PAGE
Preface[xvii]
Emily Dickinson (1830–1886)
Chartless[4]
Indian Summer[4]
Suspense[5]
The Railway Train[6]
A Cemetery[6]
Beclouded[7]
Thomas Bailey Aldrich (1836–1907)
Memory[8]
“Enamored Architect of Airy Rhyme”[9]
Two Quatrains:
    Maple Leaves[9]
    Pessimist and Optimist[10]
John Hay (1838–1905)
Jim Bludso[11]
Banty Tim[13]
Bret Harte (1839–1902)
“Jim”[16]
Plain Language from Truthful James[19]
Joaquin Miller (1841–1913)
By the Pacific Ocean[23]
Crossing the Plains[24]
From “Byron”[25]
Edward Rowland Sill (1841–1887)
Solitude[26]
Dare You?[26]
Sidney Lanier (1842–1881)
Song of the Chattahoochee[29]
Night and Day[31]
From “The Marshes of Glynn”[32]
Charles Edward Carryl (1842–1920)
The Plaint of the Camel[34]
Robinson Crusoe’s Story[35]
James Whitcomb Riley (1849–1916)
“When the Frost is on the Punkin”[39]
A Parting Guest[41]
Eugene Field (1850–1895)
Our Two Opinions[43]
Little Boy Blue[44]
Seein’ Things[45]
Edwin Markham (1852– )
Outwitted[48]
The Man with the Hoe[49]
Preparedness[51]
Lincoln, The Man of the People[51]
C. E. S. Wood (1852– )
Sunrise[53]
The Desert[54]
Irwin Russell (1853–1879)
Blessing the Dance[56]
De Fust Banjo[58]
Edith M. Thomas (1854– )
“Frost To-Night”[61]
George Edward Woodberry (1855– )
Immortal Love[62]
A Song of Sunrise[63]
H. C. Bunner (1855–1896)
Shake, Mulleary and Go-ethe[64]
Behold the Deeds[66]
A Pitcher of Mignonette[68]
Lizette Woodworth Reese (1856– )
Tears[69]
The Dust[70]
Spicewood[70]
Horace Traubel (1858–1919)
How Are You, Dear World, This Morning?[72]
O My Dead Comrade[74]
Frank Dempster Sherman (1860–1917)
At Midnight[76]
Bacchus[76]
Two Quatrains:
    Ivy[77]
    Dawn[78]
Charlotte P. S. Gilman (1860– )
A Conservative[78]
Louise Imogen Guiney (1861–1920)
The Wild Ride[80]
Bliss Carman (1861– )
A Vagabond Song[83]
The Gravedigger[83]
Hem and Haw[86]
Daisies[87]
Richard Burton (1861– )
Black Sheep[88]
Oliver Herford (1863– )
Earth[89]
The Elf and the Dormouse[90]
Richard Hovey (1864–1900)
At the Crossroads[92]
Unmanifest Destiny[94]
Love in the Winds[95]
A Stein Song[95]
Madison Cawein (1865–1914)
Snow[98]
The Man Hunt[98]
Penury[100]
Deserted[100]
Bert Leston Taylor (1866–1921)
Canopus[101]
William Vaughn Moody (1869–1910)
From “Jetsam”[103]
Pandora’s Song[104]
On a Soldier Fallen in the Philippines[105]
George Sterling (1869– )
The Black Vulture[107]
The Master Mariner[108]
Edwin Arlington Robinson (1869– )
Miniver Cheevy[111]
The Gift of God[112]
The Master[114]
An Old Story[117]
Richard Cory[117]
Vain Gratuities[118]
The Dark Hills[119]
Edgar Lee Masters (1869– )
Petit, The Poet[121]
Lucinda Matlock[122]
Anne Rutledge[123]
Silence[123]
Stephen Crane (1871–1900)
I Saw a Man[127]
The Wayfarer[128]
Hymn[128]
The Blades of Grass[129]
Edwin Ford Piper (1871– )
Bindlestiff[130]
Sweetgrass Range[132]
T. A. Daly (1871– )
The Song of the Thrush[134]
Mia Carlotta[135]
Between Two Loves[136]
Paul Laurence Dunbar (1872–1906)
The Turning of the Babies in the Bed[138]
A Coquette Conquered[140]
Discovered[141]
Guy Wetmore Carryl (1873–1904)
How Jack Found that Beans May Go Back on a Chap[143]
The Sycophantic Fox and the Gullible Raven[145]
How a Cat Was Annoyed and a Poet Was Booted[147]
H. H. Knibbs (1874– )
The Valley That God Forgot[151]
Roll a Rock Down[153]
The Trail-Makers[155]
Anna Hempstead Branch
The Monk in the Kitchen[158]
While Loveliness Goes By[162]
Amy Lowell (1874– )
Solitaire[165]
Meeting-House Hill[165]
A Lady[166]
Free Fantasia on Japanese Themes[167]
Madonna of the Evening Flowers[169]
Wind and Silver[170]
Ridgely Torrence (1875– )
The Bird and the Tree[171]
The Son[173]
Robert Frost (1875– )
Mending Wall[177]
The Tuft of Flowers[178]
The Death of the Hired Man[181]
Good-Bye and Keep Cold[187]
The Runaway[188]
Birches[189]
Fragmentary Blue[191]
The Onset[192]
William Ellery Leonard (1876– )
The Image of Delight[193]
To the Victor[194]
Sarah N. Cleghorn (1876– )
The Survival of the Fittest[195]
The Incentive[195]
Carl Sandburg (1878– )
Cool Tombs[198]
Fog[199]
From “Smoke and Steel”[199]
Blue Island Intersection[202]
Clean Curtains[203]
A. E. F.[204]
Nocturne in a Deserted Brickyard[205]
Grass[205]
Adelaide Crapsey (1878–1914)
Three Cinquains:
    November Night[206]
    Triad[207]
    The Warning[207]
On Seeing Weather-Beaten Trees[207]
Grace Hazard Conkling (1878– )
The Whole Duty of Berkshire Brooks[208]
Frost on a Window[208]
Amelia Josephine Burr (1878– )
Battle-Song of Failure[209]
Don Marquis (1878– )
Unrest[211]
John Erskine (1879– )
Dedication[213]
James Branch Cabell (1879– )
Sea-Scapes[214]
One End of Love[215]
Vachel Lindsay (1879– )
The Eagle That Is Forgotten[219]
The Congo[221]
To a Golden Haired Girl in a Louisiana Town[229]
The Traveller[229]
A Negro Sermon:—Simon Legree[230]
Abraham Lincoln Walks at Midnight[232]
Edwin Meade Robinson (1879– )
How He Turned Out[234]
“Halcyon Days”[236]
Franklin P. Adams (1881– )
War and Peace[238]
The Rich Man[238]
Those Two Boys[239]
John G. Neihardt (1881– )
When I Am Dead[241]
Cry of the People[241]
Let Me Live Out My Years[242]
Witter Bynner (1881– )
Grass-Tops[244]
Voices[244]
A Farmer Remembers Lincoln[245]
Train-Mates[246]
James Oppenheim (1882– )
The Runner in the Skies[250]
The Slave[250]
Tasting the Earth[251]
The Lincoln Child[252]
Night Note[257]
Alice Corbin
Echoes of Childhood[258]
Lola Ridge
Passages from “The Ghetto”[262]
New Orleans[265]
Wind in the Alleys[265]
Wallace Stevens
Peter Quince at the Clavier[266]
Alfred Kreymborg (1883– )
Old Manuscript[270]
Dawns[271]
Her Eyes[272]
Improvisation[272]
Arthur Davison Ficke (1883– )
Portrait of an Old Woman[274]
The Three Sisters[275]
Sonnet[275]
Badger Clark (1883– )
The Glory Trail[276]
The Coyote[279]
Marguerite Wilkinson (1883– )
Before Dawn in the Woods[280]
Harry Kemp (1883– )
Street Lamps[282]
A Phantasy of Heaven[282]
Max Eastman (1883– )
Coming to Port[284]
Hours[285]
At the Aquarium[285]
Arturo Giovannitti (1884– )
From “The Walker”[287]
Eunice Tietjens (1884– )
The Most-Sacred Mountain[290]
The Drug Clerk[291]
Sara Teasdale (1884– )
Night Song at Amalfi[294]
Spring Night[295]
I Shall Not Care[296]
The Long Hill[296]
Water Lilies[297]
Tired[298]
Gladys Cromwell (1885–1919)
The Crowning Gift[299]
The Mould[300]
Ezra Pound (1885– )
A Girl[302]
A Virginal[303]
Ballad for Gloom[303]
Δωρια[305]
In a Station of the Metro[305]
Louis Untermeyer (1885– )
Summons[307]
Caliban in the Coal Mines[309]
Swimmers[309]
Hands[312]
A Side Street[312]
Jean Starr Untermeyer (1886– )
High Tide[315]
Autumn[316]
Sinfonia Domestica[317]
Lake Song[318]
John Gould Fletcher (1886– )
The Swan[320]
London Nightfall[321]
Dawn[322]
Lincoln[323]
The Skaters[327]
“H. D.” (1886– )
Oread[328]
Pear Tree[329]
Heat[329]
Lethe[330]
William Rose Benét (1886– )
Merchants from Cathay[331]
Night[335]
How to Catch Unicorns[336]
John Hall Wheelock (1886– )
Sunday Evening in the Common[338]
Beauty[339]
Love and Liberation[339]
Nirvana[340]
Joyce Kilmer (1886–1918)
Trees[341]
Martin[342]
Shaemas O Sheel (1886– )
They Went Forth to Battle, But They Always Fell[344]
Roy Helton (1886– )
In Passing[346]
David Morton (1886– )
Symbols[347]
Old Ships[347]
Orrick Johns (1887– )
The Interpreter[348]
Little Things[349]
Margaret Widdemer
Factories[350]
The Two Dyings[351]
The Modern Woman to Her Lover[352]
Alan Seeger (1888–1916)
“I Have a Rendezvous with Death”[353]
Willard Wattles (1888– )
The Builder[355]
Creeds[356]
T. S. Eliot (1888– )
Morning at the Window[357]
From “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock”[357]
Prelude[358]
Conrad Aiken (1889– )
Chance Meetings[360]
The Fulfilled Dream[360]
Miracles[363]
Morning Song from “Senlin”[364]
Christopher Morley (1890– )
Quickening[367]
Leslie Nelson Jennings (1891– )
Frustrate[368]
Maxwell Bodenheim (1892– )
Poet to His Love[369]
Old Age[370]
Death[370]
Edwin Curran (1892– )
Autumn[372]
The Painted Hills of Arizona[372]
Edna St. Vincent Millay (1892– )
God’s World[374]
Renascence[375]
Pity Me Not[382]
I Shall Go Back[382]
The Pear Tree[383]
Wild Swans[383]
Mary Carolyn Davies
The Day Before April[384]
The Apple Tree Said[385]
Winifred Welles (1893– )
From a Chinese Vase[386]
Humiliation[386]
Love Song from New England[387]
Herbert S. Gorman (1893– )
The Fanatic[388]
Babette Deutsch (1895– )
The Death of a Child[389]
In a Museum[390]
Alter Brody (1895– )
A City Park[391]
Searchlights[391]
Ghetto Twilight[392]
Stephen Vincent Benét (1898– )
Portrait of a Boy[393]
Hilda Conkling (1910– )
Water[395]
Hay-Cock[396]
The Old Bridge[396]
I Keep Wondering[397]
A Selected Bibliography[399]
Index of Authors and Poems[401]

PREFACE
The Civil War—and After

The end of the Civil War marked the end of a literary epoch. The New England group, containing (if Poe could be added) all the great names of the ante-bellum period, began to disintegrate. The poets had outsung themselves; it was a time of surrender and swansongs. Unable to respond to the new forces of political nationalism and industrial reconstruction, the Brahmins (that famous group of intellectuals who dominated literary America) withdrew into their libraries. Poets like Longfellow, Bryant, Taylor, turned their eyes away from the native scene, rhapsodized endlessly about Europe, echoed the “parlor poetry” of England, or left creative writing altogether and occupied themselves with translations. “They had been borne into an era in which they had no part,” writes Fred Lewis Pattee (A History of American Literature Since 1870), “and they contented themselves with reëchoings of the old music.” ... Within a single period of six years, from 1867 to 1872, there appeared Longfellow’s Divina Commedia, C. E. Norton’s Vita Nuova, T. W. Parson’s Inferno, William Cullen Bryant’s Iliad and Odyssey, and Bayard Taylor’s Faust.

Suddenly the break came. America developed a national consciousness; the West discovered itself, and the East discovered the West. Grudgingly at first, the aristocratic leaders made way for a new expression; crude, jangling, vigorously democratic. The old order was changing with a vengeance. All the preceding writers—poets like Emerson, Thoreau, Lowell, Longfellow, Holmes—were not only products of the New England colleges, but typically “Boston gentlemen of the early Renaissance.” To them the new men must have seemed like a regiment recruited from the ranks of vulgarity. Walt Whitman, Mark Twain, Bret Harte, John Hay, Joaquin Miller, Joel Chandler Harris, James Whitcomb Riley—these were men who had graduated from the farm, the frontier, the mine, the pilot-house, the printer’s shop! For a while, the movement seemed of little consequence; the impact of Whitman and the Westerners was averted. The poets of the transition, with a deliberate art, ignored the surge of a spontaneous national expression. They were even successful in holding it back. But it was gathering force.

THE “POST-MORTEM” PERIOD

The nineteenth century, up to its last quarter, had been a period of new vistas and revolts: a period of protest and iconoclasm—the era of Shelley and Byron, the prophets of “liberty, equality and fraternity.” It left no immediate heirs. In England, its successors by default were the lesser Victorians.[[1]] In America, the intensity and power of men like Emerson and Whittier gave way to the pale romanticism and polite banter of the transition, or, what might even more fittingly be called the “post-mortem” poets. For these interim lyrists were frankly the singers of reaction, reminiscently digging among the bones of a long-dead past. They burrowed and borrowed, half archaeologists, half artisans; impelled not so much by the need of creating poetry as the desire to write it.

From 1866 to 1880 the United States was in a chaotic and frankly materialistic condition; it was full of political scandals, panics, frauds, malfeasance in high places. The moral fiber was flabby; the country was apathetic, corrupt and contented. As in all such periods of national unconcern, the artists turned from life altogether, preoccupying themselves with the by-products of art: with method and technique, with elaborate and artificial conceits, with facile ideas rather than fundamental ideals. Bayard Taylor, Thomas Buchanan Read, Richard Henry Stoddard, Paul Hamilton Hayne, Thomas Bailey Aldrich-all of these authors, in an effort to escape a reality they could not express and did not even wish to understand, fled to a more congenial realm of fantasy. They took the easiest routes to a prim and academic Arcadia, to a cloying and devitalized Orient or a mildly sensuous and treacle-dripping Greece. In short, they followed wherever Keats, Shelley (in his lesser lyrics) and Tennyson seemed to lead them. However, not being explorers themselves, they ventured no further than their predecessors, but remained politely in the rear; repeating dulcetly what they had learned from their greater guides—pronouncing it with little variety but with a vast and sentimental unction. In their desperate preöccupation with lures and legends overseas, they were not, except for the accident of birth, American at all; all of them owed much more to old England than to New England.

WALT WHITMAN

Whitman, who was to influence future generations so profoundly in Europe as well as in America, had already appeared. The third edition of that stupendous volume, Leaves of Grass, had been printed in 1860. Almost immediately after, the publisher failed and the book passed out of public notice. But private scrutiny was keen. In 1865 a petty official discovered that Whitman was the author of the “notorious” Leaves of Grass and, in spite of his great sacrifices in nursing hundreds of wounded soldiers, in spite of his many past services and his present poverty, the offending poet was dismissed from his small clerkship in the Department of the Interior at Washington, D. C. Other reverses followed rapidly. But Whitman, broken in health and cheated by his exploiters, lived to see not only a seventh edition of his great work published in 1881, but a complete collection printed in his seventy-third year (1892) in which the twelve poems of the experimental first edition had grown to nearly four hundred.

The influence of Whitman can scarcely be overestimated. It has touched every shore of letters, quickened every current of art. And yet, as late as 1900, Barrett Wendell in his Literary History of America could speak of Whitman’s “eccentric insolence of phrase and temper” and, perturbed by the poet’s increasing vogue across the Atlantic (Whitman had been hailed by men as eminent as Swinburne, Symonds, Rossetti), he is led to write such a preposterous sentence as “In temperament and style he was an exotic member of that sterile brotherhood which eagerly greeted him abroad.”