narrative and political poetry, such as "The Battle of the Kegs" and "A
Fable," dealing almost entirely with events and aiming to arouse military
ardor. In "The Ballad of Nathan Hale," the musical expression of
bravery, pride, and sympathy raises the poem so far above the rhymes of
their period that it will long endure as the most memorable poetic
expression of the Revolutionary period.

Poetry was still a thing of the moment, an avocation, not dignified by
receiving the best of a man. With William Cullen Bryant came a change.
He told our nation that in the new world as well as in the old some men
should live for the beautiful. Everything in nature spoke to him in
terms of human life. Other poets saw the re1ation between their own
lives and the life of the flowers and the birds, but Bryant constantly
expressed this relationship. The concluding stanza of "To a Waterfowl"
is the most perfect example of this characteristic, but it underlies also
the whole thought of his youthful poem "Thanatopsis" (A View of Death).
If we could all read the lives of our gentians and bobolinks as he did,
there would be more true poetry in America. Modern thinkers urge us to
step outside of ourselves into the lives of others and by our imagination
to share their emotions; this is no new ambition in America; since Bryant
in "The Crowded Street" analyzes the life in the faces he sees.

Until the early part of the nineteenth century American poetry dealt
mainly with the facts of history and the description of nature. A new
element of fancy is prominent in Joseph Rodman Drake's "The Culprit Fay."
It dances through a long narrative with the delicacy of the fay himself.

Edgar Allan Poe brought into our poetry somber sentiment and musical
expression. Puritan poetry was somber, but it was almost devoid of
sentiment. Poe loved sad beauty and meditated on the sad things in life.