English Fireside Poets

William Cullen Bryant

Poet who wrote “Thanatopsis” and “To a Waterfowl”

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Poet whose wife burned to death and wrote “The Cross of Snow” and “Tide Rises, Tide Falls”

Oliver Wendell Holmes

Poet who wrote “The Chambered Nautilus” and “Old Ironsides”

“Thanatopsis”

Poem about how Earth is man’s great resting place

“To a Waterfowl”

Poem about a duck that flies across a pond and avoids being hunted

“The Chambered Nautilus”

Poem about an animal that builds itself a new chamber to live in every year

“Old Ironsides”

Poem about saving a ship in the Boston Harbor from being used for its wood

“The Cross of Snow”

Poemabout a dead women and a mountain that has a cross

“The Tide Rises, The Tide Falls”

Poem about the constant cycle of the ocean and the Earth

Apostrophe

An address to something not normally spoken to

Volta

The turning point in a story

Sonnet

A poem of fourteen lines

English/Shakespearean Sonnet

Sonnet consisting of 3 quatrains and a couplet

Italian/Petrarchan Sonnet

A sonnet consisting of an Octave and Seslet

Refrain

Line or lines that are repeated throughout the poem

Benedight

Adj. Blessed

Curlew

noun. A large, waiting bird of the Sand Piper family

Efface

verb. to wipe out, do away with, or expunge

Feign

verb. to event or to forge

Forlorn

Adj. Pitifully sad and abandoned or lonely

Ensign

Noun. A flag that is flown (as by a ship), a simple of nationality

Gale

Noun. A very strong wind

Eloquence

noun. The action, practice, or art of expressing thought with fluency, force, and appropriateness as to appeal to the reason or move the feelings

Blight

Noun. Specifically applied to disease in plants caused by fungi, parasites as mildew, rust, or smut in corn

Sepulchre

Noun. A place of burial; a tomb

Brink

Noun. An extreme edge of land before a steep or vertical slope

Abyss

Noun. A vast and deep area

Martyrdom

Noun. The death or suffering of a martyr