(138) 88. Bohea = black tea. (139) 145-56. "This reflects upon the inhumanity of those men, who, not to mention an enemy, would scarcely cover a departed friend with a little dust without certainty of reward for so doing."-Freneau.

(141) 203, 204. See Paradise Lost, II 648 ff.

(142) 251. See Ps. 137.

(143) THE BRITISH PRISON SHIP. Canto II. 55-94. In 1780 the ship in which Freneau was voyaging to the West Indies was captured by a British man-ofwar, and he lay for several weeks in a prison ship and a hospital ship at New York. ¶ 31. review = see again.

(144) TO THE MEMORY OF THE BRAVE AMERICANS. First published in The Freeman's Journal. The Americans' loss in this battle, including killed, wounded, and missing, was 554. ¶ 20. Cf. Scott's Marmion (1808), introduction to Canto III, 1. 64, "And snatched the spear but left the shield."

(145) THE POLITICAL BALANCE. Stanzas 1-3, 6-12, 31-37, 42-45, 51-60. First published in The Freeman's Journal, "filling the entire first page" (Pattee). ¶ 22. Virgin ... Scales: these two signs of the Zodiac are next each other. (146) 47. Libra: Latin for "Scales."

(147) 78. Skie: a small island off the coast of Scotland. ¶ 88. A ship of first rate: a war vessel of the greatest size and power. 193. Momus: the god of mockery.

(148) 124. "It is hoped that such a sentiment may not be deemed wholly illiberal. Every candid person will certainly draw a line between a brave and magnanimous people and a most vicious and vitiating government."-Freneau, in 1809 edition.

(148) THE WILD HONEY SUCKLE. First published in The Freeman's Journal. (149) THE INDIAN BURYING GROUND.

(150) 36. Cf. Thomas Campbell's "O'Connor's Child" (1810), stanza 4, l. 8, "The hunter and the deer a shade."

(150) THE NEW ENGLAND SABBATH-DAY CHACE. First published in The New York Daily Advertiser; a prefatory statement said: "In several parts of New England it is customary not to suffer travellers to proceed on a journey on the Sabbath day. . . The following lines commemorate an event of this sort, which some years ago really befel Mr. P., the noted performer in feats of horsemanship." (151) 26. joe: a Portuguese coin worth about eight dollars.

(152) THE REPUBLICAN GENIUS OF EUROPE. The text is that of 1795, as reprinted by Pattee.

(154) TO A CATY-DID. The text is from the 1815 edition.

ROBERT TREAT PAINE

(156) THE RULING PASSION. Lines 47-96. The text is from the 1797 edition. The poem was spoken before the Phi Beta Kappa Society, at Harvard College, in 1797. ¶ 28. frize=frieze, a kind of cloth. 29. ton the prevailing fashion. 34. o'erflowing yet not full: “A parody on part of the last line in the following passage of Denham's 'Cooper's Hill':

=

Though deep yet clear; though gentle yet not dull;
Strong without rage; without o'erflowing full."

-Paine.

135. Cf. Pope's "Essay on Criticism," ll. 612-13:

The bookful blockhead, ignorantly read,
With loads of learned lumber in his head.

(157) 44. Esop's legs: "Esop, the Phrygian, the most celebrated fabulist of antiquity, was not only disfigured in his legs but was deformed in almost every other part of his body."-Paine. Tully's wart: "Marcus Tullius Cicero, the father of Roman oratory, is said to have received his last appellation from an uncommon excrescence on his cheek, resembling a cicer, or vetch."-Paine. ¶ 45. Gunter: an English mathematician, who invented a scale used in surveying and navigation.

JOHN NEAL

(158) THE BATTLE OF NIAGARA. Canto I. 156-75, 253-306; Canto II. 23-52; Canto III. 81-106. The text is from the 1819 edition. The Battle of Niagara, or Lundy's Lane, between 2,600 Americans and 4,500 British, was fought July 25, 1814, near Niagara Falls; the British were repulsed, but afterward regained the field; the losses were heavy, amounting to nearly 900 on each side.

JOSEPH RODMAN DRAKE

(161) THE CULPRIT FAY. Sections 3-8, 10-23, 24 (II. 1-14). The text is from the 1859 edition. The poem was written in the summer of 1819, among the Highlands of the Hudson; the scene is pitched there, as is shown by the reference to Cronest, a height overlooking the Hudson, in Section 1, 1. 7.

(162) 25. ising=mica. ¶ 30. minim-tiny (from Latin "minimus," through French "minime"). 137. Ouphe=fairy.

(164) 104. warlock-pertaining to imps or sprites; impish. ¶ 107. colen: a coined word. ¶ 114. dern=hidden.

(165) 165. jellied quarl: the jelly fish.

(168) 246. bootle: a coined word.

HENRY C. KNIGHT

(170) A SUMMER'S DAY. The text is from the 1821 edition.

FITZ-GREENE HALLECK

(171) MARCO BOZZARIS. The text is from the 1827 edition. The poem was first published in The New York Review. "Marco Bozzaris, the Epaminondas of modern Greece. He fell in a night attack upon the Turkish camp at Laspi, the site of the ancient Platæa, August 20, 1823, and expired in the moment of victory. His last words were, "To die for liberty is a pleasure and not a pain." "Note in the 1827 edition. The fight which the poem records was an incident in the Greek war for independence (1821-28), which resulted in the liberation of Greece after more than three centuries of Turkish rule. ¶ 13. Suliote band: the Suliotes were a people of mixed Greek and Albanian blood, who had lived in Suli, a district of Albania; being driven out by the Turks, in 1822, they came to Greece and fought fiercely In the war of independence.

(172) 18. old Platea's day: in 479 B.C., at Platæa in Boeotia, Greece, a force of 110,000 Greeks defeated 300,000 Persians, thereby completing the repulse of the invading army of Xerxes.

EDWARD COATE PINKNEY

(174) A HEALTH. The text is from the 1825 edition.

NATHANIEL PARKER WILLIS

(175) ROARING BROOK. The text is from the 1837 edition.

(176) UNSEEN SPIRITS. The text is from the 1844 edition. First published in The New York Mirror, July 29, 1843.

PHILIP PENDLETON COOKE

A note in that 9-16. Cf. Coleridge's

(177) FLORENCE VANE. The text is from the 1847 edition.
edition says the poem was "published some years ago.'
"Love," stanzas 4 and 6:

She lean'd against the armed man
The statue of the armed knight;
She stood and listen'd to my lay
Amid the lingering light...

I play'd a soft and doleful air,

WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT

The text, with the exceptions noted, is from the 1876 edition.

(178) THE EMBARGO. Lines 1-26. The text is that of the 1809 edition, from a copy in the Harris Collection, Brown University Library. During the Napoleonic wars both France and Great Britain formally asserted the right to interfere with neutral vessels, whether they bore contraband of war or not; in retaliation the United States placed an embargo on all merchant vessels, domestic or foreign, in American ports, forbidding them to leave except by special permission from the President. The act was very unpopular, especially in Massachusetts, whose sea trade was then large. "A doubt having been intimated in The Monthly. Anthology of June last, whether a youth of thirteen years could have been the author of this poem, in justice to his merits the friends of the writer feel obliged to certify the fact from their personal knowledge of himself and his family, as well as his literary improvement and extraordinary talents. The printer is enabled to disclose their names and places of residence.”—“Advertisement" in the 1809 edition. ¶ 10. weak ruler's: the reference is to President Jefferson; as a student of French theories of government and religion, he was supposed to side with France and to favor the embargo as a blow against her enemy, Great Britain, with whom most of our maritime trade was done. ¶ 18. "words that breathe and thoughts that burn": misquoted from Gray's "Progress of Poesy," l. 110. "Thoughts that breathe and words that burn."

(179) THANATOPSIS. First published in The North American Review, September, 1817, in the following form (including the punctuation):

Yet a few days, and thee

The all-beholding sun, shall see no more,

In all his course; nor yet in the cold ground,
Where thy pale form was laid, with many tears,
Nor in th' embrace of ocean shall exist

Thy image. Earth, that nourished thee, shall claim
Thy growth, to be resolv'd to earth again;
And, lost each human trace, surrend'ring up
Thine individual being, shalt thou go

To mix forever with the elements,

To be a brother to th' insensible rock

And to the sluggish clod, which the rude swain
Turns with his share, and treads upon. The oak
Shall send his roots abroad and pierce thy mould.
Yet not to thy eternal resting place

Shalt thou retire alone-nor couldst thou wish
Couch more magnificent. Thou shalt lie down
With patriarchs of the infant world-with kings
The powerful of the earth-the wise, the good,
Fair forms, and hoary seers of ages past,
All in one mighty sepulchre. The hills,
Rock-ribb'd and ancient as the sun,-
-the vales
Stretching in pensive quietness between;
The venerable woods-the floods that move
In majesty, and the complaining brooks,
That wind among the meads, and make them green,
Are but the solemn decorations all,

Of the great tomb of man.-The golden sun,
The planets, all the infinite host of heaven
Are glowing on the sad abodes of death,
Through the still lapse of ages. All that tread
The globe are but a handful to the tribes
That slumber in its bosom.-Take the wings
Of morning and the Borean desert pierce-
Or lose thyself in the continuous woods
That veil Oregan, where he hears no sound
Save his own dashings-yet-the dead are there,
And millions in those solitudes, since first
The flight of years began, have laid them down
In their last sleep-the dead reign there alone.--
So shalt thou rest-and what if thou shalt fall
Unnoticed by the living-and no friend
Take note of thy departure? Thousands more
Will share thy destiny. The tittering world
Dance to the grave. The busy brood of care
Plod on, and each one chases as before

His favourite phantom.-Yet all these shall leave
Their mirth and their employments, and shall come
And make their bed with thee!

The present form, except for variations noted below, appeared in 1821.

"I cannot give any you information of the occasion which suggested to my mind the idea of my poem "Thanatopsis.' It was written when I was seventeen or eighteen years old-I have not now at hand the memorandums which would enable

me to be precise-and I believe it was composed in my solitary rambles in the woods." -Bryant, in answer to a letter of inquiry, in 1855. Mr. Godwin says, on the authority of the poet's autobiography (see his life of Bryant, Vol. I, pp. 37, 97) that just before writing "Thanatopsis," in the summer of 1811, he had been reading Henry Kirke White's poems, much taken with their melancholy tone, Blair's "Grave," Porteus on death, Southey's shorter poems, and Cowper's Task. Two passages from Blair's "Grave" will show how like yet unlike the two poems are:

The Grave, dread thing!

Men shiver when thou 'rt nam'd: nature, appall'd,

Shakes off her wonted firmness. Ah, how dark

Thy long-extended realms and rueful wastes,

Where nought but silence reigns, and night, dark night,
Dark as was chaos ere the infant sun

Was roll'd together or had tried his beams

Athwart the gloom profound! The sickly taper,

By glimm'ring through thy low-brow'd misty vaults,
Furr'd round with mouldy damps and ropy slime,
Lets fall a supernumerary horror,

And only serves to make thy night more irksome.
What is this world?

What but a spacious burial-field unwall'd,
Strew'd with Death's spoils, the spoils of animals
Savage and tame, and full of dead men's bones!
The very turf on which we tread once liv'd;
And we that live must lend our carcases
To cover our own offspring; in their turns
They too must cover theirs. 'Tis here all meet:
The shiv'ring Icelander, and sun-burnt Moor,
Men of all climes, that never met before,
And of all creeds, the Jew, the Turk, the Christian.
Here the proud prince and favourite yet prouder-
His sov'reign's keeper and the people's scourge—
Are huddled out of sight. Here lie abash'd
The great negotiators of the earth,

And celebrated masters of the balance,

Deep-read in stratagems and wiles of courts:

Now vain their treaty-skill; Death scorns to treat.
Here the o'erloaded slave flings down his burden
From his gall'd shoulders; and when the stern tyrant
With all his guards and tools of power about him,

Is meditating new unheard-of hardships,

Mocks his short arm, and, quick as thought, escapes
Where tyrants vex not and the weary rest.

Thanatopsis="view of death" (Greek @ávaros, "death";

is, "view"). 17. healing: in 1821, "gentle"; the present reading was adopted in 1836. 32. thine: before 1836, "thy."

(180) 52. pierce the Barcan wilderness: in 1821, "and the Barcan desert pierce"; in 1855, "traverse Barca's desert sands"; the present reading was adopted in 1871. Barcan: Barca is a desert region in northern Africa. ¶ 54. Oregon: before 1871, "Oregan." The Oregon is now called the Columbia; the region through which it flows, now the state of Oregon, was then a complete wilderness. ¶ 59. withdraw: in 1821, "shalt fall"; the present reading was adopted in 1836.