Edgar Allan Poe brought into our poetry somber sentiment and musical expression. Puritan poetry was somber, but it was almost devoid of sentiment. Poe loved sad beauty and meditated on the sad things in life. Many of his poems lament the loss of some fair one. "To Helen," "Annabel Lee" "Lenore," and "To One In Paradise" have the theme, while in "The Raven" the poet is seeking solace for the loss of Lenore. "Eulalie—A Song" rises, on the other hand to intense happiness. With Poe the sound by which his idea was expressed was as important as the thought itself. He knew how to make the sound suit the thought, as in "The Raven" and "The Bells." One who understands no English can grasp the meaning of the different sections from the mere sound, so clearly distinguishable are the clashing of the brass and the tolling of the iron bells. If we return to our definition of poetry as an expression of the heart of a man, we shall find the explanation of these peculiarities: Poe was a man of moods and possessed the ability to express these moods in appropriate sounds.
The contrast between the emotion of Poe and the calm spirit of the man who followed him is very great. In Henry Wadsworth Longfellow American poetry reached high-water mark. Lafcadio Hearn in his "Interpretations of Literature" says: "Really I believe that it is a very good test of any Englishman's ability to feel poetry, simply to ask him, 'Did you like Longfellow when you were a boy?' If he eats 'No,' then it is no use to talk to him on the subject of poetry at all, however much he might be able to tell you about quantities and metres." No American has in equal degree won the name of "household poet." If this term is correctly understood, it sums up his merits more succinctly than can any other title.
Longfellow dealt largely with men and women and the emotions common to us all. Hiawatha conquering the deer and bison, and hunting in despair for food where only snow and ice abound; Evangeline faithful to her father and her lover, and relieving suffering in the rude hospitals of a new world; John Alden fighting the battle between love and duty; Robert of Sicily learning the lesson of humility; Sir Federigo offering his last possession to the woman he loved; Paul Revere serving his country in time of need; the monk proving that only a sense of duty done can bring happiness: all these and more express the emotions which we know are true in our own lives. In his longer narrative poems he makes the legends of Puritan life real to us; he takes English folk-lore and makes us see Othere talking to Arthur, and the Viking stealing his bride. His short poems are even better known than his longer narratives. In them he expressed his gentle, sincere love of the young, the suffering, and the sorrowful. In the Sonnets he showed; that deep appreciation of European literature which made noteworthy his teaching at Harvard and his translations.
He believed that he was assigned a definite task in the world which he described as follows in his last poem:
"As comes the smile to the lips,
The foam to the surge;
So come to the Poet his songs,
All hitherward blown
From the misty realm, that belongs
To the vast unknown.
His, and not his, are the lays
He sings; and their fame
Is his, and not his; and the praise
And the pride of a name.
For voices pursue him by day
And haunt him by night,
And he listens and needs must obey,
When the Angel says: 'Write!'
John Greenleaf Whittier seems to suffer by coming in such close proximity to Longfellow. Genuine he was, but his spirit was less buoyant than Longfellow's and he touches our hearts less. Most of his early poems were devoted to a current political issue. They aimed to win converts to the cause of anti-slavery. Such poems always suffer in time in comparison with the song of a man who sings because "the heart is so full that a drop overfills it." Whittier's later poems belong more to this class and some of them speak to-day to our emotions as well as to our intellects. "The Hero" moves us with a desire to serve mankind, and the stirring tone of "Barbara Frietchie" arouses our patriotism by its picture of the same type of bravery. In similar vein is "Barclay of Ury," which must have touched deeply the heart of the Quaker poet. "The Pipes of Lucknow" is dramatic in its intense grasp of a climactic hour and loses none of its force in the expression. We can actually hear the skirl of the bagpipes. Whittier knew the artiste of the world and talked to us about Raphael and Burns with clear-sighted, affectionate interest. His poems show varied characteristics; the love of the sterner aspects of nature, modified by the appreciation of the humble flower; the conscience of the Puritan, tinged with sympathy for the sorrowful; the steadfastness of the Quaker, stirred by the fire of the patriot.
The poetry of Ralph Waldo Emerson is marked by serious contemplation rather than by warmth of emotional expression. In Longfellow the appeal is constantly to a heart which is not disassociated from a brain; in Emerson the appeal is often to the intellect alone. We recognize the force of the lesson in "The Titmouse," even if it leaves us less devoted citizens than does "The Hero" and less capable women than does "Evangeline." He reaches his highest excellence when he makes us feel as well as understand a lesson, as in "The Concord Hymn" and "Forbearance." If we could all write on the tablets of our hearts that single stanza, forbearance would be a real factor in life. And it is to this poet whom we call unemotional that we owe this inspiring quatrain:
"So nigh is grandeur to our dust,
So near is God to man,
When duty whispers low, Thou must,
The youth replies, I can!"
James Russell Lowell was animated by a well-defined purpose which he described in the following lines:
"It may be glorious to write
Thoughts that make glad the two or three
High souls like those far stars that come in sight
Once in a century.
But better far it is to speak
One simple word which, now and then
Shall waken their free nature in the weak
And friendless sons of men.
To write some earnest verse or line
Which, seeking not the praise of art,
Shall make a clearer faith and manhood shine
In the untutored heart."