyegwuh gushuh/My brother, my brother
SARAH HELEN WHITMAN (1803–1878)
The Raven
from Sonnets [to Poe]
To——
RALPH WALDO EMERSON (1803–1882)
Concord Hymn
Each and All
The Rhodora
The Snow-Storm
The Humble-Bee
Hamatreya
Merlin
Ode, Inscribed to W. H. Channing
Days
Brahma
from Voluntaries
PROSE
The Poet
Letter to Walt Whitman
ELIZABETH OAKES SMITH (1806–1893)
The Unattained
HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW (1807–1882)
A Psalm of Life
Hymn to the Night
The Wreck of the Hesperus
Mezzo Cammin
The Day Is Done
The Bridge
from Evangeline
[Prologue]
My Lost Youth
The Jewish Cemetery at Newport
from The Song of Hiawatha
V. Hiawatha’s Fasting
XIV. Picture-Writing
The Landlord’s Tale: Paul Revere’s Ride
Aftermath
Milton
Nature
The Tide Rises, the Tide Falls
The Cross of Snow
JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER (1807–1892)
Massachusetts to Virginia
Ichabod!
Skipper Ireson’s Ride
Telling the Bees
Snow-Bound
EDGAR ALLAN POE (1809–1849)
[Alone]
Sonnet—To Science
Romance
To Helen
Israfel
The City in the Sea
The Haunted Palace
The Raven
Ulalume
Eldorado
To Helen
To My Mother
The Bells
Annabel Lee
PROSE
The Philosophy of Composition
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES (1809–1894)
Old Ironsides
The Chambered Nautilus
The Deacon’s Masterpiece, or The Wonderful One-Hoss Shay
The Flaˆneur
ABRAHAM LINCOLN (1809–1865)
My Childhood Home I See Again
MARGARET FULLER (1810–1850)
Meditations
FRANCES SARGENT LOCKE OSGOOD (1811–1850)
The Maiden’s Mistake
The Wraith of the Rose
Lines
The Hand That Swept the Sounding Lyre
ADA [SARAH LOUISA FORTEN] (ca. 1814–1898)
The Slave Girl’s Farewell
The Slave
HENRY DAVID THOREAU (1817–1862)
Sic Vita
Haze
Smoke
My life has been the poem I would have writ
Mist
Between the traveller and the setting sun
JULIA WARD HOWE (1819–1910)
Battle Hymn of the Republic
HERMAN MELVILLE (1819–1891) . . . . . . . . .
from Battle-Pieces and Aspects of the War
The Portent
The March into Virginia
Shiloh
A Utilitarian View of the Monitor’s Fight
The House-Top
The College Colonel
The Apparition
OTHER POEMS
The Maldive Shark
Art
Monody
JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL (1819–1891)
from A Fable for Critics
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Edgar Allan Poe
James Russell Lowell
WALT WHITMAN (1819–1892)
Song of Myself
There Was a Child Went Forth
Out of the Cradle Endlessly Rocking
As I Ebb’d with the Ocean of Life
I Sit and Look Out
Native Moments
Once I Pass’d through a Populous City
Facing West from California’s Shores
As Adam Early in the Morning
In Paths Untrodden
Hours Continuing Long
Trickle Drops
City of Orgies
Behold This Swarthy Face
I Saw in Louisiana a Live-Oak Growing
Here the Frailest Leaves of Me
A Hand-Mirror
When I Heard the Learn’d Astronomer
Cavalry Crossing a Ford
The Wound-Dresser
Vigil Strange I Kept on the Field One Night
Bivouac on a Mountain Side
When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom’d
Reconciliation
One’s-Self I Sing
A Noiseless Patient Spider
Passage to India
The Dalliance of the Eagles
Good-Bye My Fancy
ALICE CARY (1820–1871)
The Sea-Side Cave
Contradiction
FREDERICK GODDARD TUCKERMAN (1821–1873)
Sonnets
The Cricket
PHOEBE CARY (1824–1871)
Dorothy’s Dower
Samuel Brown
FRANCES ELLEN WATKINS HARPER (1825–1911)
The Slave Mother
Bible Defence of Slavery
The Slave Auction
Lines
The Slave Mother, a Tale of the Ohio
Bury Me in a Free Land
Aunt Chloe’s Politics
Learning to Read
Church Building
A Double Standard
MARIA WHITE LOWELL (1827–1853)
Africa
The Sick-Room
An Opium Fantasy
ROSE TERRY COOKE (1827–1892)
Captive
Blue-Beard’s Closet
‘‘Che Sara Sara’’
Semele
A Hospital Soliloquy
Schemhammphorasch
Arachne
R.W. Emerson
JOHN ROLLIN RIDGE (1827–1867)
The Stolen White Girl
HENRY TIMROD (1828–1867)
Ode
HAWAI’IAN PLANTATION WORK SONGS (1825–1930)
Uya Anma/My Mother Dear Nae Nakasone
Hana-Hana: Working
The Five O’Clock Whistle!
Hole Hole Bushi/Stripping Leaves from Sugarcane
JINSHAN GE/SONGS OF GOLD MOUNTAIN (1838–1920)
[Jinshan Fu Xing]/Song of the Wife of a Gold Mountain Man
POPULAR EUROPEAN-AMERICAN SONGS
On Top of Old Smoky
Bury Me Not on the Lone Prairie
Clementine
Aura Lee
The Battle Cry of Freedom
Tenting on the Old Camp Ground
When Johnny Comes Marching Home
Come Home, Father Henry Clay Work
I’ll Take You Home Again, Kathleen
from America, the Beautiful Katherine Lee Bates
PART THREE: LATER NINETEENTH CENTURY
Introduction
CORRIDOS (1860s–1930s)
Kiansis I/Kansas 1
ZARAGOZA CLUBS (1860s)
Me´jico libre ha de ser/Mexico will be free Merced J. de Gonza´les
En la antigua Roma habý´a/In ancient Rome there stood
Filomena Ibarra
DEWITT CLINTON DUNCAN [TOO-QUA-STEE] (1829–1909)
The Dead Nation
HELEN HUNT JACKSON (1830–1885)
Found Frozen
Danger
Cheyenne Mountain
EMILY DICKINSON (1830–1886)
I never lost as much but twice
Success is counted sweetest
These are the days when birds come back
The daisy follows soft the sun
Title divine is mine!
‘‘Faith’’ is a fine invention
I taste a liquor never brewed
We dont cry - Tim and I
I’m nobody! Who are you?
Wild nights -Wild nights!
There’s a certain slant of light
I felt a funeral in my brain
I’m ceded - I’ve stopped being their’s
It was not death, for I stood up
A bird came down the walk
The soul has bandaged moments
After great pain a formal feeling comes
This world is not conclusion
One need not be a chamber to be haunted
The soul selects her own society
I had been hungry all the years
They shut me up in prose
This was a poet
I died for beauty but was scarce
I dwell in possibility
I was the slightest in the house
Because I could not stop for death
A still volcano life
This is my letter to the world
For largest woman’s heart I knew
I heard a fly buzz when I died
The brain is wider than the sky
Much madness is divinest sense
I’ve seen a dying eye
I started early - took my dog
I cannot live with you
Pain has an element of blank
My life had stood a loaded gun
Publication is the auction
This consciousness that is aware
Color - caste - denomination
She rose to his requirement - dropt
Under the light yet under
A narrow fellow in the grass
The bustle in a house
Tell all the truth but tell it slant
What mystery pervades a well!
Volcanoes be in Sicily
My life closed twice before it’s close
LETTERS
To Susan Gilbert (Dickinson) (June 27, 1852)
To Samuel Bowles (About February 1861)
To recipient unknown (About 1861)
To Thomas Wentworth Higginson (April 15, 1862)
To Thomas Wentworth Higginson (April 25, 1862)
To Thomas Wentworth Higginson (June 7, 1862)
To Thomas Wentworth Higginson (July 1862)
To Otis P. Lord (About 1878)
To Susan Gilbert Dickinson (About 1884)
ADAH ISAACS MENKEN (ca. 1835–1868)
Myself
A Memory
Infelix
SARAH M. B. PIATT (1836–1919)
Giving Back the Flower
Shapes of a Soul
A Hundred Years Ago
The Palace-Burner
Her Blindness in Grief
We Two
The Witch in the Glass
LYDIA KAMAKAEHA [QUEEN LILI’UOKALANI] (1838–1917)
Aloha `Oe/Farewell to Thee
Ku`u Pua I Paoa-ka-lani/My Flower at Paoa-ka-lani
Sanoe/Sanoe
INA COOLBRITH (1841–1928)
The Mariposa Lily
The Sea-Shell
The Captive of the White City
Sailed
Woman
SIDNEY LANIER (1842–1881)
The Marshes of Glynn
EMMA LAZARUS (1849–1887)
Long Island Sound
The Cranes of Ibycus
The South
Echoes
City Visions
In Exile
The New Colossus
1492
Venus of the Louvre
SARAH ORNE JEWETT (1849–1909)
A Caged Bird
ALBERY ALLSON WHITMAN (1851–1901)
from The Octoroon
EDWIN MARKHAM (1852–1940)
The Man with the Hoe
Preparedness
Outwitted
JOSE´ MARTI´ (1853–1895)
from Versos sencillos/Simple Verses
ERNEST FRANCISCO FENOLLOSA (1853–1908)
The Wood Dove
Fuji at Sunrise
LOUISE IMOGEN GUINEY (1861–1920)
Tarpeia
Planting the Poplar
MARY MCNEIL FENOLLOSA (1865–1954)
Miyoko San
Yuki
OWL WOMAN [JUANA MANWELL] (1867–1957)
from Songs for Treating Sickness, Parts One and Two
SADAKICHI HARTMANN (1867–1944)
Cyanogen Seas Are Surging
from My Rubaiyat
Tanka
from Haikai
EDGAR LEE MASTERS (1868–1950)
from Spoon River Anthology
The Unknown
Elsa Wertman
Hamilton Greene
W. E. B. DU BOIS (1868–1963)
A Litany of Atlanta
My Country ’Tis of Thee
The Quadroon
WILLIAM VAUGHN MOODY (1869–1910)
The Bracelet of Grass
An Ode in Time of Hesitation
EDWIN ARLINGTON ROBINSON (1869–1935)
The House on the Hill
The Children of the Night
John Evereldown
Luke Havergal
Richard Cory
Calverly’s
Miniver Cheevy
Eros Turannos
The Mill
Mr. Flood’s Party
STEPHEN CRANE (1871–1900)
from The Black Riders and Other Lines
1 (‘‘Black riders came from the sea’’)
3 (‘‘In the desert’’)
9 (‘‘I stood upon a high place’’)
19 (‘‘A god in wrath’’)
24 (‘‘I saw a man pursuing the horizon’’)
27 (‘‘A youth in apparel that glittered’’)
46 (‘‘Many red devils ran from my heart’’)
56 (‘‘A man feared that hemight find an assassin’’)
fromWar is Kind
76 (‘‘Do not weep, maiden, for war is kind’’)
96 (‘‘A man said to the universe’’)
POSTHUMOUSLY PUBLISHED POEMS
113 (‘‘A man adrift on a slim spar’’)
JAMES WELDON JOHNSON (1871–1938)
O Black and Unknown Bards
My City
PAUL LAURENCE DUNBAR (1872–1906)
Accountability
The Mystery
A Summer’s Night
WeWear the Mask
When Malindy Sings
Dawn
Sympathy
The Poet
Douglass
The Debt
The Haunted Oak
To Alice Dunbar
Compensation
About the Editors
Index