Born in the USA - Exploring American Poems. The Massachusetts Poets

By Ralph Waldo Emerson, Amy Lowell and Emily Dickenson

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 tiny Commonwealth of Massachusetts. Its history is scarred with tragedy, much of its own making, and yet its natural beauty and its kaleidoscope of cultures summon the envy of us all when put to verse by the likes of Ralph Waldo Emerson, Amu Lowell, Emily Dickenson, William Cullen Bryant and James Russell Lowell.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Portable Poetry
• Release date: Sep 30, 2023
• ISBN: 9781835471500

Book preview

Born in the USA - Exploring American Poems

The Massachusetts 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 tiny Commonwealth of Massachusetts. Its history is scarred with tragedy, much of its own making, and yet its natural beauty and its kaleidoscope of cultures summon the envy of us all when put to verse by the likes of Ralph Waldo Emerson, Amy Lowell, Emily Dickenson, William Cullen Bryant and James Russell Lowell.     

Index of Contents

June by Horatio Alger Jr

America the Beautiful by Katharine Lee Bates

Beyond by Katharine Lee Bates

Come Unto Me by Katherine Lee Bates

Turn Me to My Yellow Leaves by William Stanley Braithwaite

Hymn to the North Star by William Cullen Bryant

Song of Marion's Men by William Cullen Bryant

October by William Cullen Bryant

The Death of Slavery by William Cullen Bryant

Hope is the Thing With Feathers by Emily Dickinson

I Measure Every Grief by Emily Dickinson

Where Roses Would Not Dare to Go by Emily Dickinson

A Light Exists in Spring by Emily Dickinson

This Was a Poet - It Is That by Emily Dickinson

Credo by W E B Du Bois

Concord Hymn by Ralph Waldo Emerson

Letters by Ralph Waldo Emerson

Water by Ralph Waldo Emerson

A Nation's Strength by Ralph Waldo Emerson

Fate by Ralph Waldo Emerson

The Eyes of My Regret by Angelina Weld Grimké

The Black Finger by Angelina Weld Grimké

Tenebris by Angelina Weld Grimké

In the Reading Room of the British Museum by Louise Imogen Guiney

Forms of Heroes by Nathaniel Hawthorne

The Ocean by Nathaniel Hawthorne

Address to the Moon by Nathaniel Hawthorne

The Old Man of the Sea by Oliver Wendell Holmes

Hymn for the Celebration at the Laying of the Cornerstone of Harvard Memorial Hall, Cambridge, October 6th 1870 by Oliver Wendell Holmes

Old Ironsides by Oliver Wendell Holmes

A Calendar of Sonnets - February by Helen Hunt Jackson

A Calendar of Sonnets - May by Helen Hunt Jackson

A Calendar of Sonnets - November by Helen Hunt Jackson

The Fir Tree and the Brook by Helen Hunt Jackson

The Poet by Amy Lowell

Meeting House Hill by Amy Lowell

Madonna of the Evening Flowers by Amy Lowell

Late September by Amy Lowell

Lilacs by Amy Lowell

Midnight by James Russell Lowell

A Contrast by James Russell Lowell

Winter Evening Hymn to My Fire by James Russell Lowell

Threnodia by James Russell Lowell

A Requiem by James Russell Lowell

To My Mother by Edgar Allan Poe

In Youth I Have Known One by Edgar Allan Poe

The Raven by Edgar Allan Poe

A Dream Within a Dream by Edgar Allan Poe

Alone by Edgar Allan Poe

Here by the Brimming April Streams by Phillip Henry Savage

On the 10th October by Phillip Henry Savage

November Blind by Phillip Henry Savage

Casey at the Bat by Ernest L. Thayer

The Summer Rain by Henry David Thoreau

Woof of the Sun by Henry David Thoreau

Pray to What Earth Does This Sweet Cold Belong by Henry David Thoreau

What's the Railroad to Me by Henry David Thoreau

A Day by John Greenleaf Whittier

The Pumpkin by John Greenleaf Whittier

The Hunters of Men by John Greenleaf Whittier

The Farewell of a Virginia Slave Mother by John Greenleaf Whittier

I H B Died August 11th 1898 by William Winter

THE MASSACHUSETTS POETS

June by Horatio Alger Jr

Throw open wide your