And the landscape sped away behind

Like an ocean flying before the wind;
And the steed, like a bark fed with furnace fire
Swept on with his wild eyes full of ire,
But lo! he is nearing his heart's desire,
He is snuffing the smoke of the roaring fray,
With Sheridan only five miles away.

6.

The first that the general saw were the groups
Of stragglers, and then the retreating troops;

What was done,-what to do,-a glance told him both,
And, striking his spurs with a terrible oath,

He dashed down the line mid a storm of huzzas,

And the wave of retreat checked its course there because

The sight of the master compelled it to pause,

With foam and with dust the black charger was gray;

By the flash of his eye and the red nostrils' play
He seemed to the whole great army to say,
"I have brought you Sheridan all the way
From Winchester, down to save the day!"

7.

Hurrah! hurrah for Sheridan!

Hurrah! hurrah for horse and man!

And when their statues are placed on high,
Under the dome of the Union sky,-
The American soldier's Temple of Fame,-
Then with the glorious General's name
Be it said in letters both bold and bright:
"Here is the steed that saved the day
By carrying Sheridan into the fight,
From Winchester-twenty miles away!"

10. Emily Dickinson (1830-1886) lived a life of seclusion at Amherst, Massachusetts, where she wrote some remarkable poems which are in a class by themselves. They were not published until 1890, four years after her death. (See Bibliography, page 294, for suggested readings.)

II.

Edward Rowland Sill (1841-1887) was a native of New England. He went to California for his health, where he became professor of English literature in the University of California. He exhibited a notable talent in his poetry, which shows rich gifts of spiritual insight and power," says Professor Simonds.

THE FOOL'S PRAYER

The royal feast was done; the King

Sought some new sport to banish care,
And to his jester cried: "Sir Fool,
Kneel now, and make for us a prayer!"

The jester doffed his cap and bells,
And stood the mocking court before;
They could not see the bitter smile
Behind the painted grin he wore.

He bowed his head, and bent his knee
Upon the monarch's silken stool;
His pleading voice arose: "O Lord,
Be merciful to me, a fool!

"No pity, Lord, could change the heart
From red with wrong to white as wool:
The rod must heal the sin; but Lord,
Be merciful to me, a fool!

""Tis not by guilt the onward sweep

Of truth and right, O Lord, we stay; 'Tis by our follies that so long

We hold the earth from heaven away.

"These clumsy feet, still in the mire,
Go crushing blossoms without end;
These hard, well-meaning hands we thrust
Among the heart-strings of a friend.

"The ill-timed truth we might have kept

Who knows how sharp it pierced and stung!

12.

The word we had not sense to say—

Who knows how grandly it had rung!

"Our faults no tenderness should ask,

The chastening stripes must cleanse them all;
But for our blunders-oh, in shame
Before the eyes of heaven we fall.

"Earth bears no balsam for mistakes;

Men crown the knave, and scourge the tool
That did his will; but Thou, O Lord,
Be merciful to me, a fool."

The room was hushed; in silence rose
The King, and sought his gardens cool,
And walked apart, and murmured low,
"Be merciful to me, a fool!"

Emma Lazarus (1849-1887) was a Jewess of New York City who wrote some remarkable poems protesting against the persecution of her race in Russia. She had a message to deliver to her people, but unhappily it was given only in part, because of her untimely death. (See Bibliography, page 294, for suggested readings.)

13. Walt Whitman (1819-1892), the most unconventional of all our poets both in choice of theme and form of expression, aspired to be the poet of Democracy. He was born on Long Island, was practically self-educated, became a teacher, and later a journalist. During the Civil War he went to Washington where he served as nurse in the hospitals. His latter days were spent in Camden, New Jersey, where he was known

as

the good gray poet of Camden Town." He is sometimes called "the poet of epithets, phrases, lines." "His message was unique, his manner of giving it bizarre," yet he was a real force in literature and has had much influence. Mr. Edmund Gosse calls him a poet in solution. The following extracts show not only his eccentricities of form but his sincerity of purpose. In O Captain! My Captain! and some other poems he demonstrates that it was possible for him to follow regular form if he so willed.

MYSELF

(From The Song of Myself)

I celebrate myself, and sing myself,

And what I assume you shall assume,

For every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you. I loaf and invite my soul,

I lean and loaf at my ease observing a spear of summer grass.

My tongue, every atom of my blood, formed from this soil, this air,

Born here of parents born here from parents the same, and their parents the same,

I, now thirty-seven years old in perfect health begin,
Hoping to cease not till death.

Creeds and schools in abeyance,

Retiring back awhile sufficed at what they are, but never forgotten,

I harbor for good or bad, I permit to speak at every hazard, Nature without check with original energy.

O CAPTAIN! MY CAPTAIN !

O Captain! my Captain! our fearful trip is done,

The ship has weathered every rack, the prize we sought is

won,

The port is near, the bells I hear, the people all exulting, While follow eyes the steady keel, the vessel grim and daring;

But O heart! heart! heart!

O the bleeding drops of red,

Where on the deck my Captain lies,

Fallen cold and dead.

O Captain! my Captain! rise up and hear the bells;
Rise up for you the flag is flung-for you the bugle trills,
For you bouquets and ribboned wreaths for you the
shores acrowding,

For you they call, the swaying mass, their eager faces turning;

Here Captain! dear father!

This arm beneath your head!

It is some dream that on the deck

You've fallen cold and dead.

My Captain does not answer, his lips are pale and still,
My father does not feel my arm, he has no pulse nor will,
The ship is anchored safe and sound, its voyage closed and
done,

From fearful trip the victor ship comes in with object won;
Exult O shores, and ring O bells!

But I with mournful tread,

Walk the deck my Captain lies,
Fallen cold and dead.

TO THE MAN-OF-WAR-BIRD

Thou who hast slept all night upon the storm,
Waking renewed on thy prodigious pinions
(Burst the wild storm? above it thou ascendedst,
And rested on the sky, thy slave that cradled thee),
Now a blue point, far, far in heaven floating,
As to the light emerging here on deck I watch thee
(Myself a speck, a point on the world's floating vast).

Far, far at sea,

After the night's fierce drifts have strewn the shore with wrecks,

With re-appearing day as now so happy and serene,

The rosy and elastic dawn, the flashing sun,

The limpid spread of air cerulean,

Thou also re-appearest.

Thou born to match the gale (thou art all wings),

To cope with heaven and earth and sea and hurricane,

Thou ship of air that never furl'st thy sails,

Days, even weeks, untired and onward, through spaces, realms gyrating,