1. Three of the stanzas definitely locate the goldenrod. Read the lines that tell where it grows.
2. Which stanza makes the most vivid picture for you? What descriptive words in the stanza help make this picture?
3. Read the second stanza aloud, and tell in your own words what you think each line means.
4. Find synonyms (words of similar meaning) for the following: sumptuous, unfettered, disheveled, lustrous. Substitute your synonym for each of these words and read the line aloud.
5. Make a pencil sketch of a goldenrod as you recall it. Color your sketch with crayon.
6. The goldenrod is sometimes called our national flower. Why do you think it is so called? What is your state flower?
(Used by permission of Dodd, Mead and Company, Publishers.)
On the west side of the Hudson River there is a cliff,
or crag of rock, all carved into queer shapes. It
stretches along the riverside for twenty or thirty miles,
as far as Tarrytown, or further, to the broad part where the
stream looks like a sea. The cliff rises up, as a rule very 5
boldly, to the height of several hundred feet. The top of
it (the Jersey shore) appears regular. It is like a well-laid
wall along the river, with trees and one or two white wooden
houses, instead of broken glass, at the top. This wall appearance
made the settlers call the crag the "Palisades." 10
Where the Palisades are the grandest is just as high up as
Yonkers. Hereabouts they are very stately, for they are
all marshaled along a river a mile or more broad, which
runs in a straight line past them, with a great tide. If you
take a boat and row across to the Palisades their beauty 15
makes you shiver. In the afternoon, when you are underneath
them, the sun is shut away from you; and there you
are, in the chill and the gloom, with the great cliff towering
up and the pinnacles and tall trees catching the sunlight
at the top. Then it is very still there. You will see no 20
one along that shore. A great eagle will go sailing out, or
a hawk will drop and splash after a fish, but you will see
no other living thing, except at the landing. There are
schooners in the river, of course, but they keep to the New
York shore to avoid being becalmed.
You can lie there in your boat, in the slack water near
the crag foot, and hear nothing but the wind, the suck of
the water, or the tinkle of a scrap of stone falling from the
cliff face. It is like being in the wilds, in one of the desolate
places, to lie there in a boat watching the eagles. 5
—A Tarpaulin Muster.
1. Put yourself in the author's place and try to visualize this scene as he viewed it. Tell what you see. From what position are you looking?
1. What keeps the poetry of earth alive in the heat of summer? In the cold of winter? What does Keats mean by his first line?
Bryant saw a solitary waterfowl winging its way high up in the air in the twilight of evening. The sight sets him thinking of the inborn sense of the bird. Where was it going? How did it know it was on the right way? Who gave it the power to direct its flight? Then he imagines that the bird is bound for its nesting place among its fellows. And he finally gets for himself—and for us all—a fine lesson from the flight of the waterfowl. Try to follow the poet's thinking, step by step, as you read the poem.
1. What time of day is it when Bryant observes the bird? Is it clear or cloudy weather? Prove both answers.
2. In the third stanza, how many places does he mention as the possible ends of the bird's flight? Name each.
3. Has the waterfowl traveled far? Read the line that answers this.
4. Explain line 5, page 190; the third stanza on page 191.
5. What lesson does Bryant get from the bird? Memorize the last stanza.
6. William Cullen Bryant (1794-1878) was born at Cummington, Massachusetts, where his father practiced medicine. He attended the district school and later studied law, but gave up his practice for journalism. He was very successful and was for many years editor of The New York Evening Post. This poem was written when he was unsettled and discouraged about his law practice.
Those who have spent their lives on the ocean say that we dwellers on land know nothing of life under the open sky. The following extract is a bit of night scenery aboard ship in the days of wooden vessels with canvas wings.
One night while we were in the tropics, I went out to
the end of the flying jib boom upon some duty; and
having finished it, turned around and lay on the boom for
a long time, admiring the beauty of the sight below me.
Being so far out from the deck I could look at the ship 5
as at a separate vessel; and there rose up from the water,
supported only by the small black hull, a pyramid of canvas
spreading far out beyond the hull and towering up almost,
as it seemed in the indistinct night, into the clouds. The
sea was as still as an inland lake; the light trade wind was 10
gently and steadily breathing from astern; the dark-blue
sky was studded with the tropical stars; there was no
sound but the rippling of the water under the stem; and
the sails were spread out wide and high—the two lower
studding sails stretching out on either side far beyond the 15
deck; the topmost studding sails like wings to the topsails;
the topgallant studding sails spreading fearlessly out above
them; still higher the two royal studding sails, looking
like two kites flying from the same string; and highest
of all the little skysail, the apex of the pyramid, seeming 20
actually to touch the stars and to be out of reach of human
hand. So quiet, too, was the sea, and so steady the breeze,
that if these sails had been sculptured in marble they could
not have been more motionless—not a ripple on the
surface of the canvas, not even a quivering of the extreme
edges of the sail, so perfectly were they distended by the
breeze. I was so lost in the sight that I forgot the presence
of the man who came out with me, until he said (for he 5
too, rough old man-of-war's man that he was, had been
gazing at the show) half to himself, still looking at the
marble sails: "How quietly they do their work!"
—Two Years Before the Mast.
1. This is a painting in words. From what position did Mr. Dana view the scene? What impressed him most?
1. What was the author doing? How did the ride affect her? What does she mean in line 5? In line 12? If you have ever coasted or had a swift sleigh ride tell the thrills you experienced.
The following selection is an artistic description of a winter storm. Read it carefully to get the successive pictures that are presented. Try to determine, as you read, when the snow fell, whether the scenes are in the country or in town; if the author was an actual observer of the storm or if he wrote the poem out of imagination.
1. The first stanza describes the effect of the storm on people. Who are some of those inconvenienced?
2. In the remainder of the poem, the storm is thought of as an architect. What words describe him and his work? Why is he "myriad-handed?" Explain windward; mauger; "Parian wreaths." Why is the storm said to use the last mockingly? What other fanciful or mischievous things does the storm do?
3. Express in your own words the idea in lines 3-8, page 195. Compare the work of human builders with the work of the storm.
4. Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882) was an American essayist, poet, and philosopher. He lived at Concord, Massachusetts.
—Snow-Bound.
1. Outline, stanza by stanza, the story told. Who tells it? Where is the scene laid? How many days and nights are covered?
2. Compare this with the previous poem for clearness, pleasant sound, pictures shown, new ideas. Which do you like better? The last line of "The Snowstorm" interprets lines 14-25, page 197. How?
3. John Greenleaf Whittier (1807-1892) was born at Haverhill, Massachusetts. Snow-bound, from which this extract is taken, gives a good description of his home and family. A great deal of his writing was done while editor of various magazines and newspapers. He was for a long time connected with the Atlantic Monthly. Many of his poems describe country life in New England; others retell old stories of pioneer days. He died at Amesbury, Massachusetts.
It was a charming evening, mild and bright. The four
grays skimmed along, as if they liked it quite as well
as Tom did; the bugle was in as high spirits as the grays;
the coachman chimed in sometimes with his voice; the
wheels hummed cheerfully in unison; the brass work on 5
the harness was an orchestra of little bells; and thus as they
went clinking, jingling, rattling smoothly on, the whole
concern, from the buckles of the leaders' coupling reins to
the handle of the boot, was one great instrument of music.
Yo-ho! Past hedges, gates, and trees; past cottages, and
barns, and people going home from work. Yo-ho! Past
donkey chaises drawn aside into the ditch, and empty
carts with rampant horses whipped up at a bound upon the
little watercourse and held by struggling carters close to5
the five-barred gate until the coach had passed the narrow
turning in the road. Yo-ho! By churches dropped down
by themselves in quiet nooks, with rustic burial grounds
about them, where the graves are green and daisies sleep—for
it is evening—on the bosoms of the dead. 10
Yo-ho! Past streams in which the cattle cool their feet,
and where the rushes grow; past paddock fences, farms,
and rickyards; past last year's stacks, cut slice by slice
away, and showing in the waning light like ruined gables,
old and brown. Yo-ho! Down the pebbly dip, and through 15
the merry water splash, and up at a canter to the level
road again. Yo-ho! Yo-ho!
Yo-ho! Among the gathering shades, making of no
account the reflection of the trees, but scampering on
through light and darkness, all the same, as if the light of 20
London fifty miles away were quite enough to travel by,
and some to spare. Now, with a clattering of hoofs and
striking out of fiery sparks, across the old stone bridge,
and down again into the shadowy road, and through the
open gate, and far away, into the world. Yo-ho! 25
See the bright moon! High up before we know it,
making the earth reflect the objects on its breast like water—hedges,
trees, low cottages, church steeples, blighted stumps,
and flourishing young slips, have all grown vain upon a
sudden, and mean to contemplate their own fair images till 30
morning. The poplars yonder rustle, that their quivering
leaves may see themselves upon the ground. Not so the
oak; trembling does not become him; and he watches
himself in his stout old burly steadfastness without the
motion of a twig.
The moss-grown gate, ill-poised upon its creaking hinges,
crippled and decayed, swings to and fro before its glass 5
like some fantastic dowager: while our own ghostly likeness
travels on, through ditch and brake, upon the plowed land
and the smooth, along the steep hillside and steeper wall,
as if it were a phantom hunter.
Yo-ho! Why, now we travel like the moon herself. 10
Hiding this minute in a grove of trees; next minute in a
patch of vapor; emerging now upon our broad, clear course;
withdrawing now, but always dashing on, our journey is a
counterpart of hers. Yo-ho! A match against the moon.
The beauty of the night is hardly felt when day comes 15
leaping up. Two stages, and the country roads are almost
changed to a continuous street. Yo-ho! Past market
gardens, rows of houses, villas, crescents, terraces, and
squares, and in among the rattling pavements. Yo-ho!
Down countless turnings, and through countless mazy 20
ways, until an old innyard is gained, and Tom Pinch, getting
down quite stunned and giddy, is in London.
"Five minutes before the time, too!" said the driver, as
he received his fee from Tom.
—Martin Chuzzlewit.
1. Tom Pinch traveled by the fast night coach to London, in the days before railroads. Tell what he saw, and make sketches.
2. Explain: grays, boot, yo-ho, chaises, paddock, dowager, rickyards, brake, crescents.
3. Charles Dickens (1812-1870), an English novelist, is famous for his humor and for the marvelous characters he has created. Many of his books attack or laugh at abuses and prejudices of his time.
The poet watches the butterfly and speaks to it, guessing in a fanciful way at its origin, commenting on its way of life, and thinking of the symbolic meaning that people in all ages have associated with it.
1. What color was the butterfly that the poet watched? What does he imagine it to be in the second stanza? In the third? What does he say about its habits in the fourth stanza? In the fifth?
2. What are the four stages in the life of a butterfly? The Greeks represented Psyche, the soul, with butterfly wings. Why? Express the meaning of the last stanza in your own words.
3. Use these words in sentences of your own: cipher, fostering, imbues, blazonry, satiety, orgy, sprite, arrest, symbol.
4. Thomas Wentworth Higginson (1823-1911) was an American writer of essays and biography.
The following sketch vividly describes an English traveler's impression of the desert country that lies between Jerusalem and Cairo. Mr. Kinglake had only an interpreter, two Arabian attendants and two camels in his little caravan.
Eothen, the title of the volume from which this selection is extracted, is a Greek word meaning "From the East."
Once during this passage my Arabs lost their way
among the hills of loose sand that surrounded us,
but after a while we were lucky enough to recover our right
line of march. The same day we fell in with a sheik, the
head of a family that actually dwells at no great distance5
from this part of the desert during nine months of the year.
The man carried a matchlock, and of this he was inordinately
proud, on account of the supposed novelty and ingenuity
of the contrivance. We stopped, and sat down and
rested awhile, for the sake of a little talk. 10
There was much that I should have liked to ask this man,
but he could not understand Dthemetri's language, and
the process of getting at his knowledge by double interpretation
through my Arabs was tedious. I discovered,
however (and my Arabs knew of that fact), that this man 15
and his family lived habitually for nine months of the year
without touching or seeing either bread or water. The
stunted shrub growing at intervals through the sand in
this part of the desert enables the camel mares to yield a
little milk, and this furnishes the sole food and drink of 20
their owner and his people. During the other three months
(the hottest, I suppose) even this resource fails, and then
the sheik and his people are forced to pass into another
district. You would ask me why the man should not
remain always in that district which supplies him with
water during three months of the year, but I don't know 5
enough of Arab politics to answer the question.
The sheik was not a good specimen of the effect produced
by his way of living. He was very small, very spare, and
sadly shriveled—a poor overroasted snipe—a mere
cinder of a man. I made him sit down by my side, and 10
gave him a piece of bread and a cup of water from out of
my goatskins. This was not a very tempting drink to
look at, for it had become turbid and was deeply reddened
by some coloring matter contained in the skins; but it
kept its sweetness and tasted like a strong decoction of 15
Russia leather. The sheik sipped this drop by drop with
ineffable relish, and rolled his eyes solemnly round after
every draft as though the drink were the drink of the
Prophet and had come from the seventh heaven.
An inquiry about distances led to the discovery that this20
sheik had never heard of the division of time into hours.
About this part of my journey I saw the likeness of a
fresh-water lake. I saw, as it seemed, a broad sheet of
calm water stretching far and fair towards the south—stretching
deep into winding creeks and hemmed in by 25
jutting promontories, and shelving smooth off toward the
shallow side. On its bosom the reflected fire of the sun lay
playing and seeming to float as though upon deep, still
waters.
Though I knew of the cheat, it was not till the spongy 30
foot of my camel had almost trodden in the seeming lake
that I could undeceive my eyes, for the shore line was quite
true and natural. I soon saw the cause of the phantasm.
A sheet of water, heavily impregnated with salts, had
gathered together in a vast hollow between the sand hills,
and when dried up by evaporation had left a white saline
deposit; this exactly marked the space which the waters 5
had covered, and so traced out a good shore line. The
minute crystals of the salt, by their way of sparkling in
the sun, were made to seem like the dazzled face of a lake
that is calm and smooth.
The pace of the camel is irksome, and makes your 10
shoulders and loins ache from the peculiar way in which
you are obliged to suit yourself to the movements of the
beast; but one soon, of course, becomes inured to the work,
and after my first two days, this way of traveling became so
familiar to me that (poor sleeper as I am) I now and then15
slumbered for some moments together on the back of my
camel.
After the fifth day of my journey, I no longer traveled
over the shifting hills but came upon a dead level—a dead
level bed of sand, quite hard, and studded with small shining 20
pebbles.
The heat grew fierce; there was no valley, no hollow,
no hill, no mound, no shadow of hill nor of mound, by which
I could mark the way I was making. Hour by hour I
advanced, and saw no change. I was still the very center 25
of a round horizon. Hour by hour I advanced, and still
there was the same, and the same, and the same—the
same circle of flaming sky—the same circle of sand still
glaring with light and fire. Over all the heaven above,
over all the earth beneath, there was no visible power that 30
could balk the fierce will of the sun. "He rejoiced as a
strong man to run a race; his going forth was from the end
of the heaven, and his circuit unto the ends of it: and there
was nothing hid from the heat thereof." From pole to
pole, and from the east to the west, he brandished his
fiery scepter as though he had usurped all heaven and
earth. As he bid the soft Persian in ancient times, so 5
now, and fiercely too, he bid me bow down and worship
him; so now in his pride he seemed to command me, and
say, "Thou shalt have none other gods but me." I was
all alone before him. There were these two pitted together,
and face to face—the mighty sun for one, and for 10
the other this poor, pale, solitary Self of mine.
But on the eighth day, and before I had yet turned away
from Jehovah for the glittering god of the Persians, there
appeared a dark line upon the edge of the forward horizon,
and soon the line deepened into a delicate fringe that 15
sparkled here and there as though it were sown with diamonds.
There, then, before me were the gardens and the
minarets of Egypt, and the mighty works of the Nile, and
I, I had lived to see, and I saw them.
When evening came I was still within the confines of the 20
desert, and my tent was pitched as usual; but one of my
Arabs stalked away rapidly toward the west without telling
me of the errand on which he was bent. After a while he
returned. He had toiled on a graceful service; he had
traveled all the way on to the border of the living world, 25
and brought me back for a token an ear of rice, full, fresh,
and green.
—Eothen.
1. Several aspects of the desert are herein described. The first is a native sheik. What are the others?
2. The camel and the blazing sun belong peculiarly to the desert. What comments has Mr. Kinglake made on each?
3. Show on your maps approximately where this journey was made.
This poem is a series of clearly drawn pictures grouped about a central image of the month of May as the builder of a house. While you read it, preferably aloud, try to see the pictures and feel the rhythm of the words. The thought in the last stanza may remind you of the "Ode to a Butterfly." Richard Le Gallienne is a poet of our own day, now living in this country.
(Used by permission of the author)
1. What form the roof, the beams, the floors, the doors and windows, of the house of May? What is arras? When was it used? Why was it so called? What form the hangings and the carpets of the house? Who inhabit it? Why are the rooms "glimmering"?
2. What is October's "tossed and trodden gold"? Is the poet telling the truth in the last stanza? Explain what is meant.
3. This verse is different in form from most that you have studied. Do you think it is especially suited to the subject?
1. Have you ever seen a daffodil? If not, find out all you can about the color, time of blooming, etc. of this flower. Remember that the scene of the poem is the north of England.
2. Put briefly into your own words the experience, as told in the first three stanzas, and its result, as told in the last stanza. At what time of year did the incident occur? Was the day fair or cloudy? Why did the flowers show up so well against the lake as a background? What change took place in the poet's state of mind while he looked at the flowers? What was the wealth that the sight brought him?
3. Wordsworth's purpose in poetry was "awakening the mind's attention . . . by directing it to the loveliness and wonders of the world before us." His best poetry is about things out of doors and their influence on people's minds. You may like to read "Fidelity," "To the Cuckoo," "The Solitary Reaper," "The Reverie of Poor Susan," and others that you find for yourself.
4. Wordsworth was born in 1770, at Cockermouth, England, and was educated at Cambridge University. He gave all his time to writing poetry and lived an uneventful life, surrounded by his family and friends, in the beautiful Lake District, in the North of England, which he describes in his poems. From 1843 till his death in 1850 he was Poet Laureate of England.
Robert Southey (1774-1843) was Poet Laureate of England from 1815 till his death. He wrote several long poems and a great deal of history and biography, but his best-remembered works are shorter poems like this and "The Inchcape Rock" and "The Battle of Blenheim." He is sometimes associated with Wordsworth and Coleridge in the group called the "Lake Poets".