from Contemplations: "When I behold the heavens as in their prime" / Anne Bradstreet --
from Gods Determinations Touching His Elect: The Preface; The Prologue; Meditation Six / Edward Taylor --
The Wild Honey Suckle / Philip Freneau --
Advice to a Raven in Russia December, 1812 / Joel Barlow --
The Lip and the Heart / John Quincy Adams --
On Snow-Flakes Melting on His Lady's Breast / William Martin Johnson --
Song: "Who has robbed the ocean wave . . ." / John Shaw --
The Little Beach Bird / Richard Henry Dana --
On the Death of Joseph Rodman Drake / Fitz-Greene Halleck --
Niagara / Lydia Huntley Sigourney --
"O, fairest of the rural maids!" --
Inscription for the Entrance to a Wood / William Cullen Bryant --
The Coral Grove / James Gates Percival --
The American Flag / Joseph Rodman Drake --
Song: "We break the glass . . ." / Edward Coote Pinkney --
Nature / Ralph Waldo Emerson --
To Giulia Grisi / Nathaniel Parker Willis --
"The tide rises, the tide falls" --
Milton / Henry Wadsworth Longfellow --
The Pageant / John Greenleaf Whittier --
The Chambered Nautilus --
Old Ironsides / Oliver Wendell Holmes --
Dream-Land / Edgar Allen Poe --
Stanza From an Early Poem --
The Pines and the Sea / Christopher Pearse Cranch --
Winter Memories / Henry David Thoreau --
from the Prelude to The Vision of Sir Launfal: "And what is so rare as a day in June?" --
Monna Lisa / James Russell Lowell --
Battle-Hymn of the Republic / Julia Ward Howe --
"Darest thou now O soul" --
"The world below the brine" --
To a Locomotive in Winter / Walt Whitman --
An Uninscribed Monument on One of the Battlefields of the Wilderness --
The Enviable Isles / Herman Melville --
Sonnet CXCIV / George Henry Boker --
Charleston / Henry Timrod --
"The wind took up the northern things --
"I like to see it lap the miles" --
"Because I could not stop for Death" --
"Whole gulfs of red and fleets of red" --
"I heard a fly buzz when I died" --
"A narrow fellow in the grass" --
"A bird came down the walk" --
"The bustle in a house" --
"A route of evanescence" / Emily Dickinson --
The Scarlet Tanager / Joel Benton --
The Word / Richard Realf --
Memory / Thomas Bailey Aldrich --
Crossing the Plains / Joaquin Miller --
Fame / John Bannister Tabb --
Biftek aux Champignons / Henry Augustin Beers --
It is in Winter that we dream of Spring / Robert Burns Wilson --
A Dutch Lullaby / Eugene Field --
The Man with the Hoe / Edwin Markham --
Love Song / Harriet Monroe --
On the Death of a Metaphysician --
Sonnet: O world / George Santayana --
The Black Vulture / George Sterling --
For a Dead Lady / Edwin Arlington Robinson --
Anne Rutledge / Edgar Lee Masters --
"Be still. The Hanging Gardens were a dream" --
"Live blindly" / Trumbull Stickney --
Madonna of the Evening Flowers / Amy Lowell --
Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening --
The Gift Outright / Robert Frost --
Song: "I make my shroud . . ." / Adelaide Crapsey --
Four Preludes on Playthings of the Wind / Carl Sandburg --
General William Booth Enters into Heaven --
Abraham Lincoln Walks at Midnight / Vachel Lindsey --
The Idea of Order at Key West --
The Emperor of Ice-Cream / Wallace Stevens --
Flowers by the Sea / William Carlos Williams --
Wisdom / Sara Teasdale --
Fair Annet's Song / Elinor Wylie --
No Swan So Fine / Marianne Moore --
Shine, Perishing Republic --
The Eye / Robinson Jeffers --
Bells for John Whiteside's Daughter --
Janet Waking / John Crowe Ransom --
from Priapus and the Pool: III: "When trout swim down Great Ormond Street . . ."; XVII: "Fade, then-die, depart, and come no more" --
from Fatal Interview: Sonnet XXX: "Love is not all: it is not meat nor drink . . ." / Edna St. Vincent Millay --
L'An Trentiesme de Mon Eage / Archibald MacLeish --
"All in green went my love riding" / E. E. Cummings --
Song for a Slight Voice --
Song for the Last Act / Louise Bogan --
Winter Mask / Allen Tate --
Lullaby / Léonie Adams --
X Minus X / Kenneth Fearing --
The Groundhog / Richard Eberhart --
End of Summer / Stanley Kunitz --
"April's amazing meaning" --
"The world goes turning" --
The Constant One / George Dillon --
The Voice / Theodore Roethke --
Roosters / Elizabeth Bishop --
"The heavy bear who goes with me" / Delmore Schwartz --
Terminal / Karl Shapiro --
The Quaker Graveyard in Nantucket / Robert Lowell --
A Black November Turkey / Richard Wilbur --
Upon the Death of George Santayana / Anthony Hecht.