Half-hours with the Best American Authors, Volume 4

Front Cover
J.B. Lippincott, 1886 - American literature

From inside the book

Other editions - View all

Common terms and phrases

Popular passages

Page 415 - The old oaken bucket, the iron-bound bucket, The moss-covered bucket, which hung in the well. That moss-covered vessel I hail as a treasure ; For often, at noon, when returned from the field, I found it the source of an exquisite pleasure, The purest and sweetest that nature can yield. How ardent I seized it, with hands that were glowing, And quick to the white-pebbled bottom it fell ; Then soon, with the emblem of truth overflowing, And dripping with coolness, it rose from the well : The old oaken...
Page 414 - Old Oaken Bucket" of Samuel Woodworth. How dear to this heart are the scenes of my childhood, When fond recollection presents them to view! The orchard, the meadow, the deep-tangled...
Page 462 - And heard, with voice as trumpet loud, Bozzaris cheer his band : "Strike — till the last armed foe expires ; Strike — for your altars and your fires ; Strike — for the green graves of your sires ; God — and your native land...
Page 123 - Their blood has washed out their foul footsteps' pollution. No refuge could save the hireling and slave From the terror of flight or the gloom of the grave ; And the star-spangled banner in triumph doth wave O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave.
Page 464 - Her soldier, closing with the foe, Gives for thy sake a deadlier blow; His plighted maiden, when she fears For him, the Joy of her young years, Thinks of thy fate and checks her tears. And she, the mother of thy boys. Though in her eye and faded cheek Is read the grief she will not speak, The memory of her buried Joys, And even she who gave thee birth, Will by their pilgrim-circled hearth Talk of thy doom without a sigh: For thou art freedom's now and fame's, One of the few, the immortal names, That...
Page 123 - O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave? On the shore, dimly seen through the mists of the deep, Where the foe's haughty host in dread silence reposes, What is that which the breeze, o'er the towering steep, As it fitfully blows, half conceals, half discloses?
Page 366 - Ye fearful saints, fresh courage take, The clouds ye so much dread, Are big with mercy, and shall break In blessings on your head.
Page 124 - He hath loosed the fateful lightning of his terrible swift sword: His truth is marching on. I have seen Him in the watch-fires of a hundred circling camps; They have builded Him an altar in the evening dews and damps; I can read His righteous sentence by the dim and flaring lamps. His day is marching on. I have read a fiery gospel, writ in burnished rows of steel: "As ye deal with my contemners, so with you my grace shall deal...
Page 322 - It was August the third, And quite soft was the skies; Which it might be inferred That Ah Sin was likewise; Yet he played it that day upon William And me in a way I despise. Which we had a small game, And Ah Sin took a hand; It was euchre — the same He did not understand ; But he smiled as he sat by the table With the smile that was childlike and bland.
Page 369 - Amid the mysteries which become the more mysterious the more they are thought about, there will remain the ONE absolute certainty, that he is ever in the presence of an Infinite and Eternal Energy from which all things proceed.

Bibliographic information