George Edward Woodberry, Litt. D., LL. D. (1855–1930) was an American literary critic and poet. Born in Beverly, Massachusetts, Woodberry graduated from Harvard College in 1877, and became professor of English at the University of Nebraska. In 1891–1904 he was professor of comparative literature at Columbia University. He was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Letters. In 1930 he was posthumously awarded one of the first three Frost Medals for lifetime achievement in poetry by the Poetry Society of America. He wrote a number of books as well. Other publications: He edited The complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley (1892); Lamb's Essays of Elia (1892); The Works of Edgar Allan Poe, with E. C. Stedman (1894); and Select Poems of Aubrey de Vere (1894). He wrote compositions in the "National Studies in American Letters," and Columbia University Studies in Comparative Literature, (nine volumes). "Defeat is not the worst of failures. Not to have tried is the true failure.
Nightingales warble about it,
All night under blossom and star;
The wild swan is dying without it,
And the eagle crieth afar;
...
I
England, I stand on thy imperial ground,
Not all a stranger; as thy bugles blow,
...
Where are the friends that I knew in my Maying,
In the days of my youth, in the first of my roaming?
We were dear; we were leal; O, far we went straying;
Now never a heart to my heart comes homing! --
...
MOTHER of nations, of them eldest we,
Well is it found, and happy for the state,
When that which makes men proud first makest them great,
...
TO tremble, when I touch her hands,
With awe that no man understands;
To feel soft reverence arise
When, lover-sweet, I meet her eyes;
...