Cornell University Library 
 PS 1185.C39B8 1865 
 
 3 1924 022 052 421 
 
The original of this book is in 
 the Cornell University Library. 
 
 There are no known copyright restrictions in 
 the United States on the use of the text. 
 
 http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924022052421 
 
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 NEW YORK: 
 PUBLISHED BY THE CENTUEY ASSOCIATION. \J i 
 
 1^ 
 
 M.DCCO.LXV. 
 
Entered, according to Act of Congress, in tlie year 1864; by 
 
 THE CENTURY ASSOCIATION, 
 
 In the Clerk's OflBce of the District Court of the United States for the Southern District of New Yorli. 
 
 Only one hundred and fifty copies printed. 
 
THE BEYANT FESTIVAL. 
 
 44 
 
 mHE CENTURY," of which Mr. Bryant was one of the 
 I original founders and trustees, and remains an assid- 
 uous member, by a spontaneous movement seized the occa- 
 sion of his completing his seventieth year, to mark theii 
 good will to their beloved associate and their pride in his 
 fame. The third of November was the day of his birth ; the 
 evening of the fifth was selected for their festival. Invita- 
 tions to be present were sent to many of his friends in 
 various parts of the country; and, as was expected, met 
 with the most cordial responses and acceptance. Some idea 
 of the design got abroad, and notwithstanding the excite- 
 ment of an impending national election, there were abundant 
 evidences that it touched the sympathy of the great public. 
 
As the company at the appointed time entered the house 
 of the Century, they found the hall decorated with long and 
 graceful lines of festoons of fresh flowers and evergreen. 
 The gallery, which was brilliantly and skilfully lighted, was 
 hung round with five-and-twenty new pictures, and a work 
 in sculpture, all by members of the Century. These were 
 ''The Mischief Maker," hj Leutze; a Marine View, a Sea- 
 Coast, and a Sketch from Nature, by Kensett; ''The Seventh 
 Regiment in Gamp" and a Scene on the Coast of Maine, by 
 GriFFORD ; a Landscape, by Cropset ; " Lonely," by Hennessy ; 
 a portrait, by Le Clear ; Nahant Coast, and a Sketch from 
 Nature, by Haseltine ; " Dogs and Rat," by Hats ; " Venice," 
 by Huntington; "Sunny Llours," by Lang; "Reading the 
 News," and "A Flower-girl," by Rossiter; "Evening" by 
 Colman; "By the Sea,'' by Benson; "Study of a Horse," by 
 Dana; " Lady of Seville," hj Haia^; a, portrait, hj ^101^^; a 
 portrait, " The Carrier Pigeon" The Companions, and " Tn 
 the Woods" by Hicks; and the model of a horse, by Brown. 
 
 Precisely at nine o'clock, the procession, consisting of Mr. 
 Bryant, the guests of the Century, and its officers, moved into 
 the large saloon, to the music of a band in the balcony. The 
 room was already filled by about four hundred persons, mem- 
 bers of the Century, and ladies. The decorations were ex- 
 clusively of natural flowers, which had been sent by members 
 
of the Association in profusion, as if the season had been the 
 last of spring rather than early winter. Behind the raised 
 platform on which Mr. Bryant and the President took their 
 seats, was a lyre, composed entirely of fresh violets, amaranths, 
 and immortelles, and in its strings the initials of the poet's 
 name were written in flowers. Above the lyre was his marble 
 bust, crowned with laurel. Upon the walls were hung various 
 passages from his poems, inscribed on tablets in letters of gold. 
 Among others equally appropriate were these : 
 
 In sucli a bright, late quiet would that I 
 
 Might wear out life like thee, 'mid bowers and brooks, 
 And dearer yet, the sunshine of kind looks, 
 
 And music of kind voices ever nigh. 
 
 For thou hast taught us with delighted eye. 
 To gaze upon the mountains — to behold 
 
 With deep affection the pure, ample sky. 
 And clouds along its blue abysses rolled — 
 
 To love the song of waters, and to hear 
 
 The melody of winds with charmed ear. 
 
 His love of truth, too warm, too strong 
 
 For Hope or Fear to chain or chill. 
 His hate of Tyranny and wrong. 
 
 Burn in the breasts he kindled, still. 
 
Let the mimic canvas show 
 His calm, benevolent features ; let the light 
 Stream o'er his deeds of love, that shunned the sight 
 
 Of all but Heaven ; and in the book of fame 
 The glorious record of his virtues write, 
 And hold it up to men, and bid them claim 
 A palm like his, and catch from him the hallowed flame. 
 
 No sooner had the music ceased, than the President rose^ 
 and amidst every testimony of the unanimous adhesion of the 
 audience^ spoke as follows : 
 
 WlLTilAM CxiLLEN BbTAWT : 
 
 The Century has set apart this evening to show you honor. 
 All its members, the old and the young, crowd around you like 
 brothers round a brother — like children round a father. Our wives 
 and daughters have come with us, that they, too, may join in the 
 pleasant office of bearing witness to your worth. The artists of our 
 association, whose labors you have ever been ready to cheer, whose 
 merits you have loved to proclaim, unite to bring an enduring 
 memorial to your excellence in an art near akin to their own. A 
 noble band of your compeers in your own high calling, from all parts 
 of the country, offer their salutations and praise and good wishes in a 
 full chorus of respect and affection. Others, who could not accept 
 our invitation, keep the festival by themselves, and are now in their 
 own homes going over the years which you have done so much to 
 gladden. 
 
It is primaiily your career as a poet that we celelsrate. The 
 moment is well chosen. While the mountains and the ocean side 
 ring with the tramp of cavalry and the din of cannon, and the nation 
 is in its agony, and an earthquake sweeps through the land, we take 
 a respite to escape into the serene region of ideal pursuits which can 
 never fail. 
 
 It has been thought praise enough of another to say that he 
 "wrote no line which dying he could wish to Wot." Every line 
 which you have written may be remembered by yourself and by 
 others at all times, for your genius has listened only to the whisper- 
 ings of the beautiful and the pure. 
 
 Moreover, a warm nationality runs through all your verse. 
 Your imagination took the hue of the youth of our country, and has 
 reflected its calm contemplative moods, when the pulses of its early 
 life beat vigorously but smoothly, and no bad passions had distorted 
 its countenance. The clashing whirlwinds of civil war, the sublime 
 energy and perseverance of the people, the martyrdom of myriads of 
 its bravest and best, its new birth through terrible sufferings, will 
 give a more passionate and tragic and varied cast to the literature of 
 the coming generations. A thousand years hence posterity will turn 
 to your pages as to those which best mirror the lovely earnestness of 
 the rising republic, the sweet musings of her years of innocence, when 
 she was aU. unfamiliar -with sorrow, bright with the halo of promise, 
 seizing the great solitudes by the busy hosts of civilization, and 
 guiding the nations of the earth iuto the pleasant paths of freedom 
 and of peace. 
 
 You have derived your inspii-ation as a poet from your love of 
 nature, and she has returned your affection and blessed you as her 
 favored son. At three score and ten years your eye is un dimmed. 
 
your step light and fi'ee as in youth, and the lyre which ever re- 
 sponded so willingly to your touch refuses to leave your hand. 
 
 Our tribute to you is to the poet ; hut we should not have paid 
 it had we not revered you as a man. Your blameless life is a 
 continuous record of patriotism and integrity ; and passing untouched 
 thi'ough the fiery conflicts that grow out of the ambition of others, 
 you have, as all agree, preserved a perfect consistency with yourself, 
 and an unswerving, unselfish fidelity to your convictions. 
 
 This is high praise, but the period at which we address you 
 removes even the suspicion of flattery, for it is the completing of 
 your seventieth year. It is a solemn thing to draw nearer and nearer 
 to eternity; you teach us how to meet old age. With each year you 
 have become more and more genial, have cherished larger and still 
 larger sympathies with your felloAV-men ; and if time has set on you 
 any mark, you preserve in all its freshness the youth of the soul. 
 
 What remains but to wish you a long-continued life, crowned 
 with health and prosperity, with happiness and honour ? Live on 
 till you hear your children's children rise up and call you blessed. 
 Live on for the sake of us, your old associates, for whom life would 
 lose much of its lustre in. losing you as a companion and friend. 
 Live on for your own sake, that you may enjoy the better day of 
 which your eye already catches the dawn. Where faith discerned 
 the Saviour of the world, the unbeliever looked only on a man of 
 sorrows, crowned with thorns, and tottering under the burden of the 
 cross on which he was to die. The social skeptic sees America 
 sitting apart in her afiliction, stung by vipers at her bosom, and 
 welcomed to the pit by " earth's ancient kings ; " but through all the 
 anguish of her grief you teach us to behold her in immortal beauty, as 
 she steps onward through trials to brighter glory. Live to enjoy her 
 
< 
 
9 
 
 coming triumpli, when the acknowledged power of right shall tear 
 the root of sorrow out of the heart of the country, and make her 
 more than ever the guardian of human liberty and the regenerator of 
 the race. 
 
 MR. BRYANT'S REPLY TO MR. BANCROFT. 
 
 I thank you, Mr. President, for the kind words you have uttered, 
 and I thank this good-natured company for having listened to them 
 with so many tokens of assent and approbation. I must suppose, 
 however, that most of this approbation was bestowed upon the orator 
 rather than upon his subject. He who has brought to the writing 
 of our national history a genius equal to the vastness of the subject, 
 has of course more than talent enough for humbler tasks. I wonder 
 not, therefore, that he should be applauded this evening for the skill 
 he has shown in embellishing a barren topic. 
 
 I am congratulated on having completed my seventieth year. 
 Is there nothing ambiguous, Mr. President, in such a compliment ? 
 To be congratulated on one's senility ! To be congratulated on having 
 reached that stage of life when the bodily and mental powers pass 
 into decline and decay ! Lear is made by Shakespeare to say, 
 
 " Age is unnecessary ;'' 
 
 and a later poet. Dr. Johnson, has expressed the same idea in one of 
 his sonorous lines : 
 
 " Superfluous lags the veteran on the stage." 
 
 You have not forgotten, Mr. President, the old Greek saying : 
 
 " Whom the gods love die young," — 
 
10 
 
 nor the passage in Wordswortli : 
 
 " Oh, sir, the good die first, 
 
 And they whose hearts are dry as summer dust, 
 Bum to the socket." 
 
 Mucli has been said of the wisdom of Old Age. Old Age is 
 wise, I grant, for itself, but not wise for the community. It is wise 
 in declining new enterprises, for it has not the power nor the time to 
 execute them ; wise in shrinking from difficulty, for it has not the 
 strength to overcome it ; wise in avoiding danger, for it lacks the 
 faculty of ready and swift action, by which dangers are parried and 
 converted into advantages. But this is not wisdom for mankind at 
 lai'ge, by whom new enterprises must be undertaken, dangers met, 
 and difficulties surmounted. What a world would this be if it were 
 made up of old men ! — generation succeeding generation of hoary 
 ancients who had but a dozen years or perhaps half that time to live ! 
 What new work of good would be attempted? what existing abuse 
 or evil corrected? What strange subjects would such a world afford 
 for the pencils of our artists — groups of superannuated gray-beards 
 basking in the sun through the long days of spring, or huddling like 
 sheep in warm corners in the winter time ; houses with the timbers 
 dropping apart ; cities in ruins ; roads un wrought and impassable ; 
 weedy gardens and fields with the surface feebly scratched to put in a 
 scanty harvest ; decrepit old men clambering into crazy wagons, 
 perhaps to be run away with, or mounting horses, if they mounted 
 them at all, in terror of being hurled from their backs like a stone 
 from a sling. Well it is that in this world of ours the old men are 
 but a very small minority. 
 
 Ah, Mr. President, if we could but stop this rushing tide of time 
 
11 
 
 that bears us so swiftly onward, and make it flow towards its source ; 
 if we could cause the shadow to turn back on the dial-plate ! I see 
 before me many excellent friends of mine, worthy to live a thousand 
 years, on whose countenances years have set their seal, marking them 
 with the lines of thought and care, and causing their temples to glis- 
 ten with the frosts of life's autumn. If to any one of them could be 
 restored his glorious prime, his golden youth with its hyacinthine 
 locks, its smooth, unwriakled brow, its fresh and rounded cheek, its 
 pearly and perfect teeth, its lustrous eyes, its light and boundiug step, 
 its frame full of energy, its exulting spirits, its high hopes, its gener- 
 ous impulses, and, if all these could be added to the experience and 
 fixed principles of mature age, I am sure, Mr. President, that I should 
 start at once to my feet and propose that in commemoration of such a 
 marvel and by way of congratulating our friend who was its subject, 
 we should hold such a festivity as the Century has never seen nor will 
 ever see again. Eloquence should bring its highest tribute, and Art 
 its fairest decorations to grace the festival ; the most skilful musicianis 
 should be here with all manner of instruments of music, ancient and 
 modern ; we would have sackbut, and trumpet, and shawm, and dam- 
 sels with dulcimers, and a modern band three times as large as the 
 one that now plays on that balcony. But why dwell on such a vain 
 dream, since it is only by passing through the darkness that overhangs 
 the Valley of the Shadow of Death that man can reach his second 
 youth ? 
 
 I have read, in descriptions of the old world, of the families of 
 princes and barons coming out of their castles to be present at some 
 rustic festivity, such as a wedding of one of their peasantry. I am 
 reminded of this custom by the presence of many literary persons of 
 
 eminence in these rooms, and I thank them for this act of benevolence. 
 
 2 
 
12 
 
 Yet I miss among ttem several whom I had wished rather than ven- 
 tured to hope that I should meet on this occasion. I miss my old 
 friend Dana, who gave so grandly the story of the Buccaneer in his 
 solemn verses. I miss Pierpont, veneraLle in years, yet vigorous in mind 
 and body, and with an undimmed fancy; and him whose pages are wet 
 with the tears of maidens who read the story of Evangeline ; and the 
 author of Fanny and the Croakers, no less renowned for the fiery 
 spirit which animated his Marco Bozzaris ; and him to whose wit we 
 owe the Biglow Papers, who has made a lowly flower of the wayside 
 as classical as the rose of Anacreon ; and the Quaker poet, whose 
 verses, Quaker as he is, stir the blood like the voice of a trumpet call- 
 ing to battle ; and the poetess of Hartford, whose beautiful lyrics are 
 in a million hands ; and others, whose names, were they to occur to 
 me here as in my study, I might accompany with the mention of some 
 characteristic merit. But here is he whose aerial verse has raised the 
 little insect of our fields making his murmuring journey from flower 
 to flower, the humble-bee, to a dignity equal to that of Pindar's 
 eagle ; here is the Autocrat of the Breakfast Table — author of that 
 most spirited of naval lyrics, beginning with the line : 
 
 " Aye, tear her tattered ensign down ! " 
 
 here is the poet who told in pathetic verse the story of Jephthah's 
 daughter; here, too, is the bard of Philadelphia, whose war songs have 
 been read by half the nation ; and here are others, worthy compeers 
 of those I have mentioned, yet greatly my juniors, in the brightness 
 of whose rising fame I am like one who has carried a lantern in the 
 night, and who perceives that its beams are no longer visible iu the 
 glory which the morning pours around him. To them and to all the 
 members of the Century, allow me, Mr. President, to offer the wish 
 
13 
 
 that they may live longer than I have done, in health of body and 
 mind, and in the same contentment and serenity of spirit which has 
 fallen to my lot. I must not overlook the ladies who have deigned 
 to honor these rooms with their presence. K I knew where, amid 
 myrtle bowers and flowers that never wither, gushed from the ground 
 the Fountain of Pei-petual Youth so long vainly sought by the first 
 Spanish adventurers on the North American continent, I would offer 
 to the lips of every one of them a beaker of its fresh and sparkling 
 waters, and bid them drink unfading bloom. But since that is not to 
 be, I will wish what, perhaps, is as well, and what some would think 
 better, that the same kindness of heart which has prompted them to 
 come hither to-night, may lend a beauty to every action of their future 
 lives. And to " The Century " itself — the dear old Century — to whose 
 members I owe both the honors and the embarrassments of this occa- 
 sion — to that association, fortunate in having possessed two such pres- 
 idents as the distinguished historian who now occupies the chair, 
 and the eminent and accomplished scholar and admirable writer who 
 preceded him, I offer the a\ ish that it may endure, not only for the 
 term of years signified by its name — not for one century only, but for 
 ten centuries — so that hereafter, perhaps, its members may discuss the 
 question whether its name should not be changed to that of the Club 
 of a Thousand Years, and that these may be centuiies of peace and 
 prosperity, from which its members may look back to this period of 
 bloody strife, as to a frightful dream soon chased away by the beams 
 of a glorious morning. 
 
 No sooner had the applause which attended and fol- 
 lowed Mr. Bryant's remarks subsided^ than choristers in the 
 balcony struck up a chant for his birthday, by Bayard Taylor : 
 
14 
 
 I. 
 
 One hour be silent, sounds of war ! 
 
 Delay the battle he foretold, 
 And let the bard's triumphant star 
 
 Pour down from Heaven its mildest gold. 
 
 n. 
 
 Let Fame, that plucks but laurel now 
 
 For loyal heroes, turn away, 
 And twine, to crown her poet's brow, 
 
 The greener garland of the bay. 
 
 m. 
 
 For he, our earliest minstrel, fills 
 
 The land with echoes, sweet and long, 
 
 Gives language to her silent hills. 
 And bids her rivers move to song. 
 
 IV. 
 
 The Phosphor of the Nation's dawn. 
 Sole-risen above our tuneless coast. 
 
 As Hesper, now, his lamp burns on — 
 The leader of the starry host. 
 
 V. 
 
 He sings of mountains and of streams. 
 Of storied field and haunted dale. 
 
 Yet hears a voice through all his dreams. 
 Which says, " The Good shall yet prevail." 
 
15 
 
 VI. 
 
 He sings of truth, lie sings of right ; 
 
 He sings of Freedom, and Ms strains 
 March with our armies to the fight, 
 
 Ring in the Ibondman's falling chains. 
 
 vn. 
 God, bid him live, till in her place' 
 
 Truth, crushed to earth, again shall rise — 
 The " mother of a mighty race," 
 
 Fulfil her poet's prophecies. 
 
 The most venerable of American poets would have next 
 been looked to ; his absence was explained by 
 
 ME. RICHARD H. DANA'S LETTER TO "THE CENTURY." 
 
 Gentlemen : 
 
 I was much gratified upon seeing in the papers that "The Cen- 
 tury " would keep the day on which my old friend Mr. Bryant is to 
 take his place among the septuagenarians : may he live to be number- 
 ed with the next " upper ten." I am sorry, that, being within a very 
 few years of the latter class, and feeling the touch of infirmities, it 
 will be out of my power to take advantage of the invitation so kind- 
 ly extended to me. It is good for us to give honour where it is due ; 
 and it would be cheering to me to pay it to one who has done so 
 much to throw beauty over our common life. As it is, I must be con- 
 tent at home with setting apart the time of your meeting together to 
 
16 
 
 thinMng upon what you are all enjoying, and to going over by my- 
 self the many years to which our friend has added so much to gladden 
 a protracted life. 
 
 The letter having been read, the President introduced a 
 representative of New England : 
 
 MR. RALPH WALDO EMERSON'S REMARKS. 
 
 Mr. President: 
 
 Whilst I am grateful to you and to " The Century " for the 
 privilege of joining you in this graceful and most deserved homage to 
 our poet, I am a little disconcerted, in the absence of some expected 
 friends from the Bay State, at finding myself put forward to speak 
 on their part. Let me say for them that we have a property in his 
 genius and virtue. Whilst we delight in your love of him, and in his 
 power and reputation in your imperial State, we can never forget that 
 he was born on the soil of Massachusetts. Your great metropolis is 
 always, by some immense attraction of gravity, drawing to itself our 
 best men. But we forgive you in this case the robbery, when we see 
 how nobly you have used him. Moreover, the joint possession by 
 New York and Massachusetts of him, and of Others in this great circle 
 of his friends, is one of those ethereal hoops which bind these States 
 inseparably in these perilous times. 
 
 I join with all my heart in your wish to honor this native, sincere, 
 original, patriotic poet. I say original : I have heard him charged with 
 being of a certain school. I heard it with surprise, and asked, what 
 school ? for he never reminded me of Goldsmith, or Wordsworth, or 
 
11 
 
 Byron, or Moore. I found him always original, a true painter of tlie 
 face of tMs country, and of tlie sentiment of his own people. When I 
 read the verses of popular American and English poets, I often think 
 that they appear to have gone into the Art Galleries and to have seen 
 pictures of mountains, but this man to have seen mountains. With 
 his stout staff iie has climbed Grey lock and the White Hills, and sung 
 what he saw. He renders Berkshire to me in verse, with the sober 
 coloring, too, to which nature cleaves, only now and then permitting 
 herself the scarlet and gold of the prism. It is his proper praise, that 
 he first and he only made known to mankind our northern landscape — 
 its summer splendor, its autumn russet, its winter lights and glooms. 
 And he is original because he is sincere. Many young men write 
 verse which strikes by talent, but the writer has not committed him- 
 self, the man is not there, it is written at arm's length, he could as 
 well have written on any other theme : it was not necessitated and 
 autobiographic, and therefore it does not imprint itself on the memory, 
 and return for thought and consolation in our solitary hours. But 
 our friend's inspiration is from the inmost mind ; he has not a labial 
 but a chest voice, and you shall detect the tastes and experiences of 
 the poem in his daily life. 
 
 Like other poets — more than other poets — with his expanding 
 genius his ambition grew. Fountain-heads and pathless groves did 
 not content him. It is a national sin. There is, you know, an optical 
 distemper endemic in the city of Washington, contracted by Senators 
 and others who once look at the President's chair ; their eyes grow 
 to it ; they can never again take their eyes off it. The virus once in 
 is not to be got out of the system. Our friend had not this malady, 
 but has symptoms of another, 
 
 " That last infirmity of noble minds." 
 
18 
 
 Ah, gentlemen ! so cold and majestic as lie sits here, I fear this sin 
 burned at his heart — well hid, I own ; never was man more modest, 
 less boastful, less egotistical. But you remember that wicked Phidias, 
 who, after making his divine Minerva, carved his own image with 
 such deep incision into the shield, that it could not be effaced without 
 destroying the statue. But this artist of ours, with deeper cunning, 
 has contrived to levy on all American nature, has subsidized every 
 solitary grove and monument-mountain in Berkshire or the Katskills, 
 every gleaming water, the " gardens of the Desert," every waterfowl 
 and woodbird, the evening wind, the stormy March, the song of the 
 stars ; — has suborned every one of these to speak for him, so that there 
 is no feature of day or night in the country which does not, to a 
 contemplative mind, recall the name of Bryant. This high-handed 
 usurpation of whatever is sweet or sublime, I charge him with, and, 
 on the top of this, with the sorcery of making us hug our fetters and 
 rejoice in our subjugation. 
 
 Then, sir, for his patriotism — we all know the deep debt which 
 the country owes to the accomplished journalist, who, the better to 
 carry the ends which his heart desired, left the studies and retire- 
 ments dear to his muse, adapted his voice to the masses to be reached, 
 and the great cause to be sustained — was content to drop "the garland 
 and singing-robes of the poet," and, masking his Tyrtaean elegies ia 
 the plain speech of the street, sounded the key-note of policy and 
 public duty to the American people, in a manner and with an effect 
 of the highest service to the Republic. 
 
 Before I sit down, let me apply to him a verse addressed by 
 Thomas Moore to the poet Crabbe, and Moore has written few better : 
 
 " True bard, and simple as the race 
 Of Heaven-born poets always are, 
 
19 
 
 When stooping from theii- stairy place, 
 They're children near, but gods afar." 
 
 The audience listened with hearty approval to the gen- 
 erous tribute from one man of genius to another. From all 
 parts of the country representatives were present ; the plat- 
 form was next taken by a representative of Pennsylvania, who 
 did but embody the sentiments and wishes of all around him. 
 
 BRYANT. 
 
 Novemher ?>th, 1864. 
 BY GEORGE H. BOKER. 
 
 With timid steps, as one who enters ia 
 A solemn temple from the city's din, 
 And hears behind the mighty portals close 
 Upon the world's long chase of joys and woes, 
 And half forgets his mission, through intense 
 Awe at the chancel's calm magnificence : 
 So I, a stranger with a recent name — 
 More on the people's than the lips of fame — 
 In this august assemblage faltering stand, 
 And doubt the right I use by your command. 
 Behold the temple that around me lies, 
 A growth of earth, but swelling to the skies ; 
 Eaised in a night, that he who fills the shrine, 
 Founder and glory of our tuneful line, 
 
20 
 
 May hold tte state his genius owns by right, 
 
 And claim our homage in the nation's sight. 
 
 What prouder pile was ever built by hands 
 
 Than that which fancy, as her eye expands. 
 
 Shapes from this mass of noble forms and minds, 
 
 Builds as she broods, and in one structure Vjinds ? 
 
 I see before me, clustered side by side, 
 
 The stateliest columns of my country's pride, — 
 
 Poets, historians, and those whose art 
 
 Makes fiction truth, and gives to shadows heart. 
 
 A storied frieze their laurelled brows uphold. 
 
 Enriched with legends grand and manifold ; 
 
 Or glowing Avith that quiet hearth-side light 
 
 Which makes the homeliest face beloved and bright. 
 
 To right and left, wide chapels flash their store 
 
 Of painted wonders from the walls, and pour 
 
 A flood of gloiy on each hand that wrought 
 
 Its new creation from exhaustless tliought. 
 
 Here rest the sculptured shapes that never know 
 
 A mortal touch to passion's ebb or flow. 
 
 Calm in their deathless grace and changeless mood. 
 
 They front their fate with godlike fortitude. 
 
 Or breathe their love in ever-listening ears. 
 
 Or drop in sorrow their eternal tears ; 
 
 Kneel at a tomb whence human grief has fled, 
 
 And pray to Heaven for man's forgotten dead. 
 
 Shall I, half trembling at the thing I do. 
 
 Speak of the windows, whence the light shines through 
 
 Upon this Avorld of art ? O critics keen. 
 
21 
 
 Your lucid minds give splendor to tlie scene ; 
 You are tlie medium of the heavenly rays ; 
 Groups, pictures, poems kindle in your blaze. 
 Without your aid we see no art aright ; 
 But is't not sometimes party-colored light 
 That flames upon us from your tinted panes. 
 And haply glorifies, or haply stains ? 
 I shall not ask. The marvel of the roof. 
 That crowns this temple draws my eyes aloof. 
 Wide as Grod's azure vault it spreads above, 
 A perfect dome of man's triumphant love ; 
 And all the vastness of its cloudless coj^e 
 Burns with the stars of memory and of hope. 
 Such is your temple, Bryant ! Do I strain 
 The figure farther than the facts sustain ? 
 Look on the neighboring groups, ye doubting few 
 And own yourselves convicted at the view. 
 To me the sight of those assembled here 
 Will be a wonder tUl my latest year. 
 My memory holds no picture in its round 
 So sure in aim, in justice so profound, 
 So free from any passion that might taint 
 The holiest scene man's cunning art could paint ; 
 Nor can I hope, outliving Nestor's years. 
 To see again these intellectual peers 
 Marshal their ranks, to honor any chief 
 With joy's acclaims, or with the tears of grief. 
 'T were vain in me to ape great Homer's plan, 
 And give his title to each noted man. 
 
22 
 
 Why should I echo an illustrious name, 
 
 Already sounding from the lips of Fame ? 
 
 Or like a wren, my twittering notes prolong 
 
 Amidst these sky-larks of our native song ? 
 
 Thus much however ; what the wren may owe 
 
 The morning's laureate, I am proud to show. 
 
 Great Master of my Country's earnest lyre. 
 
 What heart so humble that cannot aspire 
 
 With grateful pride, to feel itself the while 
 
 Blessed by the bounty of your generous smile ? 
 
 To know, though vexed with doubts and crossed with fears. 
 
 That from the audience Bryant bends and hears ; 
 
 And in the largess of his patient heart. 
 
 Takes the intention as the deed's best part ? 
 
 Why should I tremble, holding by the hand 
 
 That led my youth across his wondrous land ? 
 
 Through every feeling that can move the mind. 
 
 Through noisy joy, through sorrow dumb and blind, 
 
 Through the cool ways of philosophic thought. 
 
 Over the fields where bloody frays were fought. 
 
 Into the silence of the forest nook, 
 
 Down the green pathway of the primrose brook. 
 
 By God's own gardens in the meadows sown. 
 
 Around the prairie's sky-encompassed zone, 
 
 Across the fiery steps of dying day. 
 
 Where the lone wild-fowl winged his fearless way. 
 
 Up to the peaks that bury in the sun 
 
 Their golden foreheads, where the bright stars run 
 
 Theii' silver circle round the frozen pole, 
 
23 
 
 And through the mysteries of man's solemn soul, 
 O Bryant, partner of my path and guide. 
 We two have journeyed onward side by side. 
 Yours was the realm. At your imperial look 
 The dew-drop glittered and the gentian shook, 
 The circling swallow dipped his restless wings, 
 The feathered conclave perched in silent rings, 
 The furry beast came purring to your feet, 
 All Nature bowed before your sovereign seat. 
 Crowned with the laurel, sceptred with the lyre. 
 Sage with the secrets of its magic wire ; 
 Wearing the purple by a right divine. 
 That shamed the claimants of the haughtiest line ; 
 Amongst the votaries of your throne I stood 
 With regal longings stirring in my blood. 
 Blame not a boy, if I essayed ere long 
 To catch the key-note of your matchless song. 
 Failed at the first, as at this latest hour. 
 But, failing, learned the mystery of your power. 
 Hearken, ye bards who err by rigid rules, 
 And wear the tawdry livery of the schools ; 
 Who strive to shine as other lights have shone. 
 And envying others, forfeit what's your own ! 
 Write, as he wrote, with honest, simple pains, 
 Out of the seeds God planted in your brains. 
 Out of the fulness of yom- nation's heart. 
 Nor vex the dead with imitative art ; 
 Nor cross the natural limit of your seas. 
 To seek a strength that fills our stronger breeze. 
 
24 
 
 For were tlie copy as the first mould cast, — 
 
 Out on the thing ! a copy 'tis at last ! 
 
 By mere descent no poet shall be known ; 
 
 Each royal minstrel holds his separate throne, 
 
 And o'er his state a seraph's brand is whirled : 
 
 One Milton is enough for any world. 
 
 Poet revered, you taught this lesson first, 
 
 As from the bondage of the schools you burst, 
 
 And fiUed our startled but delighted sense 
 
 With our wide land's discovered affluence ; 
 
 Gave the scorned legends of our nan'ow past 
 
 Another color and more graceful cast ; 
 
 Touched the wild flowers beneath our lucid skies. 
 
 And shook their glimmer in the dreamer's eyes ; 
 
 Made history light upon unstoried hills. 
 
 And breathed a voice along our savage rills ; 
 
 Spread over all the haze of fresh romance. 
 
 Till Europe wondered through her doubting glance ; 
 
 But wondered more that every tone rang out 
 
 The clarion challenge of a freeman's shout ; 
 
 Sounding defiance to their castes and kings. 
 
 Their courtly follies over empty things ; 
 
 But, O my Bryant, tempered sweet and low. 
 
 To tenderest pity, was your music flow 
 
 Over the trampled serfs that raised their groans 
 
 Beneath the shadows of resplendent thrones. 
 
 Warm was the welcome of the hand you gave 
 
 Across our threshold to the fleeing slave ; 
 
 And stern the courage of your angry frown, 
 
25 
 
 When tyrants raged for what they called their own. 
 
 You were the first who made us clearly see, 
 
 In rhythnaic words, how grand 'tis to be free ; 
 
 Sang to the world the spirit of our land. 
 
 And waved her standard from your spotless hand ; 
 
 Taught every child the glory of his birth, 
 
 And spread his heritage around the earth ; 
 
 Made youth feel stronger, that his life began 
 
 Here in the front of freedom's hardy van ; 
 
 Consoled the sage against foreboding fears, 
 
 And starred with hopes the shadows of his years. 
 
 Two lives the poet lives, 'tis said. In you 
 
 Both gently mingle in a man so true 
 
 To the pure instincts of his sacred gift. 
 
 That slander's self can point no adverse drift. 
 
 "Whether the subtle rhetoric of your pen 
 
 In prose or verse address itself to men, 
 
 Or the convincing logic of your tongue. 
 
 With which the rostrums of the State have rung, 
 
 Be raised in counsel ; who will dare to say 
 
 They passed truth's landmarks for a novel way ; 
 
 Or ranged themselves, in peace or open fight. 
 
 On any side but on the side of right ? 
 
 So well the man becomes the poet's crown. 
 
 That each gives each a measure of renown ; 
 
 Imbue each other, form a perfect whole. 
 
 And top our race with one exalted soul. 
 
 Let me no longer try the public ear 
 
 With what men knew before they entered here ; 
 
26 
 
 Or mar your title with my tedious lines, 
 
 And breathe a mist upon a thing that shines. 
 
 We hail you, poet, with our greeting shout ; 
 
 From this thronged hall the cry goes rolling out 
 
 Above the city, that takes up the sound, 
 
 And spreads the welcome to the country round. 
 
 Each fruitful valley and each echoing hill. 
 
 That feel the touch of your fame-giving will, 
 
 Wake as the tones slide down the happy gales. 
 
 To wave our flag, or fill our swelling sails. 
 
 The dew-beads twinkle, and the wild flowers nod ; 
 
 The robins carol from the tawny sod ; 
 
 The slave turns lightly in his galling chain, 
 
 Prays low, then dreams of liberty again. 
 
 Nature and man repeat the mystic thrill. 
 
 That proved the power of the magician's skill, 
 
 When, as a youth, you struck your country's lyre. 
 
 And filled its pauses with your spirit's fire. 
 
 Long may the years that hear your powerful rhyme. 
 
 Stretch out your life along the coming time ! 
 
 We hear no discord, nothing of decay 
 
 In the fresh music of your latest lay. 
 
 Youth nerves the poet ; why may not the man 
 
 Leave far behind the Psalmist's fated span ; 
 
 Like a pure tone, his purer life prolong, 
 
 Live with the life of his immortal song ? 
 
 God grant it, Bryant ! I have not a prayer 
 
 That would not clamber up the heavenly air. 
 
 To kneel before the splendor of the Throne, 
 
27 
 
 If thus another blessing could be sown 
 
 In the fair garden of your blooming days, 
 
 Already fragrant with a nation's praise, 
 
 Bright with the wreaths the total world hath given, 
 
 And warm with love that's sanctified by Heaven. 
 
 The great West sent an honored artist and poet, who 
 travelled eight hundred miles by night and day, to appear in 
 its behalf ; and these are the stanzas in which he expressed 
 the spirit of those from whom he came : 
 
 TO BRYANT. 
 
 BY THOMAS BUCHANAN READ. 
 
 What time I ope, with reverential love. 
 One of the charmed volumes of my choice, 
 
 I hear, as in the cloisters of the grove, 
 The solemn music of thy Druid voice. 
 
 All sights and sounds that can delight impart, 
 
 Or whatsoe'er athwart thy vision swims, 
 Before the altar of the world's great heart, 
 
 Thou nobly breathest in undying hymns. 
 
 For thy broad love there is no flower too small, 
 
 Nor scene too vast for thy encircling mind ; 
 
 Thy heart is one with Nature's, yet o'er all 
 
 Rises its sweet vibration for mankind. 
 4 
 
28 
 
 The faintest breath that finds a flowery nook, 
 The flying winds with wise and gust-like locks, 
 
 The pebble which the lapidary brook 
 
 Rounds into form — or ocean-scorning rocks ; 
 
 The burnished blue-bird, with his spring-time song, 
 The azure- winged runnel's April call ; 
 
 The timid wren, the falcon fierce and strong, 
 The soaring water-fowl, the swooping fall ; 
 
 The glow-worm's lantern and the lunar car, 
 The midnight taper and the noonday sun. 
 
 The pool where swims the lily like a star. 
 The boundless sea, with lily sails o'errun ; 
 
 The brooklet blade the lightest wavelet moves. 
 Where childhood's paper sails are set unfurled, 
 
 The antique home of shade, the oaken groves, 
 Growing the ponderous navies of the world ; 
 
 The peaceful hearthstone and the roaring field, 
 The song-bird and our eagle on his crag, 
 
 The love of all that quiet home can yield. 
 The love of country, freedom, and her flag ; 
 
 All these are thine, thou pioneer of song, 
 Bard of the prairie and primeval grove, 
 
 And unto thee our praise may well belong — 
 Yea, more than praise — the homage of our love. 
 
29 
 
 And this is thine, and therefore I obey, 
 And bow. before thy Druid locks of snow. 
 
 And on thy sacred altar here I lay 
 My votive branch of western mistletoe. 
 
 From the Britisli Provinces there was received an assur- 
 ance that the Saint Lawrence cannot set bounds to the 
 friendly recognition of merit. 
 
 EXTRACT OF A GREETING FROM CANADA TO WILLIAM Cin.(,K,LN 
 BRYANT ON HIS lOTR BIRTHDAY. 
 
 All honor to the lyric few 
 
 Of every land and nation. 
 The tuneful throng whose souls of song 
 
 Are deeps of inspiration. 
 O ! sad old world, where were thy boast 
 
 Unless these struck the lyre ! 
 Thou had'st no mental Pentecost 
 
 But for their tongues of fire. 
 The sacred oracles of God 
 
 Each heaven-transmitted token, 
 The inspired word in visions heard. 
 
 Through poet-souls were spoken. 
 All honor, then, ye men of men. 
 
 In Bardic love assembled. 
 Whose truths have flown from zone to zone, 
 
 While error paused and trembled. 
 
30 
 
 Columbia's boast ! her lark-like host, 
 
 In lyric strength reliant, 
 Their carcanet of lays would set 
 
 Around the name of Biyant. 
 And well they may ; each loving la}-, 
 
 Thrice-earned, is his in duty ; 
 For who so well hath tuned the shell 
 
 To nature's worth and beauty ! 
 His burning lyre, his heart on fire 
 
 With passion true and fervent ; 
 A soul to feel for woe or weal ! 
 
 Truth's champion, priest, and servant. 
 To sterling worth their hearts go forth, 
 
 Vieing with one another ; 
 With eager feet they come to greet 
 
 Their* patriarchal brother. 
 No rival stands with folded hands, 
 
 But with one voice compliant. 
 The gifted throng, each heir of song, 
 
 Eings out the fame of Bryant. 
 Here e'en as there, our hearts can share 
 
 The greetings flung before him ; 
 In love to-day we're rich as they 
 
 Who shed their halos o'er him. 
 
 Charles Sang-ster. 
 
 Kingston, Canada West. 
 
 It had been hoped that the great people from whom we 
 inherit the best language ever used by man, since that of 
 
31 
 
 Homer and Plato died away, would have been represented 
 at the festival by one who has a singular command of that 
 language in its richness, delicacy, and strength. The Presi- 
 dent could only produce an 
 
 EXTRACT OF A LETTER FROM MR. GOLDWIN SMITH. 
 
 " I am sincerely sorry to miss the opportunity of taking part in 
 any tribute of respect to Mr. Bryant. I beg you will assure him of 
 this, and wish him joy, in my name, of the public gratitude which 
 crowns his bright and honorable career." 
 
 The admirers of the best poetry are not confined to men. 
 Offerings, voluntary, or in response to invitations, were re- 
 ceived from the other sex. 
 
 EXTRACT OF MISS C. M. SEDGWICK'S LETTER TO W. J. HOPPIN. 
 
 " WooDBOURNE (near Boston), October Slsi, 1864. 
 
 " It is one of the severest of my privations that ill-health compels 
 me to decline the very gratifying invitation from the Century. No 
 one could participate more earnestly than myself in an honor 
 rendered to my friend Mr. Bryant, to whose genius my heart 
 has given homage from its first budding to the ripening of its fruits 
 in their present sweetness and immortal perfection. To this homage 
 is added the reverence due to his character, and to the patriotic ser- 
 vice he has done for his country in keeping the fire brightly burning 
 in his watch-tower through all its weal and woe. I am happy in 
 
32 
 
 believing that some of tlie members of ' The Century ' will be glad to 
 know that they have enriched me vsdth pleasant memories which, in 
 some sort, console me for my enforced absence from the coming 
 celebration. There are lights and consolations for the dimmed hours 
 never perceived or known till they come. 
 
 " Believe me, my dear Mr. Hoppin, gratefully yours, 
 
 " C. M. SEDawiCK." 
 
 To WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT. 
 
 With a blossom of Edelweiss, //"(ym the Swiss Alps, eleven thousand feet above 
 
 the level of the sea. 
 
 BY MARY H. 0. BOOTH, OF WISCONSIN. 
 
 Not from the cultured gardens, 
 
 And not from the daisied sod, 
 Do I bring my little offering. 
 
 But down from the hills of God. 
 Down from the crystal mountains. 
 
 Where never a flower was sown. 
 Save the flower that God has planted, 
 
 In sight of the Great White Throne. 
 
 From over the nests of the eagles 
 
 And under the Angels' feet. 
 Where the opal airs of summer 
 
 And the winds of winter meet, 
 A flower I bring, an offering 
 
 From the snow hill's silver crest. 
 
33 
 
 And leave sweet songs and silver crowns 
 And earth flowers for tlie rest. 
 
 Tlie Alpine hunters tell us 
 
 That, when a Poet dies, 
 God meets him at the Golden Gate 
 
 Crowned with the Edelweiss / 
 But only those who worshipped Him 
 
 In singing nature's praise, 
 And walked beside Him on the hills 
 
 And through Life's lonely ways. 
 
 Oh King of nature's songsters ! 
 
 And thus I bring to thee 
 This blossom, from the Alpine hills. 
 
 The glorious and free. 
 That, when the Angels bid thee pause 
 
 Where oft thy soul hath trod. 
 To crown thee on the mountain tops. 
 
 Upon thy way to God — 
 
 Thou then may'st recognise the flower 
 
 As one, while yet below 
 And walking in the earthly ways. 
 
 Thou yet had'st learned to know. 
 Thus, from no cultured garden, 
 
 And not from the daisied sod, 
 Do I bring my little offering, 
 
 But down from the hills of God. 
 
 November 5th, 1864. 
 
34 
 
 AT THE CENTURY. 
 
 November pth, 1864. 
 
 BY MARY ELIZABETH WILSON SHERWOOD. 
 
 Bryant and Bancroft ! well assorted pair ! 
 Beneath the Laurel and the fragrant Pine 
 Your country's lovers saw you standing there 
 At once a memory, a hope, a sign. 
 The stirring music of the Poet's lyre 
 And the Historian's clear resounding line 
 The nation's heart with courage shall inspire, 
 And its crude gold to purer form refine. 
 The hour was dark, yet as with cheerful face 
 We honored him, the Poet, Patriot true. 
 Unwonted gladness seemed to fill the place ; 
 Nor can om- hopes refuse to spring anew. 
 While Bryant's verse leads on our men to glory. 
 And Bancroft's pen illuminates their story. 
 
 A beautiful wreath composed of natural flowers, white 
 lilies, amaranths, and red roses, intermixed with myrtle and 
 bay, was sent to Mr. Bryant by an unknown lady, with a 
 copy of verses in his honor, which she described as 
 
 " Simple blossoms of the soul 
 Budding forth without control." 
 
35 
 
 Mrs. Sigoiirney reluctantly resigned the " opportunity of 
 paying respect to one whose high and pure poetical genius 
 has rendered his name illastrious in our country and the 
 world ; " and contributed the following stanzas : 
 
 THE SEVENTIETH BIRTHDAY OF WILLIAM CULLEN 
 
 BRYANT. 
 
 BY L. HUNTLEY SIGOURNEY. 
 
 Honor to him, the loved of all, 
 
 The master of our Western lyre ! 
 Who o'er his country's heart hath thrown 
 The melody with which his own 
 Hath ever dwelt, shaping its tone. 
 To heavenly choir. 
 
 Honor to him whose early years 
 
 The old Homeric fire displayed,' 
 And now to Wisdom's ripened truth 
 
 Hath brought the sunbeams of his youth 
 Without a shade. 
 
 All hail to him, whose genial strain 
 
 Nor bitterness nor satire knew, 
 But from the charms of Nature's face 
 
 And virtue's dignity and grace 
 Its impulse drew. 
 
36 
 
 All hail ! and still througli lengthened days 
 
 May his pure thoughts unsullied flow, 
 And in the alembic of the mind, 
 Mingling like molten gold refined, 
 Through future ages on mankind 
 Their wealth bestow. 
 
 Hartford, Conn., 1864. 
 
 The assembly was becoming impatient to bear tbe voice 
 of a gifted woman, a native of New York City, who was 
 present. The President, following the intimation, led her to 
 the platform, where she recited a poem. 
 
 A LEAF FROM THE BRYANT CHAPLET. 
 
 BY JULIA WARD HOWE. 
 
 Friends who greet the crowned Poet, who detain the passing year 
 With the love that knows no passing, I attend your summons here. 
 Had ye suffered me in silence, I had thanked your courteous grace. 
 Happier yet, in rites so cordial, to have utterance and place. 
 
 In your city rows palatial has a mansion stood apart. 
 Not in aspect nor pretension, single in its saintly heart ; 
 When the tides of greed and trafiic swept the limits of the town, 
 'Twas a citadel of virtue and a shrine of pure renown. 
 
 There the Muse that knew Anacreon, that made Roman Horace great, 
 Shunning Caesar's jewelled favors, at the modest fireside sate. 
 
37 
 
 Lit tlie wintry coals with splendor, turned tlie deep historic page, 
 Held the burning lamp of Fancy to the problems of the age ; 
 
 When the great ideas came singly to the crowded market-place. 
 Looking wanly for a welcome in each money-getting face. 
 And the high police of fashion urged the vagrants to give room, 
 They, our Chief of song encountering, grew speedily at home. 
 
 He had many a measure for us ; at his forge he wrought two-fold. 
 On the iron shield of Freedom, and the poet's links of gold. 
 All the while a song was singing, others better knew than he, 
 For the even stanzas of his life made subtlest melody. 
 
 He was a veteran leader ere his forehead gained its snows ; 
 And still before the pilgrim flock his silver summons goes. 
 No wild and desert waste he brings, with lurid day and night, 
 But pastures of serenity, and founts of clear delight. 
 
 We have journeyed far to praise him, let us also praise the hour. 
 For the travail throes of Conscience, and the newest birth of power ; 
 Let us praise the faultless victims, and the living who have bent 
 O'er the wealth of Nature ravished, with a terrible consent. 
 
 For sorrow from the city to the martial camp has fled, 
 To hunt, with her funereal torch, the features of the dead. 
 Another and another the fatal sheaf doth bind. 
 But nothing of the thoughts of God, or hope of human kind. 
 
 Resurrection in the valley ! Resurrection on the shore ! 
 
 When great Justice is established, we shall have our own once more ; 
 
38 
 
 Not like Tis, unfixed, inconstant in our issues great and small, 
 But a phalanx set in marble for tlie future's judgment call. 
 
 Long remain the noble Poet, priceless liosta,ge of our love ! 
 Vainly floats the winged message from the banquet halls of Jove, 
 Vainly voices from Valhalla name the champion of the free ; 
 He has paeans yet to utter, he must crown our victory. 
 
 When the moment comes to claim him, that must come to claim us all, 
 Hearts that cherish human longings will be d-arkened by his fall ; 
 But immortal Truth shall welcome her adorer to her breast, 
 Saying : " Things are changed between us now ; on earth I was thy 
 guest." 
 
 As slie ended, her charmed hearers were still listening to 
 her words, pronounced in exquisitely musical tones^ when 
 Mr. Cranch handed to the President a letter for Mr. Bryant, 
 which was read before delivery. 
 
 Century Rooms, New York, Nov. 1, 1864. 
 
 Deak Sik: 
 
 At a meeting of the Artist-members of the Century, it was 
 agreed that some simple but appropriate testimonial of the honor and 
 esteem in which you are held among us, ought to be presented by us 
 to you, on your YOth birthday. On this festive occasion, when the 
 Century steps forward to honor the Patriot and Poet who has so long 
 and faithfully served his country in his verse and in the colmnns of 
 
39 
 
 Ms Journal, we, too, wish to express our consideration of the sym- 
 pathy you have ever manifested towards the Artists, and the high 
 rank you have ever accorded to art. Be assured, dear Sir, that the trib- 
 ute of our love and admiration is not formal, but cordial. And as we 
 are accustomed neither to speech-making nor to elaborate letter- 
 writing, we desire that the few words we have to say, may be said 
 not to you only, but to the friends who will gather here to greet you 
 on your birthday. 
 
 We ask you then, dear Sir, to accept from the Artist-members of 
 the Century, a portfolio of Sketches, knowing no more expressive form 
 of testifying to you the sentiments with which we shall meet you on 
 the evening of your approaching anniversary. 
 
 We have the honor to be, in behalf of the Artists, the Committee, 
 
 Daniel Hunti^stgtow, 
 
 ASHER B. DtJEAND, 
 
 Cheistophee p. Ceawch. 
 
 The artists are the heart of the Century ; as soon as the 
 letter was read, the crowded company opened a passage, and 
 a portfolio was brought in, mounted on a stand of the nicest 
 workmanship, and made to contain finished sketches by the 
 members, whose names follow : 
 
 Eugene Benson, Feedeeick E. Chuech, 
 
 Albeet Bieestadt, Samuel Colman, 
 
 Cabl Beandt, Cheistophee P. Ceanch, 
 
 H. R. Beown, Jaspee P. Ceopsey, 
 
 J. G. Beown, W. P. W. Dana, 
 
40 
 
 Felix O. C. Daeley, 
 a. b. dubadstd, 
 
 C. D. GrAMBBILL, 
 S. E.. GrlEFOED, 
 
 Kegis Gignoux, 
 Henet Petees Geat, 
 Geoege H. Hall, 
 W. J. Hats, 
 
 WlXLIAK HaZELTESTE, 
 
 W. J. Hennesst, 
 Thomas Hicks, 
 Daniel HxnsrTnsrGTON, 
 Eastman Johnson, 
 John F. Kensett, 
 Edwaed I. Ktjntze, 
 John La Faege, 
 Louis Lang, 
 Thomas Le Cleae, 
 
 E. Leftze, 
 H. A. Loop, 
 
 Jeevis McEntee, 
 E. D. Nelson, 
 
 ElCHAED H. PaeK, 
 
 H, W. Bobbins, 
 John Eogees, 
 Thomas P. Rossitee, 
 
 ElCHAED M. StAIGG, 
 
 J. B. Steaens, 
 William Olivee Stone, 
 James A. Sutdam, 
 Bataed Tayloe, 
 Launt Thompson, 
 Eliphalet Teeey, 
 Calveet Vaux, 
 J. Q. A. Waed, 
 William Whitteedge. 
 
 At the same moment^ Mr. Daniel Huntington, President 
 of the National Academy of Design, stepped upon the plat- 
 form, and addressed his friend of many years. 
 
 REMARKS OF MR. HUNTINGTON. 
 HONOEED AND BELOVED PoET : 
 
 The artists of this club have entrusted me with the privilege of 
 presenting to you this collection of sketches, in token of- their love 
 
V 
 
 v.- 
 
41 
 
 and admiration. A beautiful stand and portfolio have been added 
 through the liberality of several amateur members. There is an 
 illustrious artist, whose name, like your own, is imperishably traced 
 in the interwoven story of our art and literature, who, from his inti- 
 mate relations with you, as well as from his long acknowledged 
 leadership in our profession, is entitled to the honor of acting for us on 
 this occasion; but Durand is absent or silent, and therefore I have 
 the pleasure, in his name, and in behalf of all the artists, of greeting you 
 to-night as one of their own body. Indeed, Sir, the artists love you 
 very much, and you know it ; we claim you as one of us, remembering 
 that you were one of the original members of the old Sketch Club, 
 and a member and founder of the National Academy of Design — a 
 brother of the pencil most dear to all our hearts. The sketches for the 
 portfolio have not all been finished, owing to the shortness of the 
 time, the late return of many from their autumn haunts, and their de- 
 sire to make their oiferings worthy of their purpose. Such a labor of 
 love will not be slightly done, and when soon it shall be completed, it 
 will be marked by the warm affection and deep reverence we feel for 
 our poet-brother in the divine art. 
 
 Of the vast multitudes who, with ever-growing delight, bend over 
 your pages, or of those more familiar friends who have met here to do 
 you honor, there are none whose hearts glow with deeper joy and 
 pride than do those of the artists who to-night take part in this festi- 
 val solemnity. For many years, by mountain and stream, and in the 
 stillness of the studio, we have been cheered by your vivid pictures of 
 American scenery, and inspired by your songs of human freedom, and 
 we pray that God may grant you yet many years to charm our hearts 
 with new images of truth and beauty; and when this dark and bloody 
 war-cloud shall have passed forever, in the serene evening of your life. 
 
42 
 
 to sing for our whole people tlie cradle-song of a new-born American 
 Liberty. 
 
 MR. BRYANT ANSWERED: 
 
 Allow me, through you, as one of their representatives, to return 
 to the artists of the Century my best acknowledgments for the superb 
 gift they have made me. I have no title to it but their generosity, yet 
 I rejoice to possess it, and shall endeavor to preserve it as long as I 
 live. 
 
 Among the artists of our country are some of my oldest and best 
 fi'iends. In their conversation I have taken great delight, and derived 
 from it much instruction. In them the love and the study of nature 
 tend to preserve the native simplicity of character, to make them frank 
 and ingenuous, and to divert their attention from selfish interests. I 
 shall prize this gift, therefore, not only as a memorial of the genius of 
 our artists, in which respect alone it possesses a high value, but also 
 as a token of the good will of a class of men for whom I cherish a par- 
 ticular regard and esteem. 
 
 This very interesting interlude was watched with the most 
 marked sympathy by the numerous audience, who were es- 
 pecially touched by the sincere and simple words: "the ar- 
 tists love you, and you know it." The East, the West, the 
 South, had given expression to their sentiments ; so soon as 
 Mr. Huntington stepped down, the President introduced him 
 who was to speak for the whole country, for its one people, 
 and its full constellation of States. 
 

 
43 
 
 BRYANT'S SEVENTIETH BIRTHDAY. 
 
 BY OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES. 
 
 O even-handed Nature ! we confess 
 
 This life that men so honor, love, and bless. 
 
 Has filled thine olden measure. Not the less 
 
 We count the precious seasons that remain ; 
 
 Strike not the level of the golden grain, 
 
 But heap it high with years, that earth may gain 
 
 What heaven can lose, — ^for heaven is rich in song: 
 
 Do not all poets, dying, still prolong 
 
 Their broken chants amid the seraph throng. 
 
 Where, blind no more, Ionia's bard is seen. 
 And England's heavenly minstrel sits between 
 The Mantuan and the wan-cheeked Florentine ? 
 
 This was the first sweet singer in the cage 
 Of our close-woven life. A new-born age 
 Claims in his vesper song its heritage : 
 
 Spare us, oh spare us long our heart's desire ! 
 Moloch, who calls our children through the fire. 
 Leaves us the gentle master of the lyre. 
 
44 
 
 We count not on the dial of tte sun 
 
 The hours, the minutes, that his sands have run ; 
 
 Rather, as on those flowers that one by one 
 
 From earliest dawn their ordered bloom display. 
 Till evening's planet with her guiding ray 
 Leads in the blind old mother of the day. 
 
 We reckon by his songs, each song a flower. 
 
 The long, long daylight, numbering hour by hour. 
 
 Each breathing sweetness like a bridal bower. 
 
 His morning glory shall we e'er forget ? 
 His noon-tide's full-blown lily coronet ? 
 His evening primrose has not opened yet ; 
 
 Nay, even if creeping Time should hide the skies 
 In midnight from his century-laden eyes. 
 Darkened like his who sang of Paradise, 
 
 Would not some hidden song-bud open bright 
 
 As the resplendent cactus of the night 
 
 That floods the gloom with fragrance and with light? 
 
 How can we ])raise the verse whose music flows 
 With sole; in cadence and majestic close. 
 Pure as tlio dew that filters through the rose ? 
 
45 
 
 How stall we thank him that in evil days 
 He faltered never, — nor for Mame, nor praise, 
 Nor hire, nor party, shamed his early lays ? 
 
 But as his boyhood was of manliest hue. 
 So to his youth his manly years were true. 
 All dyed in royal purple through and through ! 
 
 He for whose touch the lyre of Heaven is strung 
 Needs not the flattering toU of mortal tongue : 
 Let not the singer grieve to die unsung ! 
 
 Marbles forget their message to mankind : 
 
 In his own verse the poet still we find. 
 
 In his own page his memory lives enshrined. 
 
 As in their amber sweets the smothered bees, — 
 As the fair cedar, fallen before the breeze, 
 Lies self-embalmed amidst the mouldering trees. 
 
 Poets, like youngest children, never grow 
 Out of their mother's fondness. Nature so 
 Holds their soft hands, and will not let them go. 
 
 Till at the last they track with even feet 
 Her rhythmic footsteps, and their pulses beat 
 Twinned with her pulses, and their lips repeat 
 
46 
 
 The secrets slie has told them, as their own; 
 Thus is the inmost soul of Nature known, 
 And the rapt minstrel shares her awful throne ! 
 
 O lover of her mountains and her woods, 
 
 Her bridal chamber's leafy solitudes, 
 
 "Where Love himself with tremulous step intrudes, 
 
 Her snows fall harmless on thy sacred fire : 
 Far be the day that claims the sounding lyre 
 To join the music of the angel choir ! 
 
 Yet, since life's amplest measure must be filled, 
 Since throbbing hearts must be forever stilled, 
 And all must fade that evening sunsets gild, 
 
 Grant, Father, ere he close the mortal eyes 
 
 That see a Nation's reeking sacrifice. 
 
 Its smoke may vanish from these blackened skies ! 
 
 Then, when his summons comes, since come it must. 
 And, looking heavenward with unfaltering trust. 
 He wraps his drapery round him for the dust. 
 
 His last fond glance will show him o'er his head 
 The Northern fires beyond the zenith spread 
 In lambent glory, blue and white and red,^ — 
 
47 
 
 The Southern cross without its bleeding load, 
 
 The mUky way of peace all freshly strowed, 
 
 And every white-throned star fixed in its lost abode ! 
 
 These lines were illuminated by tlie earnestness with 
 which they were pronounced; the eye and voice of the 
 speaker interpreted and vivified every word. He was heard 
 with the greatest enthusiasm ; it seemed, that hke the best 
 masters of painting in Italy, the poet was attaining a second 
 manner, even more beautiful than his first, and had seized 
 the occasion of an act of friendly justice to another, to make 
 a revelation of his own increase of power. 
 
 The President with Mrs. Bryant, followed by Mr. Bryant 
 and Mrs. Howe, now led the way to the banqueting-room, of 
 which the walls were adorned by pictures, painted by artists 
 of the Century. All eyes turned to the portrait of Bryant 
 by his venerable friend Durand, which was profusely deco- 
 rated with laurel and the choicest natural flowers. After a 
 short time given to the abundant feast provided by the House 
 Committee of the Century, the company returned to the large 
 saloon, where their first greeting was from the clergy. 
 
 The venerable Rev. Dr. Allen, formerly President of Bow- 
 doin College, and honorably known to all students of Ameri- 
 
48 
 
 can Biography, the friend of Bryant's father, famihar with 
 the home of Bryant from his cradle, sent this benediction : 
 
 FOURSCORE YEARS TO THREESCORE YEARS AND 
 
 TEN. 
 
 Novemher Sd, 1864. 
 
 Thy years threescore and ten this day ! 
 
 Thy youthful poet-prophet's word 
 Of Tetjth's great conflict made display, 
 
 By which the soldier's soul is stirred. 
 
 " Tetjth, crashed to eartli, shall rise again ; 
 The eternal years of God are hers ; 
 But error, wounded, writhes in pain, 
 And dies among his worshippers." 
 
 Bryant's Poems, page 209. 
 
 Another ten of years he thine 
 
 With His great love who came to save, 
 
 And ceaseless joys of truth divine 
 To cheer thy pathway to the grave. 
 
 The hills the same to our young eyes, 
 The same the vales, that gave delight ; 
 
 The loved ones, passed to peaceful skies, 
 Shall we not join in glory bright 1 
 
49 
 
 Christ is " the "Way, the Tbtjth, the Lite ; " 
 He leads no trusting friend astray ; 
 
 His arm will end the valiant strife, 
 His grace give victor's crown for aye ! 
 
 To William Cuilen Bryant, New York, 
 
 from William Allen, Northampton, Mass., 
 both natives of Western Massachusetts. 
 
 The next communication was from the Rev. Dr. James 
 Walker, late President of the University of Cambridge. 
 
 EXTRACT OF DR. WALKER'S LETTER. 
 
 " I feel a peculiar interest in the festival in honor of Mr. Bryant, 
 for I am a man of the same years, though having a few months the 
 start of him. I should also be glad to be there in order to testify the 
 respect I have always entertained for his genius and character." 
 
 A highly respected Protestant Episcopal Clergyman of 
 the far West sent the following : 
 
 To WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT, 
 
 ON HIS SEVENTIETH BIRTHDAY. 
 
 NoveTnher 3, 1864. 
 
 Thy patient feet have reached to-day 
 The allotted goal of human years ; 
 
50 
 
 Thanks, thanks to Him wlio bids thee stay 
 AwMle, yet, from tlie timeless spheres. 
 
 Thanks for thy journey brave and long ; 
 
 A glorious pathway has it been, 
 Melodious with majestic song, 
 
 And hallowed in the hearts of men. 
 
 Earth's face is dearer for thy gaze. 
 
 The fields that thou hast travelled o'er 
 Are fuller blossomed, and the ways 
 
 Of toil more pleasant than before. 
 
 The April pastures breathe more sweet, 
 The brooks in deeper musings glide, 
 
 Old woodlands grander hymns repeat. 
 And holier seems the Autumn-tide. 
 
 The crystal founts and summer rains 
 Are haunted now with pictured grace ; 
 
 The winds have learned more tender strains. 
 And greet us with more kind embrace. 
 
 More meekly pleads each flow'ret's eye, 
 On gentler errands comes the snow. 
 
 And birds write on the evening sky 
 More gracious lessons, as they go. 
 
51 
 
 The clouds, tlie stars, tlie sea, tlie grave, 
 Wide prairie wastes and crowded marts, 
 
 AH that is fair, and good, and brave. 
 In peaceful homes and gen'rous hearts, 
 
 Through thee their wondrous meanings tell : 
 And as men go to work and pray — 
 
 Feeling thy song's persuasive spell — 
 Love's face seems closer o'er their way." 
 
 Before thee Error howled and fled ; 
 
 And in thy path, though bold and strong, 
 Oppression quailed. From thy hand sped 
 
 The glittering shafts that crippled wrong. 
 
 And thy lips swelled the stirring peal 
 That roused the people to uphold 
 
 The sacred cause of commonweal. 
 O, may thy happy eyes behold 
 
 Fair Freedom's triumph, and the sway 
 Of Peace, which after strife and pain. 
 
 Shall usher the illustrious day 
 Of a great Nation bom again ! 
 
 Smooth be thy latest stages here, 
 
 Revered, and loved, and watched by those 
 
52 
 
 To whom thou seemest still more dear, 
 The farther on thy journey goes. 
 
 And keeping yet the child-like heart — 
 
 Pure home of every sacred guest — 
 At last, in perfect peace, depart, 
 
 O Bryant, to thy blissful rest. 
 
 H. N. POWEES. 
 Davenport, Iowa, Nov., 1864. 
 
 The Century regretted exceedingly the absence of the 
 Rev. Dr. William A. Muhlenberg. To friendly responses in 
 reply to their invitation he added : 
 
 EXTRACT OF DR. WILLIAM A. MUHLENBERG'S LETTER. 
 
 " I beg of him whom you mean so justly to honor, the acceptance of 
 my greetings on his entering his threescore and ten, while yet in the 
 spring-time of his Muse — ^the truest poet of Nature in our land, may 
 he long live to attune his chords to the Supernatural as well." 
 
 The Rev. Charles T. Brooks, who, as he said, was "with 
 us at all events in the spirit," wrote : 
 
 EXTRACT OF REV. CHARLES T. BROOKS'S LETTER. 
 
 "Mr. Bryant has been for — fifty years shall I say? — one of my 
 noblest teachers in the school of beauty, wisdom, and piety ; and my 
 
53 
 
 heart and all tliat is witMn me draws me to tte festival at whicli so 
 many fine minds and noble hearts will express for me my feelings of 
 gratitude, respect, and veneration ! " 
 
 EXTRACT OF A LETTER FROM REV. DR. A. CLEVELAND COXE, BISHOP 
 ELECT OF THE WESTERN DIOCESE OF NEW YORK, TO THE 
 CENTURY. 
 
 "Thanking you for the honor of your invitation to attend a cele- 
 bration of the 70th anniversary of our distinguished fellow-citizen, Mr. 
 Bryant, I am very sorry, as an admirer of his poetical genius, that 
 other engagements will not permit of my being present with you on 
 the evening of Saturday next." 
 
 The Rev. Dr. Samuel Osgood, of the Century, being pres- 
 ent, spoke as follows : 
 
 THE FELLOWSHIP OF THE ARTS. 
 
 What sentiment is more in time and place than that of the "Fel- 
 lowship of the Beautiful Arts " ? Here are Architecture, Sculpture, 
 Painting — ^those arts that depend most upon the hand, and appeal 
 most to the eye; here, too, are Music, Poetry, the Drama, -Eloquence 
 — those arts that depend mainly upon the voice, and appeal mainly 
 to the ear ; here they all are in the persons of accomplished masters, 
 and pledge each other in loyal brotherhood. Arts of the two impe- 
 rial senses, the Eye and the Ear, they are the two doors of the Gate 
 called Beautiful that leads into the temple of the Highest. The ven- 
 
54 
 
 erable chiefs of them both are here ; for that portrait of BETAifT from 
 the pencil of Durand brings the powers of the eye and ear into unison, 
 and those garlands are their coronation. Let us all say, "Long live 
 that union and those men." 
 
 How marvellous are those two senses and the arts that appeal to 
 them ! The eye and the ear, how different, yet how like ; the one more 
 exterior and expansive, the other more close and intensive ; the one 
 moving on waves of light, the other on waves of air ; the one rejoicing 
 in form and color, light and shade, the other in tone and melody, ca- 
 dence and swell ; the one, perhaps, more material, the other more 
 spiritual ; yet both almost like different functions of the same sense 
 and different oracles of the same law, matching the tints of the pris- 
 matic spectrum with the chords of the musical scale, as if color voiced 
 itself into song, and song shone forth into color. Thus one, and thus 
 different, the eye and the ear are like the Eros and Psyche of old, more 
 of Eros in the eye, more of Psyche in the ear, yet both one in that 
 loving embrace which all arts have so celebrated, both classic and 
 Christian, and which even the Christian muse has been not ashamed 
 to call a type of the mystical union of body .and soul in the life im- 
 mortal. 
 
 All the arts of the eye and ear greet each other here, and put to 
 us who are not of their craft the question. What right have we to be 
 here among these masters? Eight enough ; and by right, not by favor, 
 we claim our place — the right of the scholar to be with the master, 
 the right of the devotee to be at the shrine. We are all, even the 
 humblest of us, at home here, as scholars or lovers of art ; and with- 
 out such companionship, what can artists do, and who will appreciate 
 find encourage them ? It is a great law of life that original genius in 
 the master needs genial susceptibility in the disciple, as the seed needs 
 
55 
 
 the soil to grow in. Sucli geniality we all have, and none more so 
 than those here present who are our most modest guests — those fair 
 friends of our artists. If art has its kings, why not its queens ? and a 
 queenly genius charmed us just now. 
 
 Why not say that we, too, all of us, are, or ought to he, artists, and 
 have something to do with shaping rough material into ideal perfec- 
 tion? Why surrender the honors of this fellowship to any exclusive 
 set of men ? Why not rather maintain that it is the work of every 
 true life to work out a nohle ideal according to the wisdom that is 
 from God, by the love that seeks Him as its end, and in the kingdom 
 that gathers all that is lovely to Him in blessed communion ? Only as 
 we take this stand do we honor the arts duly, and save our gifts from 
 conceit, and make genius a bond of unity, instead of a crazing hero- 
 worship. All the arts are greater than our artists, and poetry is 
 greater than the greatest poet. Every man is a debtor to his calling, 
 and the higher the calling the greater is the debt. We are the poet's 
 friends and admirers, not his adorers, and his gentle bearing and 
 speech help us to honor high Art and its Divine Ai'chetype in 
 honoring this gifted and faithful servant. The true check upon 
 adulation is responsibility ; and he who takes his talents from the 
 hand of the Perfect Master is in no danger of being spoiled by 
 flattery, but rather measures dignity by service, and is hum})ler as 
 he soars, because nearer to the Eternal Mind. 
 
 I will not undertake to preach here to-night, for we are all free 
 companions, unassuming good fellows, in this Century Club, without 
 any bigots or bores, that I know of; but I am in perfect keeping with 
 your general temper, and the spirit of our honored guest, in affirming 
 that religion is the supreme art, and God is the Supreme Designer, 
 flooding the skies with glory, filling the earth with loveliness, calling 
 
56 
 
 all souls ta tuild life according to His perfect archetype, and to wor- 
 ship and enjoy Him in the beauty of holiness. No other than He gave 
 this poet, our brother, his gift and mission ; and God, who rounded 
 and rolled th? spheres, taught him as a child the sweep of his vision 
 and the rhythm of his verse. Seventy years of God's providence stand 
 before us in that honored form, and we hear their solemn footsteps 
 with the march of this festive music. What a seventy years — 1794- 
 1864 — from the fall of Robespierre and French terrorism to the down- 
 fall of American slavery and its code of terror ; from the rise of Napo- 
 leon to the uprising of this free Republic ! God grant that our poet 
 may sing its grand jubilee, every shackle broken, and every lost star 
 returned ! What ages of invention, enterprise, and thought are con- 
 centrated into that space ! How mildly, yet mightily, those years are 
 embodied and interpreted in that face, and voice, and pen! How 
 much there is in that presence to bring our own changing years together, 
 and to assimilate our different lives ! Some of us had his verse sung 
 to us in infancy ; almost all of us read his " Waterfowl," and " Green 
 River," and " Thanatopsis," at school. Every fair scene ia nature is 
 fairer by his interpretation ; the nation, liberty, humanity, God, are 
 nearer and dearer to us by his stirring odes, and calm, uplifting hymns. 
 Nor let his prose writing be forgotten in our zeal to do honor to his 
 verse, for he who is master of prose is master of all beauty ; and in this 
 work, the poet and historian are one as here at our festival, in host 
 and guest. The pen as thus wielded builds, paints, and carves ; sings, 
 rhythms, acts, and pleads, and calls all the Muses at its spell. 
 
 God bless our poet, and the whole fellowship of the beautiful arts ! 
 These forty artists have brought to you in that portfolio the precious 
 offerings of their gifted hands. In the name of our scholars and pas- 
 tors, as one of their hearty brothers, I bring a leaf of palm to lay 
 
57 
 
 among your laurels in behalf of the Art Divine, that is second to none 
 of tlie Arts, and the inspiration of all. 
 
 The President next directed attention to poets and friends 
 who were absent. An earnest invitation had been extended 
 to Mr, John Pierpont. 
 
 EXTRACT OF MR. PIERPONT'S LETTER IN REPLY. 
 
 At first I said within my heart, I'll go. — 
 
 But second thoughts forbade me to engage. 
 
 At such a time in such a pilgrimage. 
 
 My health infirm, the season, and my age, 
 
 — (For more than half my eightieth year is spent,)- 
 
 Admonish me to stay at home content, 
 
 And worship, like the Sabian, from afar. 
 
 Kissing my hand towards our brightest star. 
 
 EXTRACT OF MR. CHARLES SPRAGTJE'S REPLY. 
 
 " Your tempting request comes to me on my own birthday (Octo- 
 ber 26). Now and then, and only now and then, do I regret the in- 
 firmities of three-and-seventy years. I am sensibly reminded of them 
 at the present time, for I am thereby deprived of the privilege of 
 uniting in a worthy tribute to one whose fame is the honest pride of 
 us all." 
 
58 
 
 As the President pronounced the name of Mr. Longfellow, 
 there was a general movement, which showed that no man 
 in the country would have received a more tender and 
 hearty welcome. 
 
 EXTRACT OF MR. HENRY W. LONGFELLOW'S LETTER. 
 
 Cambkidge, October 23d, 1864. 
 
 Mt deae Mr. Bancroft : 
 
 I assure you notliing woxild give me greater pleasure than to 
 do honor to Bryant, at all times and in all ways ; both as a poet and 
 as a man. He has written noble verse, and led a noble life ; and we 
 are all proud of him. I am glad you are to pay him the homage of 
 this Festival ; and should rejoice to take part in it, if it were possible. 
 But I am really too unwell to be present, and must, thougb with 
 extreme reluctance, decline your very cordial invitation. 
 I remain, dear Mr. Bancroft, 
 
 Yours truly, 
 
 Henrt W. Longfellow. 
 
 The Century regretted the absence of Mr. Lowell, and 
 still more " the bitter occasion of it." Their invitation found 
 him a mourner at the obsequies of his nephew, Charles 
 Russell Lowell, the best scholar among his contemporaries, 
 from boyhood full of soul and of honor, faultless as friend, 
 brother, son, husband, patriot, and soldier ; who, equal to any 
 
'^iJ 
 
 ':-/ 
 
59 
 
 career, had, on the breaking out of the rebellion, given him- 
 self up to his country with unselfish love ; lithe, delicately 
 framed, active, imperturbably self-balanced, with a quick eye 
 and celerity of thought and judgment, had in rapid succes- 
 sion commanded a company of cavalry, a regiment, a brigade ; 
 had in many a field, as at Antietam, braved the hail-storm of 
 bullets; had in the one campaign of the Shenandoah, had 
 thirteen horses shot under him in battle ; had, on the nine- 
 teenth of October, nothing daunted by one terrible wound, 
 still led the final glorious cavalry charge ; and had fallen by 
 a second wound in the moment of consummated victory ; 
 leaving a widow of twenty, himself not yet thirty; beautiful 
 in death, as in life he had been lovely. 
 
 EXTRACT OF MR. JAMES R. LOWELL'S LETTER. 
 
 My dear Me. Bancroft : 
 
 I was just about to write and say how glad I should be to 
 join in your coming festival, when the sad news came which makes it 
 impossible that I should do so. 
 
 It would have been a particular gratification to me, could I have 
 joined in any public expression of respect for Mr. Bryant, who as Poet 
 has done so much for the honor of his country, and, as Editor, so 
 much for it3 salvation. The lesson of his character and example 
 seems to me of such lasting value that I am rejoiced to hear attention 
 called to it in a manner so distinguished. 
 
60 
 
 ON BOARD THE SEVENTY-SIX. 
 
 BY JAMES KUSSELL LOWELL. 
 
 Our ship lay tumbling ia an angiy sea, 
 
 Her rudder gone, ter mainmast o'er tlie side ; 
 
 Her scuppers from the waves' clutch staggering free, 
 
 Trailed threads of priceless crimson through the tide ; 
 
 Sails, shrouds, and spars with hostile cannon torn, 
 
 We lay, awaiting morn. 
 
 Awaiting morn, such mom as marks despair ; 
 And she that bore the promise of the world 
 Within her sides, now hopeless, helmless, bare. 
 At random o'er the wildering waters hurled. 
 The reek of battle drifting slow a-lee, 
 Not sullener than we. 
 
 Mom came at last to peer into our woe, 
 
 When lo, a sail ! now surely help is nigh. 
 
 The red cross flames aloft, Christ's pledge, — but no, 
 
 Her black guns grinning hate, she rushes by 
 
 And hails us. " Gains the leak? Ah, so we thought ; 
 
 Sink, then, with curses fraught ! " 
 
 I leaned against my gun still angry-hot. 
 
 And my lids tingled with the tears held back ; 
 
61 
 
 This scorn metliouglit was crueller tlian stot ; 
 The manly death-grip in the battle-wrack, 
 Yard-arm to yard-arm, were more friendly far 
 Than such fear-smothered war. 
 
 There our foe wallowed like a wounded brute, 
 The fiercer for his hurt : what now were best ? 
 Once more tug bravely at the peril's root. 
 Though death come with it ? Or evade the test 
 If right or wrong in this God's world of ours 
 Be leagued with higher powers ? 
 
 Some, faintly loyal, felt their pulses lag 
 With the slow beat that doubts and then despairs 
 Some, caitiff, would have struck the starry flag 
 That knits us with our past, and makes us heirs 
 Of deeds high-hearted as were ever done 
 'Neath the all-seeing sun. 
 
 But one there was, the Singer of our crew, 
 Upon whose head Age waved his peaceful sign, 
 But whose red heart's-blood no surrender knew ; 
 And couch ant under brows of massive line, 
 The eyes, like guns beneath a parapet, 
 Watched charged vnth lightnings yet. 
 
 The voices of the hills did his obey ; 
 
 The torrents flashed and tumbled in his song ; 
 
62 
 
 He brought our native fields from far away, 
 Or set us mid tlie innumerable throng 
 Of dateless woods, or where we heard the calm 
 Old homestead's evening psalm. 
 
 But now he sang of faith to things unseen. 
 Of freedom's birthright given to us in trust. 
 And words of doughty cheer he spoke between. 
 That made all earthly fortune seem as dust. 
 Matched with that duty, old as time and new, 
 Of being brave and true. 
 
 We, listening, learned what makes the might of words,- 
 Manhood to back them, constant as a star ; 
 His voice rammed home our cannon, edged our swords, 
 And sent our boarders shouting ; shroud and spar 
 Heard him and stiffened ; the sails heard and wooed 
 The winds with loftier mood. 
 
 In our dark hour he manned our guns again ; 
 Eemanned ourselves from his own manhood's store ; 
 Pride, honor, country, throbbed through all his strain ; 
 And shall we praise ? God's praise was his before ; 
 And on our futile laurels he looks down, 
 Himself our bravest crown. 
 
 Public duty detained Mr. Whittier at home, greatly to 
 his own regret and still more to that of the Century ; but he 
 
63 
 
 sent what he called " a rough draft of some verses/' which 
 seemed to others exquisitely finished. 
 
 BRYANT. 
 
 BY JOHN GEEENLEAF WHITTIER. 
 
 I praise not here the poet's art, 
 
 The rounded fitness of his song ; 
 Who weighs him from his life apart 
 
 Must do his nobler nature wrong. 
 
 Not for the eye familiar growa 
 
 With beauty elsewhere undescried, — 
 
 The marvellous gift he shares alone 
 With him who walked on Rydal side ; 
 
 Not for rapt hymn nor woodland lay 
 Too grave for smiles, too sweet for tears. 
 
 We speak his praise who wears to-day 
 The glory of his seventy years ! 
 
 When Freedom hath her own again 
 
 Let happy lips his songs rehearse : 
 His life is now his noblest strain, 
 
 His manhood better than his verse. 
 
 Thank God ! his hand on Nature's keys 
 Its cunning keeps at life's fall span ; 
 
64 
 
 But dimmed and dwarfed, in times like these, 
 TLe Poet seems beside the Man! 
 
 So be it ! — Let the garlands die ! 
 
 Fade civic wreath and singer's meed ! — • 
 Let our names perish if thereby 
 
 Our country may be saved and freed ! 
 
 A letter was then read from one, who, had he been pres- 
 ent, would have found himself environed by friends, and the 
 object of universal respect. His words were as follows: 
 
 Boston, 25<7i Octoher, 1864. 
 
 Mt deak Me. Bancroft : 
 
 I deeply regret that I cannot be with you on the evening of 
 the 5th, to join you in doing honor to the Nestor of our American 
 poets. The Nestor of our poets, I may call him, for more than one 
 reason, for of his poetry it may be truly said, as of the Homeric 
 Veteran, 
 
 Tlov not a-jro yX^utyrj^ jj^Tiltoq y^vniuv peev avdrj. 
 
 Having myself touched the goal of threescore years and ten, but a 
 few months earlier than Mr. Bryant, I can, better than some of you 
 youngsters, enter into the sentiment of the tribute which you are pay- 
 ing to him. 
 
 I have through life been a great lover of Mr. Bryant's poetry. My 
 admiration of it began in early youth, with his first productions, and 
 is one of the juvenile tastes, which after years and severer habits of 
 thought have confirmed and strengthened. 
 
65 
 
 I ^particularly enjoy Mr. Bryant's poetry, because I can understand 
 it. It is probably a sign that I am somewhat behind the age, that I 
 have but little relish for elaborate obscurity in literature, of which you 
 find it difficult to study out the meaning, and are not sure that you 
 have hit upon it, at last. This is too much the character of the most 
 popular poetry of the modern English school. 
 
 On the contrary, our noble poetical trio, Bryant, Longfellow, and 
 Whittier, are always easily intelligible. They touch the finest chords 
 of taste and feeling, but they never strain at effect. This, it seems to 
 me, is the highest merit, in every department of literature, and in 
 poetry it is well called Inspiration. Surprise, conceit, strange combi- 
 nations of imagery and expression, may be successfully managed, but 
 it is merit of an inferior kind. The truly beautiful, pathetic, and sub- 
 lime, is always simple and natural, and marked by a certain serene 
 unconsciousness of effort. This is the character of Mr. Bryant's poetry. 
 
 I congratulate the Century Club on the opportunity of paying this 
 richly earned tribute of respect and affection to their veteran, and him 
 on the well-deserved honor. 
 
 The taste, the culture, and the patriotism of the countiy are, on 
 this occasion, in full sympathy alike with those who weave and with 
 him who wears the laurel wreath. 
 
 Happy the community that has the discernment to appreciate its 
 gifted sons, — happy the poet, the artist, the scholar, who is permitted 
 to enjoy, in this way, a foretaste of posthumous commemoration and 
 fame! 
 
 I remain, my dear Mr. Bancroft, with sincere affection, ever truly 
 
 yours, 
 
 Edwabd Eteeett. 
 
66 
 
 It was now recalled to mind tliat Mr. Bryant had been 
 bred to the law. The Century hoped at this time to hear the 
 voice of their venerable ex-President, who had so long and 
 so efficiently taken the chief part in the conduct of their af- 
 fairs. They heard with sorrow that he was detained frons 
 his old friends by his grandson, who was suifering from very 
 severe wounds, received in defence of his country. 
 
 Saturday, 5th November, 1864. 
 
 Hon. Geoege Bancroft, 
 
 President of The Oentv/ry : 
 
 I regret that I must decline the kind invitation of the President 
 and Committee of management to be present at the meeting of the 
 Century this evening to congratulate their most distinguished member > 
 on his Seventieth birthday. 
 
 Peculiar circumstances put it out of my power to be personally 
 present, but I cordially join in the warm praises and wishes which 
 will be expressed to-night by many eminent men and felt by all. 
 
 The present kindly and genial autumn, " so mercifully dealing with 
 the growths of summer," resembles so much Bryant's own advancing _ 
 age, that I cannot but use his own simply beautiful words to express 
 to him the feelings and wishes of a friendship of many years : 
 
 " Like tlie kindly season may life's decline come o'er him ; 
 Past is manhood's summer, the frosty months are here, 
 Yet be genial airs and a pleasant sunshine left him, — 
 Leaf, and fruit, and blossom, to deck the closing year." 
 
67 
 
 With my best regards to my fellow-members and their guest of 
 
 the evening, 
 
 I remain yours, 
 
 G. C. Verplai^ck. 
 
 After reading this letter, the President introduced the 
 Attorney of the United States for the District of Massachu- 
 setts. 
 
 SPEECH OF RICHARD H. DANA, JR. 
 
 Me. President: 
 
 While I thank you and the gentlemen of the Century Club for 
 the privilege of taking part in this most interesting commemoration, I 
 feel that it is rather in a representative capacity than from any personal 
 claims, that I am here. Mr. Bryant has kindly named first in his 
 enumeration of his friends not with us to-night, one whose name it is 
 my fortune to bear in another generation. I assure Mr. Bryant that 
 there is no, one among his almost countless friends, present or absent, 
 whose thoughts gather more fondly about the associations wliich this 
 day revives. 
 
 It is now nearly fifty years since my father and his kinsman. Pro- 
 fessor Channing, editing the North American Review, received a man- 
 uscript poem, from an anonymous author, offered for publication in 
 that journal. They read it again and again. It could not be said to 
 give promise, to hold out indications, of powers to be developed by 
 time. It was the matured, finished work of one already a master. 
 
 We had then no such man in America. They naturally suspected 
 9 
 
68 
 
 that it might be the work of one of the mature poets of the first 
 rank across the water, or possibly a translation fpom one of the master 
 minds on the continent unfamiliar to them. They gave it a place in 
 their columns. At once, it commanded its own place in the perma- 
 nent literature of the English tongue. Its title was "Thanatopsis " ! 
 
 But who was the author ? They found it was the first considera- 
 ble effort of a youth, since grown to full manhood, who had never 
 been beyond the hills of Western Massachusetts. Having been a 
 scholar in the college at Williamstown, he had studied law, and had 
 just been admitted to the Bar in the rural county of Berkshire. An 
 acquaintance began, which ripened into a friendship of nearly half a 
 century, and which I have a double reason for hoping the Great 
 Separator may spare for many years to come. 
 
 No poet. Sir, can hope for permanence to his fame unless he con- 
 nects himself with something permanent in human nature. Mr. Bryant 
 has always been true to Nature and to Freedom. A hard necessity 
 called him from the banks of the river he had made immortal, from 
 the flowers, the fields, the breezes, the birds, the trees, the skies, he 
 Lived as his life, to the hard pavements of your great city, — to the 
 unpitying stones of Wall Street. There, in the dingy editorial closet, 
 amid the life-consuming sounds of the publishing house of a daily 
 commercial and political journal, he was cheerful, hopeful, and loyal. 
 Never did he pervert his sacred trasfc of divine poetry to the service 
 of fashion, or trade, or party. True to nature, nature was true to him. 
 Outside the city in which he sat a captive, earth, sea, and sky were 
 full of his unsubsidized allies. The air breathed, blue ocean sparkled, 
 the leaves shook, the birds of the air sang comfort and strength to his 
 brave, patient spirit. And now he is spared to see Freedom rising 
 again to power and dignity throughout the land, and Slavery, like 
 
69 
 
 Ms own immortal impersonation of Error, dying amidst its wor- 
 shippers. 
 
 Yes, Sir, so long as there shall be found a true love of simple 
 nature, the Green River, the Water Fowl, the Evening Wind, the 
 Deatli of the Flowers, will he cterished. Wherever there is a soul 
 capable of noble seriousness, the Thanatopsis and the Lines to the Past 
 will be remembered. And wherever, in any clime or age, there is one 
 man struggling for Truth and Freedom, his fainting spirit shall be re- 
 vived by those words, which, hackneyed though they be, time cannot 
 wither nor custom stale : — " Truth crushed to earth shall rise again." 
 
 The theme was continued by a member of the Century. 
 
 SPEECH OF WILLIAM M. EVAKTS. 
 
 Me, Peesidewt, Ladies, and Gentlemen : 
 
 I do not know what right I have to speak, or what claim to be 
 heard, on this occasion of our festive homage to the genius and renown 
 of Mr. Bryant, unless simply as a member of the community upon 
 whom, by his residence among them, he has shed so much lustre. 
 
 Yet, Sir, it is very fit that the public and learned professions 
 should join with the poets, and scholars, and artists, who have shown 
 themselves with so noble and brilliant a presence here to-night, in this 
 graceful and truthful testimony that the poet, more fortunate than the 
 prophet to whom, in some sort, he has succeeded, is not without honor 
 in his own country. For what preacher is there among us but ^vill 
 readily admit that, in the larger phrase and function of teacher, Mr. 
 Bryant, in his poems and in the daily instructions of his press, has been 
 a faithful and constant help and support to the sacred office in every 
 
70 
 
 lesson of worthy life and of personal and social duty. And what law- 
 yer will gainsay that in his noblest name of Advocatej the friend whom 
 we honor to-night, has been by his side, battling for truth and justice 
 and common right in every generous cause in the wide forum of public 
 opinion, that tribunal of last resort in a free and enlightened country. 
 
 Much has been said. Sir, of Mr. Bryant's love of nature and of his 
 love of art, and they have been insisted upon, with much force and 
 beauty, as principal traits of his character and of his poems. So far, 
 if we may trust Mr. Emerson's vivid portraiture, did the passionate 
 love of nature carry Mr. Bryant, that we owe to his great example a 
 practice which has grown to be an omnipresent source of displeasure 
 and annoyance to the enthusiasts who traverse our wide country in 
 search of the picturesque, to find in every nook and corner the em- 
 blazoned names and fame of every quack and mountebank of high or 
 low degree ! For Mr. Emerson tells us, Mr. Bryant was the first to 
 write his name upon the rocks and the mountains, and by the side of 
 the rivers and the waterfalls, thus spreading his renown and drawing 
 tribute fi'om all nature. Alas ! to what base perversions may not a 
 bright example come. 
 
 But, Mr. President, on Mr. Bryant's love of art I have something 
 more, and something more serious to say — Mr. Bryant was driven to 
 be a poet by no necessity. He has no such excuse. He was bred 
 and trained to an honorable, useful, and unselfish profession. I mean, 
 of course, the profession of the law, for I may safely appeal to the 
 candid judgment, I will not say of this audience simply, but of the 
 public at large, to bear me out in saying that, if there be any calling 
 or employment whose followers exhibit in their whole lives, in their 
 daily walk and conversation, a uniform tenor of disinterested, uncalcu- 
 lating, self-denying, selfsacrificiug devotion to the good of others. 
 
71 
 
 without the remotest notion of fee or reward to themselves, it is the 
 profession of the law. Now, Sir, what might not Mr. Bryant have 
 done for the world, with his preeminent and enthusiastic love of Art, 
 had he faithfully adhered to the profession of the law, instead of way- 
 wardly seeking his own sweet will with the muses ? Where and how 
 could his love of Art, however profuse and exuherant, have flowed 
 out into more various or wider channels of practical influence, than in 
 the ample scope for invention, illusion, false coloring, and deception, 
 offered in a prosperous career in the law ? We are told, indeed, that 
 as it was, he aided in founding a new academy of Design. Pretty 
 successfnlly, too, Mr. President, if we may judge of the proficiency of 
 the academicians by the exhibition we have had from them here to- 
 night. Certainly it is a cJief-d^ceuvre of design worthy of a whole 
 academy, to charm your guest, and this company, into an admiration 
 of the varied beauty and splendor of the numerous pictures which, at 
 so costly toil of genius, they had made into a gift for this occasion, and 
 yet, all that our eyes have seen is a leathern portfolio, closely locked, 
 and for the rest, we have heard an artistic story that the key is 
 accidentally lost, and an ingenuous regret that the sketches are unfin- 
 ished ! This is very well in a small way. But, think of Mr. Bryant, 
 in his love of art, as the founder of a new school of design, in the pro- 
 fession of the law ; a new school of scheme, contrivance, and chicanery ; 
 of surprise, simulation, and subterfuge ! Who will begrudge a tear for 
 this glory lost to Mr. Bryant, to the profession, and to the world, 
 when he was seduced fi'om his early love of the law ? 
 
 Mr. President, our profession has now borne, for more than a cen- 
 tury, the reproach of having stolen from Apollo one of his golden- 
 haired children and changed him into a dusty-wigged priest of 
 Themis ; — Pope's lament. 
 
72 
 
 " How sweet an Ovid was in Murray lost," 
 
 commemorates tlie wrong. Thank Heaven ! that account at last is 
 settled. If we took from the muses young Murray, and made him the 
 Chief Justice of England, they have robbed us of the youthful Bryant 
 and made him the Chief Poet of America, 
 
 How keen a lawyer was in Bryant lost. 
 
 The last place was reserved for the oiferings of old and 
 new friends of Mr. Bryant, poets now or formerly of New 
 York and its vicinity. 
 
 LETTER OF FITZ-GREENE HALLEGK. 
 
 GniLFOED, Conn., Nov. 5th, 1864. 
 
 My deae Sir; 
 
 I am very grateful indeed for your kind invitation, and have 
 most ardently hoped for the pleasure of being with you at the Corona- 
 tion of our Patriarch friend, but I am deeply grieved to say that for a 
 week past I have been quite ill, and find myself to-day, not only dis- 
 abled from journeying, but from leaving my room, to my exceeding 
 regret and disappointment. 
 
 I must therefore rely upon your courtesy to present my sad excuse 
 to your President and Secretary for the non-performance of my 
 promise, and to assure Mr. Bryant that, although far off in body, I 
 shall be this evening near him in spirit, repeating the homage which 
 
\\»y)^\ V -^'.'A'-V-f; 
 
73 
 
 with heart, and voice, and pen, I have during more than forty years 
 of his " threescore and ten " been delighted to pay him. 
 Believe me, my dear sir, 
 
 Faithfully yours, 
 
 Fitz-Geeeke Halleck. 
 
 A. M. CozzENs, Esq. 
 
 LETTER OF N. P. WILLIS. 
 
 Idlewild, November Zd, 1864. 
 
 To Hon. Georue Bancroft, 
 
 President of Tlie Century. 
 
 Dear Sir : — I am in receipt of your very kind and complimentary 
 invitation to be present at the celebration of the Birthday of Mr, 
 Bryant by The Century. 
 
 I need not say to you with what unmingled satisfaction I accept 
 the proposed honor — ^promising myself the happiness of being a 
 looker-on at so unusual and gratifying a spectacle. 
 
 Being at present a suflferer from a diphtheria^ by which I am de- 
 prived of the voice I might need to express a certain gratification I 
 have, in connection with Mr. Bryant, I will venture so far as to express 
 this on pa/per — my silence, whether it be, or be not, allotted to me by 
 the festivities of the evening, running the risk of being a restraint to 
 my enthusiasm. 
 
 On coming to the city, after graduation from college in 1827, and 
 adopting a profession of which William Ctjllen Bryant was already 
 the most skilfnl and admired practitioner, I unhesitatingly gave in 
 my fealty to his preeminence — acknowledging both his genius as an 
 
74 
 
 occasional poet, and his skill and sterling value as a writer of prose 
 upon leading topics. On both of these precentorships, he has ever 
 since retained his hold — lighting his occasional fire of inspiration on 
 the high and holy altar of poesy, and toiling faithfully and persever- 
 ingly at his more regular anvils, criticism, morals, and politics. Dur- 
 ing all this third of a century, I have been, as it were, a Bryant-disciple, 
 committing most of his poems to heart with affectionate admiration, 
 and copying his "leaders" often, into my own journal, with laudatory 
 adhesion and corroboration. To be invited now, as a veteran brother 
 editor and poet, to celebrate the coming round of Bryant's seventieth 
 birthday — thirty-seven years after my first acknowledgment of Ms pre- 
 eminence — is a very great pleasure to me, my unembarrassed pen and 
 ink must be permitted to say ! 
 
 And, may I be permitted also to specify, a little more distinctly, 
 my homage to Mr. Bryant ? 
 
 His present eminence among all parties, as the unquestioned first 
 poet of the country, has been gained by him, in connection with a 
 career which has its daily trials and temptations — a career which no 
 one l^ut an experienced editor of a newspaper would be likely fully to 
 appreciate. Let me call the attention of the brother poets who are to 
 celebrate his birthday, to the undimmed lustre of the laurels worn so 
 long. If gardener or farmer, mere scholar or mere tradesman, Avere to 
 set himself the task of writing " Thanatopsis," or " The Life that Is," 
 or, " The Cloud upon the Way " — any or all of his earlier or his Thirty 
 Poems — ^how uninterruptedly (if first inspired) might it all be done ! 
 But for the daily Editor, the Critic, the Influencer of Public Morals, 
 of Public Mercantile Interests and of Public Politics — for him to have 
 thus set himself the task, and come from it as does Bryant — the 
 acknowledged most independently reliable Editor, as well as the most 
 
75 
 
 irreproacliable first poet — is an example not given us by tlie ancients. 
 Let us allow that we are, in many ways, an improvement on tlie 
 "bards" of old time. They, proverbially, in their latter days, became 
 the victims of neglect, reproaching the world, and particularly their 
 brother bards, for cruel depreciation and forgetfulness. In his last 
 new volume (" Thirty Poems ") Bryant gives us the solving of this 
 riddle. He says thus to " The Poet " :— 
 
 Thou, wlio wouldst wear tlie name 
 
 Of poet 'mid thy brethren of mankind, 
 And clothe in words of flame 
 
 Thoughts that shall live within the general mind, 
 Deem not the framing of a deathless lay 
 The pastime of a drowsy summer-day. 
 
 But gather all thy powers, 
 
 And wreak them on the verse that thou dost weave, 
 And in thy lonely hours, 
 
 At silent morning or at wakeful eve. 
 While the warm current tingles thro' thy veins. 
 Set forth the burning words in fluent strains. 
 
 ****** 
 
 The secret wouldst thou know 
 
 To touch the heart or fire the blood at will ? 
 Let thine own eyes o'erflow ; 
 
 Let thy lips quiver with the passionate thrill ; 
 Seize the great thought, ere yet its power be past, 
 And bind, in words, the fleet emotion fast. 
 
 10 
 
 So shalt thou frame a lay 
 That haply may endure from age to age, 
 
76 
 
 And they who read shall say : 
 
 What witchery hangs upon this poet's page ! 
 What art is his the written spells to find 
 That sway from mood to mood the wiHiag mind. 
 
 It is thus that he has himself acted " The Poet," and it is in this 
 guise, and -svith the coronet bestowed by his contemporaries, that we 
 commit him to Posterity. 
 
 Hoping to avail myself of your kindness, and be at least a looker- 
 on at this most novel and interesting ceremony, I remain. 
 
 Dear Mr. Bancroft, 
 
 Yours most faithfully, 
 
 K P. Willis. 
 
 BEYANT. 
 
 BY E. A. STANSBUET. 
 
 " Show us a Bard," the old world cried, 
 With look of scorn and tone defiant ; 
 
 Columbia turned with queenly pride 
 And pointed to the name of Betant. 
 
 " Show us a Man, with steadfast soul, 
 On God and Right and Truth reliant. 
 
 Unbent though tempests shake the pole ; " 
 Again the name she gave was Beyant. 
 
11 
 
 Ah ! blest, thus great and true to be, 
 Yet still with heart unchilled and pliant, 
 
 My Country ! saved, restored, and free. 
 Thy purest name shall still be Beyaj^t. 
 
 November, 1864. 
 
 Mr. Street^ of Albany, recited with great earnestness the 
 following lines : 
 
 POEM. 
 
 BY ALFRED B. STREET. 
 
 A fadeless wreath is thine 
 Oh poet of our love ! its radiant twine 
 
 Not from the Old World's flowers. 
 But the unchanging foliage of the pine ; — 
 Tree of our land that, century -cinctured, towers. 
 Foot on the rock and forehead in the sky ; 
 Yet its deep bosom thrilling with a sigh 
 Although its boughs be glossed in golden dye ; — 
 
 Emblem of thy true lyre 
 Sounding in solemn wail and bright in joyous fire ! 
 
 The old oak, ivy-tressed. 
 Whose acorn rang on Arthur's warrior-crest 
 
 Along the knightly way. 
 No minstrel fervor kindles in thy breast. 
 
78 
 
 But the wild hemlock, where the hunter lay- 
 First by his watch-fire, startling thence the flight 
 Of the young eagle that, with dauntless sight, 
 Still dares the sun-flash, swings his towering height 
 
 Within thy native strain. 
 And, frowning in his shade, the red man's flitting train. 
 
 Thy full-orbed genius sought 
 The blended realm of Nature and of Thought. 
 
 Heart watched beside the eye ; 
 The spirit colored what the vision caught ; 
 The warm life mingled with the earth and sky ; 
 Boughs waved with musings ; contemplation breathed 
 From flowers ; and Song's bright brow was never wreathed 
 With more befitting gifts than thine, bequeathed 
 
 To Time, its lofty plan 
 So true that genius wrought to nature and to man. 
 
 And Nature lives in tbee ! 
 The soul-expanding dome — its twin, the sea — 
 
 Peaks, pillars of the cloud — 
 The cataract's crash — the thunder's roll — ^the free. 
 Grand winds — the stately sweep of woods — the crowd 
 Of bird, tree, flower ; and, in her essence glassed, 
 Nature with grateful love shall hold thee fast. 
 As holds the gem its hues, while years shall last ; 
 
 And every age shall praise. 
 For Nature every breast in close communion sways. 
 
79 
 
 Eacli loved tlieme sings and sMnes 
 In Memory's heart ; — ^its fields Green River twines ; 
 
 Dread Thanatopsis chants ; 
 The Ages speak ; soar the cragged Apennines ; 
 Red floats the Waterfowl to sunset haunts ; 
 Flashes the fiery charge of Marion's Men ; 
 The unshorn Fields roll billowy from the ken ; 
 The murdered Traveller moulders in his glen ; 
 
 Monument Mountain towers ; 
 And cold November blights the gentle race of Flowers. 
 
 Thy matin-strain arose 
 When native song scarce breathed ; while now it flows, 
 
 Sounding on every side, 
 Still in our hearts thy golden music glows. 
 Our mighty land looks on thy wreath with pride ; 
 The future's plaudits echo in thine ear ; 
 Thy statue greets thee still in thy career ; 
 Thy star breaks, blazing, in life's sunset clear ; 
 
 Fame steps in front of death 
 In token of thy tones immortal in her breath. 
 
 Day sheds its parting sheen ; 
 The heavenward rays stream softly o'er the scene ; 
 
 Birds twitter into sleep ; 
 The loitering kine pace home through darkening green ; 
 Along the trees, faint slumberous breathings creep ; 
 Far, dreamy sounds flit, melting on the air 
 That eastward thickens, while in hues more fair 
 
80 
 
 The west burns down ; bowed Nature, rapt in prayer, 
 
 And robed in deepening light, 
 Hushes her peaceful heart to hail the hovering night. 
 
 Mr. Stoddard's stanzas were read by Mr. Bayard Taylor. 
 YATES PATRI^. 
 
 November M, 1794 — November dd, 1864. 
 
 There came a Woman in the night, 
 
 When winds were whist, and moonlight smiled. 
 Where, in his mother's arms who slept, 
 There lay a new-born child. 
 
 She gazed at him with loving looks. 
 
 And while her hand upon his head 
 She laid, in blessing and in power, 
 
 In slow, deep words she said : 
 
 " This child is mine. Of all my sons 
 
 Are none like what the lad shall be, — 
 Though these are wise, and those are strong. 
 And all are dear to me. 
 
 " Beyond their arts of peace and war 
 The gift that unto him belongs, — 
 To see my face, to read my thoughts. 
 To learn my silent songs. 
 
i«^. 
 
81 
 
 " The elder sisters of my race 
 
 Shall taunt no more that I am dumb ; 
 Hereafter I shall sing through him, 
 In ages yet to come ! " 
 
 She stooped and kissed his bahy mouth, 
 
 Whence came a breath of melody. 
 As from the closed leaves of a rose 
 The murmur of a bee ! 
 
 Thus did she consecrate the child, 
 
 His more than mother from that hour, 
 Albeit at hrst he knew her not. 
 
 Nor guessed his sleeping power. 
 
 But not the less she hovered near, 
 
 And touched his spirit unawares ; 
 Burned in the red of morning skies, 
 And breathed in evening airs. 
 
 Unfelt in his, her guiding hand 
 
 Withdrew him from the haunts of men. 
 To where her secret bowers were buUt 
 In wood, and grove, and glen. 
 
 Sometimes he caught a transient glimpse 
 Of her broad robe, that swept before ; 
 Deep in the heart of ancient woods. 
 Or by the sounding shore. 
 
82 
 
 One prosperous day lie chanced to see 
 
 (Be sure 'twas in a lonely place) 
 Her glance of pride, that sought Ms own — 
 At last her noble face ! 
 
 Not as it fronts her children now, 
 
 With clouded brows, and looks of ire. 
 And eyes that would be blind with tears. 
 But for their quenchless fire ! 
 
 But happy, gracious, beautiful. 
 
 And more imperial than a Queen ; 
 A woman of majestic mould. 
 
 And most maternal mien. 
 
 And he was happy. For in her 
 
 (" For he," she said, " shall read my mind,") 
 He saw the glory of the earth. 
 The hope of humankind. 
 
 Thenceforth, wherever he might walk. 
 Through forest aisles, or by the sea ; 
 Where floats the flower-like butterfly. 
 And hums the drowsy bee ; 
 
 By rock-ribbed hills, and pensive vales 
 
 That stretch in shade between ; 
 And by the soffc-complaining brooks 
 That make the meadows green; 
 

 
 
83 
 
 He felt ter presence everywhere, 
 
 To-day was glad, to-morrow grave; 
 And wliat slie gave to him in thought, 
 To us in song he gave. 
 
 In stately songs, in solemn hymns, 
 
 (Few are so clear, and none so high,) 
 That mirrored her, in calm and storm. 
 As mountain lakes the sky. 
 
 And evermore one Shape appeared. 
 
 To comfort now, and now command ; 
 A bearded man, with many scars, 
 Who bore a battle-brand ! 
 
 And she was filled with serious joy. 
 To know her poet followed him ; 
 Not losing heart, nor bating hope. 
 When others' faith was dim. 
 
 And, as the years went slowly by. 
 
 And she grew stronger, and more wise, 
 Stretching her hands o'er broader lands. 
 And grander destinies : 
 
 And he, our poet, poured his hymns, 
 
 Serene, prophetic, sad, — as each 
 Became a part of her renown. 
 
 And of his native speech ; 
 
84 
 
 She wove, by turns, a wreath for him, 
 
 The business of her idle hours ; 
 And here were sprigs of mountain pine. 
 And there were prairie flowers. 
 
 And now, even in her sorest need, 
 
 Pale, bleeding, faint in every limb. 
 She still remembers what he is. 
 And comes to honor him. 
 
 For hers, not ours, the songs we bring. 
 
 The flowers, the music, and the light ; 
 And 'tis her hand that lays the wreath 
 On his gray head to-night ! 
 
 R. H. Stoddaed. 
 
 November 3d, 1864. 
 
 One more poem graced the evening ; the tribute of a long 
 and intimate friendship. 
 
 TO WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT ON HIS 
 SEVENTIETH BIRTHDAY. 
 
 BY H. T. TUOKEEMAN. 
 
 Calm priest of Nature, her maternal hand 
 
 Led thee, a reverent child. 
 To mountain-altars, by the lonely strand, 
 
 And through the forest wild. 
 
85 
 
 Haunting her temple, filled with love and awe, 
 
 To thy responsive youth 
 The harmonies of her benignant law 
 
 Revealed consoling truth. 
 
 Thenceforth, when toiling in the grasp of Care 
 
 Amid the eager throng, 
 A votive seer, her greetings thou didst bear. 
 
 Her oracles prolong. 
 
 The: vagrant winds and the far heaving main 
 
 Breathed in thy chastened rhyme. 
 Their latent music to the soul again, 
 
 Above the din of time. 
 
 The seasons, at thy call, renewed the spell 
 
 That thrilled our better years, 
 The primal wonder o'er our spirits fell. 
 
 And woke the fount of tears. 
 
 And Faith's monition, like an organ's strain. 
 
 Followed the sea-bird's flight. 
 The river's bounteous flow, the ripening grain, 
 
 And stars' unfathomed light. 
 
 In the dank woods and where the meadows gleam. 
 
 The lowliest flower that smiled 
 To wisdom's vigil or to fancy's dream. 
 
 Thy gentle thought beguiled. 
 
86 
 
 They win fond glances in the prairies' sweep, 
 
 And where the moss-clumps lie, 
 A welcome find when through the mould they creep, 
 
 A requiem when they die. 
 
 Unstained thy song with passion's fitful hues 
 
 Or pleasure's reckless breath, 
 For nature's beauty to thy virgin muse 
 
 Was solemnized by death. 
 
 I 
 O'er life's majestic realm and dread repose. 
 
 Entranced with holy calm, 
 
 From the rapt soul of boyhood then iiprose 
 
 The memorable psalm. 
 
 And roaming lone beneath the woodland shades, 
 
 Thy meditative prayer 
 In the umbrageous aisles and choral glades 
 
 We murmur unaware : 
 
 Or track the ages with prophetic cheer, 
 
 Lured by thy chant sublime, 
 Till bigotry and kingcraft disappear 
 
 In Freedom's chosen clime. 
 
 While on her ramparts "with intrepid mien, 
 
 O'er faction's angry sea. 
 Thy voice proclaims, undaunted and serene, 
 
 The watchwords of the free. 
 
87 
 
 Not in vague tones or tricks of verbal art 
 
 The plaint and psean rung ; 
 TMne the clear utterance of an earnest heart, 
 
 The limpid Saxon tongue. 
 
 Our country's minstrel ! in whose crystal verse 
 
 With tranquil joy we trace 
 Her native glories, and the tale rehearse 
 
 Of her primeval race, 
 
 Blest are thy laurels, that unchallenged crown 
 
 Worn brow and silver hair. 
 For truth and manhood consecrate renown, 
 
 And her pure triumph share ! 
 
 It being now near twelve o'clock, the President an- 
 nounced that Launt Thompson, an artist member of the Cen- 
 tury, had received a commission from Charles H. Ludiugton, 
 a brother member, to make a colossal bust of Mr. Bryant, to 
 be placed in the Central Park of New York City ; and there- 
 upon the meeting was dissolved. 
 
88 
 
 Commrtto of i^it €tninx]o for % §irga;nt Jfjesiitoal 
 
 GEOEGE BANCEOFT, Peesident. WILLIAM J. HOPPIN, 
 
 A. E. MACDONOUGH, Seceetaey. LOUIS LANG, 
 
 JOHN" PEIESTLEY, Teeasueee. JOHJST H. GOUELIE, 
 
 LEWIS M. EUTHEEFOED, WILLIAM KEMBLE, 
 THOMAS HICKS, Teustees. 
 
 ^xismhxB of i^i ^nrtfolio anir €nxb&Ji Stanit. 
 
 WILLIAM T. BLODGETT, J AS. LOEIMEE GEAHAM, Je., 
 
 A. M. COZZENS, M. K. KITCHEN, 
 
 C. E. DETMOLD, M. KNOEDLEE, 
 
 JOHN H. GOUELIE, H. Q. MAEQUAND, 
 
 LEVI P. MOETON. 
 
 MAESHALL PEPOON, ANDEEW G. BININGEE, 
 
 JAMES C. CAETEE. 
 
 Committw on ^Pttblkation. 
 
 J. LOEIMEE GEAHAM, Je., JOHN H. GOUELIE, 
 
 WILLIAM H. APPLETON. 
 
uc