After Dr. Watts's hymns the first poetry I took great delight in
greeted me upon the pages of the "American First Class Book,"
handed down from older pupils in the little private school which
my sisters and I attended when Aunt Hannah had done all she could
for us. That book was a collection of excellent literary
extracts, made by one who was himself an author and a poet. It
deserved to be called "first-class" in another sense than that
which was understood by its title. I cannot think that modern
reading books have improved upon it much. It contained poems from
Wordsworth, passages from Shakespeare's plays, among them the
pathetic dialogue between Hubert and little Prince Arthur, whose
appeal to have his eyes spared, brought many a tear to my own.
Bryant's "Waterfowl" and "Thanatopsis" were there also; and
Neal's,--
"There's a fierce gray bird with a bending beak,"
that the boys loved so dearly to "declaim;" and another poem by
this last author, which we all liked to read, partly from a
childish love of the tragic, and partly for its graphic
description of an avalanche's movement:--
"Slowly it came in its mountain wrath,
And the forests vanished before its path;
And the rude cliffs bowed; and the waters fled,--
And the valley of life was the tomb of the dead.
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