"America is a land of wonders, in which everything is in constant motion and every change seems an improvement. … No natural boundary seems to be set to the efforts of man; and in his eyes what is not yet done is only what he has not yet attempted to do." —Alexis de Tocqueville Check out the Additional Questions, Hot Links, Internet Activities, and Self-Tests for this unit using the navigation bar at the left.

PART 1: FIRESIDE AND CAMPFIRE
Washington Irving	The Devil and Tom Walker	Short Story	242
Comparing Literary Works
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow	A Psalm of Life	Poem	258
	The Tide Rises, The Tide Falls	Poem	260
Comparing Literary Works
William Cullen Bryant	Thanatopsis	Poem	267
Oliver Wendell Holmes	Old Ironsides	Poem	270
James Russell Lowell	The First Snowfall	Poem	272
John Greenleaf Whittier	from Snowbound	Poem	274
Comparing Literary Works
Meriwether Lewis	Crossing the Great Divide	Nonfiction	286
John Wesley Powell	The Most Sublime Spectacle on Earth	Nonfiction	289
PART 2: SHADOWS OF THE IMAGINATION
Comparing Literary Works
Edgar Allan Poe	The Fall of the House of Usher	Short Story	308
	The Raven	Poem	326
Nathaniel Hawthorne	The Minister's Black Veil	Short Story	336
Herman Melville	from Moby-Dick	Fiction	354
PART 3: THE HUMAN SPIRIT AND THE NATURAL WORLD
Comparing Literary Works
Ralph Waldo Emerson	from Nature	Nonfiction	388
	from Self-Reliance	Nonfiction	391
	Concord Hymn	Poem	393
	The Snowstorm	Poem	394
Comparing Literary Works
Henry David Thoreau	from Walden	Nonfiction	402
	from Civil Disobedience	Nonfiction	412
PART 4: FOCUS ON LITERARY FORMS: POETRY
Emily Dickinson	Because I could not stop for Death—	Poem	420
	I heard a Fly buzz—when I died—	Poem	422
	There's a certain Slant of light,	Poem	424
	My life closed twice before its close—	Poem	424
	The Soul selects her own Society—	Poem	425
	The Brain—is wider than the Sky—	Poem	426
	There is a solitude of space	Poem	427
	Water, is taught by thirst	Poem	428
Comparing Literary Works
Walt Whitman	from Preface to the 1855 Edition of Leaves of Grass	Nonfiction	434
	from Song of Myself	Poem	436
	When I Heard the Learn'd Astronomer	Poem	440
	By the Bivouac's Fitful Flame	Poem	441
	I Hear America Singing	Poem	442
	A Noiseless Patient Spider	Poem	444