Born in the USA - Exploring American Poems. The Mid-Atlantic Poets

By Frances E W Harper, John Gould Fletcher and Willa Cather

Poetry. A form of words that seems so elegantly simple in one verse and so cleverly complex in another. Each poet has a particular style, an individual and unique way with words and yet each of us seems to recognise the path and destination of where the verses lead, even if sometimes the full comprehension may be a little beyond us.

Through the centuries every culture has produced verse to symbolize and to describe everything from everyday life, natural wonders, the human condition and even in its more hubristic moments, the crushing triumph of an enemy.

In the volumes of this series we take a look through the prism of individual regions of the United States through the centuries and decades.

The United States may be many things: the world’s policeman, a bully, a shameless purveyor of mass market culture but it also, in its better moments, a standard bearer for truth, transparency, equality and the more positive qualities of democracy.

Little wonder that’s its poets are rightly acknowledged as wonders of their art. Leading lights in the fight against slavery and for equality, even if the rest of the Nation is finding it problematic to catch up.

In this volume we have collected verse from poets born in the prosaically named Mid-Atlantic region. Within its boundaries, which have never been authoritatively agreed, are New York, New Jersey, Delaware, Maryland, and Virginia. Therefore it is easy to wax lyrical on what, and how, our esteemed poets including Frances W Harper, Willa Cather, John Gould Fletcher and Effie Waller Smith have penned in their gloried verse on the societies and lands before and around them.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Portable Poetry
• Release date: Sep 30, 2023
• ISBN: 9781835471524

Book preview

Born in the USA - Exploring American Poems

The Mid-Atlantic Poets

An Introduction

Poetry. A form of words that seems so elegantly simple in one verse and so cleverly complex in another.  Each poet has a particular style, an individual and unique way with words and yet each of us seems to recognise the path and destination of where the verses lead, even if sometimes the full comprehension may be a little beyond us.

Through the centuries every culture has produced verse to symbolize and to describe everything from everyday life, natural wonders, the human condition and even in its more hubristic moments, the crushing triumph of an enemy.

In the volumes of this series we take a look through the prism of individual regions of the United States through the centuries and decades.

The United States may be many things: the world’s policeman, a bully, a shameless purveyor of mass market culture but it also, in its better moments, a standard bearer for truth, transparency, equality and the more positive qualities of democracy.

Little wonder that’s its poets are rightly acknowledged as wonders of their art.  Leading lights in the fight against slavery and for equality, even if the rest of the Nation is finding it problematic to catch up. 

In this volume we have collected verse from poets born in the prosaically named Mid-Atlantic region.  Within its boundaries, which have never been authoritatively agreed, are New York, New Jersey, Delaware, Maryland, and Virginia.  Therefore it is easy to wax lyrical on what, and how, our esteemed poets including Frances E W Harper, Willa Cather, John Gould Fletcher and Effie Waller Smith have penned in their gloried verse on the societies and lands before and around them.    

Index of Contents

Lullaby by Louisa May Alcott

My Kingdom by Louisa May Alcott

For Myself Alone I Would Not Be by Louisa May Alcott

Negro Woman by Lewis Alexander

Enchantment by Lewis Alexander

Africa by Lewis Alexander

September by George Arnold

October by George Arnold

Love in Twilight by Stephen Vincent Benét

Judgement by Stephen Vincent Benét

A Minor Poet by Stephen Vincent Benét

Difference by Stephen Vincent Benét

The Washer-Woman by Otto Leland Bohanan

Echoes by Olivia Ward Bush-Banks

Treasured Moments by Olivia Ward Bush-Banks

Grandmother, Think Not I Forget You by Willa Cather

Sleep Minstrel Sleep by Willa Cather

I Sought the Wood in Winter by Willa Cather

A Likeness by Willa Cather

In War-Time, an American Homeward Bound by Florence Earle Coates

A Chant of Love for England by Helen Gray Cone

Rheims Cathedral, 1914 by Grace Hazard Conkling

Ay, Workman, Make Me A Dream by Stephen Crane

Places Among the Stars by Stephen Crane

A Man Saw a Ball of Gold in the Sky by Stephen Crane

Two or Three Angels by Stephen Crane

To the Dead in the Graveyard Underneath My Window by Adelaide Crapsey

Keats by Adelaide Crapsey

To My Dear Mother in Sickness by Lucretia Maria Davidson

On My Mother's Fiftieth Birthday by Lucretia Maria Davidson

To a Young Lady Whose Mother Was Insane by Lucretia Maria Davidson

De Linin' ub de Hymns by Daniel Webster Davis

Evening by George Washington Doane

To the Night Breeze by Alice & Caroline Duer

Why We Oppose Women Travelling in Railway Trains by Alice Duer Miller

The Revolt of Mother by Alice Duer

La Vie C'est La Vie by Jessie Fauset

Dead Fires by Jessie Fauset

A Poem for Children with Thoughts On Death by Jupiter Hammon

An Evening Thought by Jupiter Hammond

My Mother's Kiss by Frances E W Harper

Bury Me in a Free Land by Frances E W Harper

The Slave Mother by Frances E W Harper

Burial of Sarah by Frances E W Harper

This Curse by Henry James

Sometimes by Maggie Pogue Johnson

The Negro Has a Chance by Maggie Pogue Johnson

Mother Machree by Rida Johnson-Young

The Star Spangled Banner by Francis Scott Key

Rouge Bouquet by Joyce Kilmer

Easter Week by Joyce Kilmer

Trees by Joyce Kilmer

Main Street by Joyce Kilmer

The Land of Love by Herman Melville

Monody by Herman Melville

The Mound by the Lake by Herman Melville

The Maldive Shark by Herman Melville

July 9th 1872 by Abram Joseph Ryan

Here by the Brimming April Streams by Phillip Henry Savage

In November by Phillip Henry Savage

Shakespeare by Philip Henry Savage

Sonnet 10 I Have Sought Happiness by Alan Seeger

The Need to Love by Alan Seeger

Sonnet 11 by Alan Seeger

Paris by Alan Seeger

Translation by Anne Spencer

White Things by Anne Spencer

Broadway, New York, July 1916 by George Sterling

Six Significant Landscapes by Wallace Stevens

Anecdote of the Jar by Wallace Stevens

Disillusionment of Ten O'Clock by Wallace Stevens

The Man With the Blue Guitar by Wallace Stevens

April by John Bannister Tabb

December by John Bannister Tabb

Shakespeare's Key by John Bannister Tabb

Georgia Dusk by Jean Toomer

Song of the Son by Jean Toomer

Star of Ethiopia by Lucian B Watkins

A Torchbearer by Edith Wharton

A Failure by Edith Wharton

The Comrade by Edith Wharton

A Hunting Song by Edith Wharton

Night on the Prairies by Walt Whitman

O Sun of Real Peace by Walt Whitman

I Hear America Singing by Walt Whitman

O Me! O Life! by Walt Whitman

Portrait of the Author by William Carlos Williams

Mujer by William Carlos Williams

The Lonely Street by William Carlos Williams

Peace on Earth by William Carlos Williams

THE MID-ATLANTIC POETS

Lullaby by Louisa May Alcott

Now the day is done,

Now the shepherd sun

Drives his white flocks from the sky;

Now the flowers rest

On their mother's breast,

Hushed by her low lullaby.

Now the glowworms glance,

Now the fireflies dance,

Under fern-boughs green and high;

And the western breeze

To the forest trees

Chants a tuneful lullaby.

Now 'mid shadows deep

Falls blessed sleep,

Like dew from the summer sky;

And the whole earth dreams,

In the moon's soft beams,

While night breathes a lullaby.