Library of the best American literature / Containing the lives of our authors in story form, their portraits, their homes, and their personal traits, how they worked and what they wrote; choice selections from eminent writers, embracing great American poets and novelists, foremost women in American letters, distinguished critics and essayists, our national humorists, noted journalists and magazine contributors, popular writers for young people, great orators and public lecturers

by Unknown

Strong, calm, and solemn as thy mountains be!

Poets have sung thy ever-living power,

Thy wintry day, and summer sunset hour;

Have told how rich thou art, how broad, how deep,

What commerce thine, how many myriads reap

The harvest of thy waters. They have sung

Thy moony nights, when every shadow flung

From cliff or pine is peopled with dim ghosts

Of settlers, old-world fairies, or the hosts

Of savage warriors that once plowed thy waves—