The Little Book of Modern Verse: A Selection from the Work of Contemporaneous American PoetsJessie Belle Rittenhouse |
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Common terms and phrases
Agathocles Anna Hempstead Branch Babylon beauty beneath bird Bliss Carman bloom blow blue breast breath Charles G. D. Roberts Clinton Scollard cold dark dawn dead dear death dream hath possessed dust earth eyes face fair fields to Anne flame flowers forever forget God's gold golden Good-bye Grandmither gray green hand hear heart heaven hills kiss knew lady leaves leetla light lips living Lizette Woodworth Reese look Lord lovers Madison Cawein Miniver moon mortal never night NIGHTINGALE UNHEARD Poems POET'S TOWN rain Richard Hovey Richard Le Gallienne ride rose Sara Teasdale scum sheepfol shine silence singing smile song soul spring star strong sweet tears of Harlequin thee thine things Thou art to-day tree Trumbull Stickney unto URIEL voice weep wild William Vaughn Moody wind wings wonder
Popular passages
Page 193 - There is something in the autumn that is native to my blood — Touch of manner, hint of mood; And my heart is like a rhyme, With the yellow and the purple and the crimson keeping time. The scarlet of the maples can shake me like a cry Of bugles going by.
Page 113 - The lost, that in armies wept over your funeral pall? They call on the names of a hundred high-valiant ones, A hundred white eagles have risen the sons of your sons, The zeal in their wings is a zeal that your dreaming began The valor that wore out your soul in the service of man.
Page 183 - He dreamed of Thebes and Camelot, And Priam's neighbors. Miniver mourned the ripe renown That made so many a name so fragrant; He mourned Romance, now on the town, And Art, a vagrant. Miniver loved the Medici, Albeit he had never seen one; He would have sinned incessantly Could he have been one.
Page 137 - When the Norn Mother saw the Whirlwind Hour Greatening and darkening as it hurried on, She left the Heaven of Heroes and came down To make a man to meet the mortal need. She took the tried clay of the common road — Clay warm yet with the genial heat of earth, Dashed through it all a strain of prophecy, Tempered the heap with thrill of human tears, Then mixed a laughter with the serious stuff.
Page 139 - He held his place — Held the long purpose like a growing tree — Held on through blame and faltered not at praise. And when he fell in whirlwind, he went down As when a kingly cedar green with boughs Goes down with a great shout upon the hills, And leaves a lonesome place against the sky.
Page 140 - Nor could it ever have been old. For he, to whom we had applied Our shopman's test of age and worth, Was elemental when he died, As he was ancient at his birth: The saddest among kings of earth, Bowed with a galling crown, this man Met rancor with a cryptic mirth, Laconic— and Olympian.
Page 118 - How will you ever straighten up this shape; Touch it again with immortality; Give back the upward looking and the light; Rebuild in it the music and the dream; Make right the immemorial infamies, Perfidious wrongs, immedicable woes?
Page 138 - Up from log cabin to the Capitol, One fire was on his spirit, one resolve — To send the keen ax to the root of wrong...
Page 122 - WHO drives the horses of the sun Shall lord it but a day; Better the lowly deed were done, And kept the humble way. The rust will find the sword of fame, The dust will hide the crown; Ay, none shall nail so high his name Time will not tear it down. The happiest heart that ever beat Was in some quiet breast That found the common daylight sweet, And left to Heaven the rest.
Page 89 - All I could see from where I stood Was three long mountains and a wood; I turned and looked another way, And saw three islands in a bay. So with my eyes I traced the line Of the horizon, thin and fine, Straight around till I was come Back to where I'd started from; And all I saw from where I stood Was three long mountains and a wood.