ON A BUST OF DANTE 563. The text is from Poems by William Thomas Parsons. 1854. 11. Beatrice should be given here the Italian pronunciation, Bay-ar-tray-che. She was the lady immortalized by Dante in his Divine Comedy. b. 13. Ghibeline's. Dante belonged to the aristocratic party in Italy and was opposed to the Guelfs or popular and papal party. 17. Cumae, a town ten miles from Naples supposed to be the locatior of the cave of the fabled • Cumaean sybil.' 32. It is told of Dante that, when he was roaming over Italy, he came to a certain monastery, where he was met by one of the friars, who blessed him, and asked what was his desire; to which the weary stranger simply answered, pace."-Author's Note. 52. Latium. Italy. PARADISE GLORIA 564. I. O frate mio! O brother of mine, each one is a citizen of a true city. THE OLD FOLKS AT HOME In 1915 The Library of Congress published a complete Catalogue of First Editions of Stephen C. Foster. It is noted in the preface that it is sig. nificant that Foster was born on the Fourth of July, since his best music is still a living force in our national life.' FAREWELL ADDRESS AT SPRINGFIELD, 571. It was a stormy morning [February 11, 1861] which served to add gloom and depression to their spirits. The leave-taking presented a scene of subdued anxiety, almost of solemnity. Mr. Lincoln took a position in the waiting-room, where his friends filed past him, often merely pressing his hand in silent emotion. The half-finished ceremony was broken in upon by the ringing bells and rushing train. The crowd closed about the railroad car into which the President-elect and his party made their way. Then came the central incident of the morning. The bell gave notice of starting; but as the conductor paused with his hand lifted to the bell-rope, Mr. Lincoln appeared on the platform of the car, and raised his hand to command attention. The bystanders bared their heads to the falling snowflakes, and standing thus, his neighbors heard his voice for the last time, in the city of his home, in a farewell address so chaste and pathetic, that it reads as if he already felt the tragic shadow of forecasting fate.'-Nicolay and Hay. FIRST INAUGURAL ADDRESS Only the last six paragraphs of the address are given here, or about one-sixth of the entire address. ADDRESS AT GETTYSBURG 572. The orator of the day was Edward Everett who was regarded as the most finished and scholarly speaker of his generation in America. He spoke for nearly two hours. 'Mr. Everett ended in a brilliant peroration, the echoes of which were lost in the long and hearty plaudits of the great multitude, and then President Lincoln arose to fill the part assigned him in the programme. It was a trying ordeal to fittingly crown with a few brief sentences the ceremonies of such a day and such an achievement in oratory; finished, erudite, apparently exhaustive of the theme, replete with all the strength of scholastic method and the highest graces of literary culture. If there arose in the minds of any discriminating listener on the platform a passing doubt whether Mr. Lincoln would or could properly honor the unique occasion, that doubt vanished with his opening sentence; for then and there the President pronounced an address of dedication so pertinent, so brief yet SO comprehensive, so terse yet so eloquent, linking the deeds of the present to the thoughts of the future, with simple words, in such living, original, yet exquisitely molded, maxim-like phrases that the best critics have awarded it an unquestioned rank as one of the world's masterpieces in rhetorical art.' -Nicolay and Hay. SECOND INAUGURAL ADDRESS The entire address is given. RESPONSE TO A SERENADE 573. Lincoln was elected November 8, 1864. • He received notice that on the night of the tenth of November the various Republican clubs in the District of Columbia would serenade him. Not wishing to speak extempore on an occasion where his words would receive so wide a publication, he sat down and wrote a speech which, while it has not received the world-wide fame of certain other of his utterances, is one of the weightiest and wisest of all his discourses. He read it at the window which opens on the north portico of the Executive Mansion, a secretary standing beside him lighting the 'Not very graceful,' he said, page with a candle. 'but I am growing old enough not to care much for the manner of doing things.' There was tainly never an equal compliment paid a serenading crowd. The innermost philosophy of Republican government was in the President's little speech.'-Nicolay and Hay. THE MEXICAN WAR cer 576. b. 20. In Taylor's command. General Grant served through the entire war. In September 1845 he went with his regiment to join the forces of General Taylor in Mexico; there he took part in the battles of Palo Alto, Resaca da la Palma and Monterey, and, after his transfer to General Scott's army, which he joined in March 1847, served at Vera Cruz, Cerro Gordo, Churubusco, Molino del Rey and at the storming of Chapultepec. He was breveted first lieutenant for gallantry at Molino del Rey and captain for gallantry at Chapultepec.' THE BIVOUAC OF THE DEAD 580. This poem, written by Theodore O'Hara, a native of Kentucky and a soldier of the Mexican war, was read by its author at the commemoration ceremonies attending the removal to their native state of the remains of Kentucky soldiers who had fallen at Buena Vista. It may be included among the poems of the Civil War since a part of its first stanza is inscribed over several national cemeteries. MY MARYLAND 581. Written by a native of Baltimore who in 1861 was professor of English literature in Poydras College, Louisiana. On reading the news of the attack upon Massachusetts troops as they passed through Baltimore, he was so stirred that he wrote the poem almost at a sitting. It was first published in the New Orleans Delta, and, quickly copied by all the other southern papers, was soon adapted to an old college air and soon became the Marseillaise of the South.' Among the names mentioned in the poem, are Charles Carroll of Carrollton, one of the signers of the Declaration of Independence, John Eager Howard, a soldier of the Revolution, Samuel Ringgold, William Henry Watson, Enoch Lewis Lowe, and Charles Augustus May, distinguished soldiers in the Mexican war. 38. Sic semper, a part of the Latin slogan, Thus ever with tyrants. THE PICKETT GUARD 582. The authorship of this lyric has been long disputed. It is said to have appeared unsigned in a northern paper October 21, 1861. It was republished in Harper's Weekly, November 30, 1861, signed E. L. B. It has generally been ascribed to Ethen Lynn Beers, a New Englander. Later evidence, however, seems to point to Thaddeus Oliver, of Georgia, as the author. See Southern Historical Society Papers. Vol. VIII, pp. 255-260. THE BATTLE CRY OF FREEDOM Written by George F. Root, an instructor of music in Boston and later in New York, after President Lincoln's second call for troons. DIXIE 583. The original Dixie was written by Daniel Decatur Emmett, a member of the Virginia Minstrels' in 1859. It was the tune rather than the words that gave the song its vogue at first. The first stanza has some merit: 'I wish I was in de land ob cotton, Old times dar am not forgotten, Look away! Look away! Look away! In Dixie land where I was born in Look away! Look away! Look away! I wish I was in Dixie, away, away! Away, away, away down South in Dixie.' resulted. Undoubtedly it was the most popular marching song of the war. BATTLE-HYMN OF THE REPUBLIC 584. Mrs. Howe visited Washington in December, 1861, and while there saw much of the regiments quartered about the city. She heard the John Brown song everywhere sung, and impressed by the inadequacy of the words, even as Pike had been impressed by the inferiority of the early version of Dixie, she wrote before she left the city what she called The Battle-Hymn of the Republic. It was first published in the Atlantic Monthly, February, 1862, and has now taken its place as The American Battle Hymn. THREE HUNDRED THOUSAND MORE First printed in the New York Evening Post, July 16, 1862, and as it was anonymous, attributed to William Cullen Bryant, who settled all conjecture as to its authorship by revealing the name of its author. It was written immediately following Lincoln's call for three hundred thousand volunteers. STONEWALL JACKSON'S WAY Written while the battle of Antietam was in progress, September 17, 1862. 585. 14. Banks, Gen. N. P. Banks, commander of a corps in the Shenandoah in 1862. 22. In forma pauperis, like a poor man. 27. Hill, the Confederate general A. P. Hill. 38. Pope, the Federal general John Pope. 38. Stuart, General Jeb.' Stuart, the Confed. erate cavalry leader. 39. Ashby, General Turner Ashby, killed at the battle of Cross Keys, Va. LITTLE GIFFIN 586. The poet Ticknor did take into his home a stricken young Confederate soldier just as the poem records and all the details of the story are literally true. THE CONQUERED BANNER 588. First published in Father Ryan's paper, The Banner of the South, in 1868. THE BLUE AND THE GRAY 589. First published in the Atlantic Monthly, September, 1867. To this first appearance of the poem was prefixed a quotation from the New York Tribune: The women of Columbus, Mississippi, animated by nobler sentiments than are many of their sisters, have shown themselves impartial in their offerings made to the memory of the dead. They strewed flowers alke on the graves of the Confederate and of the National heroes.' Finch was a native of Ithaca, N. Y., and was long prominently identified with Cornell University. EUROPE 590. The poem Ideals with the revolution of 1848 in France which overthrew the corrupt Louis Philippe. The revolution as a whole was a failure. After insurrection and turmoil, gradually the monarchial forces gained control until by August, 1849, the old system had been completely re stored. FRANCE 591. Modern France was born from the French Revolution which is the subject of this poem. MANAHATTA 592. Manhattan Island, or New York City. 17. Trottoirs, French word for pavements. CAPTAIN, MY CAPTAIN 594. This poem and When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom'd are without doubt the finest of all the elegiac verse called out by the death of Lincoln. O STAR OF FRANCE 602. The poem was written during the dark days of the Franco-Prussian war, after the French armies had been crushingly defeated on the frontier and the commune had taken possession of Paris. THOU MOTHER WITH THY EQUAL BROOD 603. This poem was read by Whitman before the Literary Societies of Dartmouth College, June 26, 1872, and published the same year in pamphlet form. In 1876 it was included in Leaves of Grass. To the earlier edition were added later what are now the first thirteen lines of the poem in its present form, besides many other additions and changes. I have followed the latest text. DEMOCRATIC VISTAS 606. In 1871, Whitman issued what unquestionably is his most notable prose work, Democratic Vistas. It is pitched in major key: it swells O'Connor's piping note into a trumpet blast. Boldly and radically it called for a new school of literature. The old is outgrown, it cried; the new is upon us; make ready for the great tide of democratic poetry and prose that even now is sweeping away the old landmarks. To the new era it was what Emerson's American Scholar was to the period that had opened in the thirties. It was our last declaration of literary independence.'-- American Literature Since 1870. 607. a. 1. Promulge, coined by Whitman. Promulgate is the proper word. 609. b. 36. Haut ton, high tone. 614. b. 30. Con amore, with love. THE PRAYER OF COLUMBUS 615. In the Preface to the poem in the collected edition of 1876, Whitman explained: 'It was near the close of his indomitable and pious life - on his last voyage when nearly seventy years of age that Columbus, to save his two remaining ships from foundering in the Caribbean Sea in a terrible storm, had to run them ashore on the Island of Jamaica where, laid up for a long and miserable year · 1503 - he was taken very sick, had several relapses, his men revolted, and death seem'd daily imminent; though he was eventually rescued, and sent home to Spain to die, unrecognized, neglected and in want.... It is only ask'd, as preparation and atmosphere for the following lines, that the bare authentic facts be recall'd and realized, and nothing contributed by the fancy. See, the Antillean island, with its florid skies and rich foliage and scenery, the waves beating the solitary sands, and the hulls of the ships in the distance. See the figure of the great Admiral, walking the beach, as a stage, in this sublimest tragedy, what poem, so piteous and majestic as the real scene? - and hear him uttering as his mystical and religious soul surely utters, the ideas following perhaps, in their equivalents, the very words.' It is believed by many that this poem has autobiographic touches. It is a picture of Whitman himself in his last years. MY DOUBLE AND HOW HE UNDID ME 618. a. 17. Rasselas, a moralizing romance written by Dr. Samuel Johnson. 26. Sandemanian. The Sandemanians were a small religious sect founded by a Scotchman, Robert Sandeman, who came to America in 1764. 24. Paraheliacal, sun-equaling, or dazzling like the sun. 619. a. 31. Richard Greenough, born 1819, American sculptor. b. 21. Frederic Ingham, the pen name used by Hale for some of his early writings, notably The Man Without a Country. 620. a. 12. Thalaba, the chief character in Robert Southey's poem Thalaba the Destroyer. 19. Sanctissimum, a superlative coined by the author. An author's study is often called his sanctum,' meaning place sacred to him and his work. b. 58. Midshipman Easy, Captain Frederick Marryat's popular sea novel Midshipman Easy appeared in 1834. 621. a. 7. The Academy. In early New England days a private high school was often called an acad emy, a name derived from Plato's school of philosophy, the Academy, at Athens. 622. a. 31. Semiramis, queen of Assyria, who after the death of her husband, brought her empire to a brilliant height of glory. b. 28. Quaene sit, etc. What is the history of the Reformation in Hungary? 31. In seculo decimo tertio, etc. In the thirteenth century, etc. 49. Diggory, a rustic character in Goldsmith's She Stoops to Conquer. 623. a. 9. Ollendorf, author of an elementary phrase book for learners of French. MY OUT-DOOR STUDY 627. This is the tenth paper in Out-Door Papers, published in book form, 1863. 630. b. 8. William Wilkie Collins (1824-89), English novelist, had issued, when Higginson's essay was written, The Dead Secret and The Woman in White, titles that suggest the type of fiction to which they belong. 23. John Constable, (1776–1837), English landscape painter. 50. Thoreau's Walden had appeared in 1854. 631. a. 44. Henry T. Buckle, (1821-62), English historian, author of History of Civilization in England, 55. Vishnu Purana, one of the eighteen Sanscrit works which deal with the doctrines of Brahmanism. b. 517. Brentano. German romantic poet and novelist (1778-1842). 633. a. 20. Subde caput, etc. Put down your head. at the same time put down your body, at the same time wash out your hair. 634. b. 33. De soir fontaines, etc. In the evening fountains; in the morning mountains. There was something in his presence, erect, impressive, filled with a solemn sense of the moment, something in his voice, clear, penetrating, sonorous, and charged with profound emotion, which stilled the noise and tumult of those before him, hushed even the lively creatures in the branches, and made the vast audience listen. He had mastered the situation in a moment, and filled with his theme, he poured out his ode with a majesty of expression which held the people to the close. It was a real victory for Poetry.'- Taylor's Life and Letters of Bayard Taylor. THE DIAMOND LENS 652. b. 37. Leeuwenhoek, Antonius von, Dutch microscopist, born 1632. He discovered among other things the red-corpuscles of the blood. Williamson and the others mentioned in the list were noted naturalists and microscopists. 653. b. 19. Camera-lucida, an apparatus for projecting a microscopic image upon paper so it can be sketched. 656. b. 23. Inter se, among themselves. 44. Rapport, harmonious relation. 657. a. 24. Carcel lamp, a lamp invented by Carcel, a Frenchman, which is fed by oil pumped to it by a mechanical device. 658. a. 16. Chansons. The chanson is a French lyric form of poetry primarily to be sung. 660. a. 28. Alexander, according to tradition, wished for new worlds to conquer. 661. a. 29. Hybla, a city of Sicily celebrated for its honey. 36. Naiad, a water nymph. 662. a. 54. Salmacis, in Greek mythology the nymph of a fountain in Caria. She and Hermaphroditus were blended into one. b. 18. Count de Gabalis, a member of the Rosicrucians, and occult order of the seventeenth century made up of philosophers who professed to be deeply versed in the secrets of nature. b. 56. Danseuse . Niblo's- -a dancer.. Niblo's theater, New York. 663. a. 31. Pas-de-fascination, the step of fascination, or the climatic moment of the dance. Poe had written, With me poetry has been not a purpose, but a passion, and the passions should be held in reverence.' b. 10. In 1880, Richard Henry Stoddard' wrote a Memoir of Poe for the reissue of Griswold's edition of the "Select Works." 683. b. 14. John Martin (1789-1854), an English painter and engraver. Among his chief works are 'Belshazzar's Feast,' 1821, and 'The Last Man,' 1839. 685. b. 45. Reliquiae, remains, fragments. 686. a. 29. In 1837 Walter Savage Landor issued 'The Pentameron,' a prose work, purporting to be conversations between Boccaccio and Petrarch. It is a part of his series entitled Imaginary Conversations.' 42. Post facto, after the deed is done -an analysis of the poem after the poem was written. b. 2. Thomas Holley Chivers, (1807-58), a Georgia physician, has been often mentioned as a source from which Poe plagiarized. Poe in his 'Chapter on Autobiography' called him one of the best and one of the worst poets in America. His productions affect one as a wild dream - strange, incongruous, full of images of more than arabesque monstrosity, and snatches of sweet unsustained song. Even his worst nonsense (and some of it is horrible) has an indefinite charm of sentiment and melody. We can never be sure that there is any meaning in his words.' The poem which Taylor and Swinburne made merry over was undoubtedly Rosalie Lee with stanzas such as these: 'Hang mellow Cydonian Suckets, Sweet apples anthosmial, divine, Like that sweet, golden goblet found growing Taylor has parodied the poem in his Diversions of the Echo Club. 687. a. 3. Mr. Miller, probably 'Joe' Miller, the joker. 51. William Beckford, whose romance Vathek appeared in 1784, William Godwin, whose Caleb Williams appeared in 1794, the Irish novelist Charles Robert Maturin, whose The Fatal Revenge appeared in 1807. the German romancer Ernst Hoffman, whose first romance, Phantasy Pieces in Callot's Manner, appeared in 1814, and the German romancer Friederich Fouqué, whose Undine appeared in 1811, may be taken as representatives of the ultra-romantic school of fiction of the late eighteenth and the early nineteenth century. 57. John P. Kennedy, the Southern novelist, author of Swallow Barn, was one of the board of judges that in 1833 awarded the prize to Poe for the best tale submitted to the Baltimore Saturday Visitor. 687. b. 16. Raconteur, story teller. |