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 NEW YORK: 
 
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 734 Broadway. 
 
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No. 47. 
 ENGLISH CLASSICS. 
 
 Than ATOP SIS 
 And Other Poems 
 
 By William Cullen Bryant. 
 
 !'0 / 
 
 \^- 
 
 With Introduction and Notes 
 By J. W. ABERNETHY, Ph.D., 
 
 PROFESSOR OF ENGLISH LITERATURE IN THE ADELPHI ACADEMY, BROOKLYN. 
 
 NEW YORK: 
 
 Clark & Maynard, Publishers, 
 
 734 Broadway. 
 
English Classics 
 
 CLASSES 
 
 IN ENGLISH LITERATURE, READING, GRAMMAR 
 
 EniTED BY Emikent English and American Scholars. 
 Jktch Volume contains a Sketch of the Author's Life, Prefatory and 
 
 ETC, 
 
 I 
 
 No 
 
 Explanatory Notes, Etc., Etc. 
 
 1 Byron's Prophecy of Bante. (Cantos 
 
 I and II.) 
 
 2 Milton's Li'Alleero and 11 Penseroso. 
 8 Lord Baeon's Essays, Civil and 
 
 Moral. (Selected. ) 
 
 4 Byron's Prisoner of Chlllon. 
 
 5 Moore's Fire Worshippers. (Lalla 
 
 Kookh. Selected from parts I. and II.) 
 
 6 Goldsmith's Deserted Village. 
 
 7 Scott's M arm ion. (SelecUons from 
 
 Canto VI.) 
 
 8 Scott's Lay of the Last MInstreL 
 
 (Introduction and Canto I.) 
 
 9 Burns' Cotter's Saturday Xlght.and 
 
 Other Poems. 
 
 10 Crabbc's the Village. 
 
 11 Campbell's Pleasures of Hope. 
 
 (Abridgment of Part I.) 
 
 12 Macaulay's Essay on Bunyan's Pll- 
 
 grini's Progress. 
 18 Macaulay's Armada, and Other 
 Poems, 
 
 14 Shakespeare's Merchant of Venice. 
 
 (Selections from Act.sl., III. andl\.j 
 
 15 Goldsmith's Traveller. 
 
 16 Hoffs's Queen's Wake. 
 
 17 Coleridge's Ancient Mariner, 
 
 18 Addison's Sir Koger de Coverley, 
 
 1 9 Gray's Elegy In a Country Church- 
 
 yard. 
 
 20 Scott's Lady of the Lake, (Canto I.) 
 
 21 Shakespeare's As You Like It, etc/ 
 
 (Sjlections.) 
 22 
 
 «. u- ^ _^ King John and Klne 
 Richard IL (Selections.) 
 
 iF' 
 
 Shakespeare 
 
 Richard IL. ^ 
 
 28 Shakespeare's KingHenr^ ^.., 
 
 KJne, Henry V., and King Henry 
 
 VI, (.-lelections ) ' 
 
 24 Shakespeare's Henry VIII,, and 
 
 Julius Caesar, (SeKctlonb) 
 Wordsworth's Excursion. (Book I. 
 Pope's Essay on Criticism, 
 Spenser's Faery Queene. (Cantos 1, 
 
 and II.) 
 Cowper's Task. (Book 1.) 
 Milton's Comus. 
 Tennyson's Enoch Arden. 
 
 81 Irvlng's Sketch Book. ( Selection. s.) 
 
 82 Dickens' Christmas Carol. (Con- 
 
 denscd ) 
 88 Carlyle's Hero as a Prophet. 
 84 Macaulay's \\ arren Hastings, (Con- 
 densed.) 
 Goldsmith's Vicar of Wakefleld. 
 
 (Condensed ) 
 Tennyson's The Tvro Voices and a 
 Dream «f Fair A\ omen. 
 
 25 
 
 26 
 
 2? 
 
 28 
 29 
 80 
 
 85 
 
 Memory Quotations. 
 Cavalier Poets, 
 
 Dryden's Alexander's Feast and 
 -^ _MacFlecknoe. 
 
 40 Keats' The Eve of St, Agnes. 
 
 41 Irving's Legend of Sleepy Holloiv, 
 
 Others In Preparation. From S2 to 64 pages each, icmo. 
 
 Shakespeare's Plays— (School Editions); viz : Mercliant of 
 Venice, Julius Csesar, Kii.- Lear, Macbeth, Hamlet, Tempest, 
 As you Like It, King Henry V. With Notes, Examination Paper" and 
 Plan of Preparation (Selected). By Brainerd Kellogg, A.M., Professor of tlio 
 English Langiiajre and Literature in the Broolvlyn Collegiate and Polytechnic Insti- 
 tute, and author of "A Text-Book on Rhetoric," "A Text-Book on EngS LUera- 
 tiire ' and one of the authors of Reed & Kellogg's "Graded Lessons in English 'V 
 and " Higher Les.sons in English." 32mo, flexible, cloth. ^"gnau, 
 
 The text of these plays of Shakespeare has been adapted for use in mixed classps hv tTiA 
 omission of everything that would be considered oflFensive. The notes have hepTpsi^pHnllv 
 selected to meet the requirements of School and College students from editLDnsecftedbv 
 eminent English Scholars. We are confident that teachfrs who exam^n^tK^^^^^^ 
 pronounce them better adapted to the wants, both of the teacher and student tLnanvnthnr t 
 editions published. Printed from large tvpe, bound in a very a?tracti^e c^^^ I 
 
 sold at nearly one-half the price of other School Editions of Shakespeare: '^'^"'"g. ana 
 
 Paradise Lost. (Book I.) Containing Sketch of Milton's Life^ssay on 
 
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 and full Explanat ory Notes. Cloth, flexible, 94 pages. aii^iLuu, 
 
 wUjTlnft^^ri^^f''**^**''* ^®**f ^; E^? Extracts from the Plays of Shakespeare 
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 By C. H. \V VKKS. 160 pp., 16mo, cloth, flexible. i' J- 
 
 p«iT^f*^*„^f^'?/^c^"'"'^iT*!^?ro'^'^^ prologue of Geoffrey Chaucer. The Text 
 r?In.^^ with he Seven Oldest MSS., and Life of the Author Introductory Notices, 
 
 Worr kS'F''#^w'^^^P^^"^*^.TT?"^"*^' ^°^ I"^*^^ t« Obsolete and Diflicul 
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 Copyright, 1884, by Clark & Matnard. 
 
Geisteral Iitteoductioit. 
 
 The life of the "father of our song" was almost co-extensive with 
 the life of our republic. His eighty- fou'^ years began during the admin 
 istration of Washuagton and ended during that of Hayes. His greatest 
 1 poem was written eight years before Irving's " Sketch Book," nine years 
 before Cooper's first novel, and twenty-eight years before Longfellow's 
 first volume of poetry appeared. Indeed, the history of American 
 ! literature may properly be said to begin with "Thanatopsis " 
 ' William Cullen Bryant was born at Cummiugton, Massachusetts, 
 J^ovember 8, 1794. His father, Peter Bryant was a physician, held in 
 high esteem both for his professional skill and for his superior learning 
 j and culture. The first of his name in this country was Stephen Bryant, 
 ' who came from England about twelve years after the arrival of the 
 Mayflower. His mother, Sarah Snell Bryant, traced the line of her 
 ancestry back to John Alden and Priscilla Mullins, celebrated in Long- 
 fellow's poem. Thus our two most eminent poets, Longfellow and 
 I Bryant, divided the honor of descent from Captain Miles Standish's 
 famous lieutenant The remarkable development of Bryant's poetic 
 I faculty in early youth was largely due, probably, to the encouragement 
 'and careful training received from his father. It was he — 
 
 *' who taught my youth 
 The art of verse, and in the bud of life 
 Offered me to the muses." 
 
 The love of literature and some skill in the "art of verse" were a part 
 of the family inheritance througii several generations. ' ' My father 
 delighted in poetry," he says, " and wrote verses himself, mostly 
 humorous and satirical." One of the poet's brothers also was a writer 
 of verses of considerable merit. To the mother he OAved much of that 
 ; stem integrity of character which won for him many triumphs outside 
 I the field of poetry. She was a person of " quick and sensitive moral 
 juderment, and had no patience with any form of deceit or duplicity," 
 and he adds, "if, in the discussion of public questions, I have in my 
 riper age endeavored to keep in view the great rule of right without 
 much regard to persons, it has been owing in great degree to the force 
 of her example, which taught me never to countenance a wrong because 
 others dia." 
 
4 GEKERAL INTRODUCTION. 
 
 Bryant began to make verses in his eighth year, one of his earliest 
 efforts being a paraphrase of the first chapter of the Book of Job, and 
 another, a poetical address before his school. In his thirteenth year he 
 surprised his family and the public with a political satire of over five 
 hundred lines, which was published at Boston under the title, "The 
 Embargo, or Sketches of the Times , a Satire, by a Youth of Thirteen." 
 It appeared in a second edition the following year, together with several 
 other poems of a political character. More than forty pieces of verse 
 were written before he was sixteen years old — odes, elegies, satires, 
 songs, and translations ; but they are little more than mocking-bird 
 rhymes, in manner echoing Pope, whose influence was still dominant, 
 and in matter rehearsing the political sentiments of the times ; more- 
 over, they contain not the slightest hint of the characteristics of his 
 later poetry. 
 
 In 1810 he entered the sophomore class of Williams College, then 
 an institution consisting of a president, one professor, and two tutors. 
 He remained here only seven months, having decided to continue his 
 course at Yale ; but this he was unable to do, on account of his father's 
 limited means. Accordingly he began the study of law, and in 1816 
 opened an oflSce in Plainfield, removing the following year to Great 
 Barrington, villages not far from his native town. In the latter place 
 he continued a successful practice until 1825. 
 
 It is pretty certain that during these years his happiest hours were 
 spent with the muses: Although he studied his law-books diligently, 
 yet he continued to read "greedily" the works of the English poets, 
 with which his father kept him well supplied. "I read all the poetry 
 that came in m\ way," he says. In 1810, the year that he entered 
 college, he made the precious discovery of Wordsworth's " Lyrical 
 Ballads," in which he found for the first time a poetic embodiment of 
 his own undefined feelings for external nature. He once said to a 
 friend that "upon opening the book a thousand springs seemed to gush 
 up at once in his heart, and the face of nature, of a sudden, to change 
 into a strange freshness and life." He had early formed the habit — 
 which remained with him during life— of roaming the fields and woods 
 whenever he could "steal an hour from study and care." In an unfin- 
 isnea poem of his old age, he says of himself at this peiiod : 
 
 " Ever apart from the resorts of men 
 He roamed the pathless woods, and hearkened long 
 To winds that brought into their silent depths 
 The murmurs of the mountain waterfalls." 
 
 Under the influence of Wordsworth he now began to comprehend more 
 fully that "various language " of Nature which he was soon to interpret 
 so beautifully, and to engage in that subtle communion with all her 
 
GENERAL INTRODITCTIOK. 5 
 
 visible forms, from which the inspiration of his best poetry was to be 
 drawn. It was during one of those solitary rambles, in 1811, that 
 "Thanatopsis" was composed, "the greatest poem ever written by so 
 young a man." In 1814 the " Yellow Violet " was written; in 1815, 
 "The Waterfowl" and the "Inscription for the Entrance to a Wood" 
 were added; and in 1819 and 1830, "Green River," "A Winter Piece," 
 and "The West Wind." 
 
 The year 1821 was an eventful one in the poet's history. He was 
 married to the "fairest of the rural maids"; he was invited to deliver 
 a poem before the Phi Beta Kappa Society of Harvard, and for this 
 occasion wrote "The Ages," one of his longest and most elaborate 
 poems ; and the first volume of his serious poetry was published, con- 
 taining only eight poems, but such poems as had never been written in 
 America. During the next four years about thirty poems were written, 
 containing some of the finest work of his life. Among these were " The 
 Rivulet," "Monument Mountain," "Autumn Woods," "Hymn to the 
 North Star," and the "Forest Hymn." 
 
 It is evident from "Green River" that the practice of law was uncon- 
 genial to Bryant from the first, and from various allusions in his private 
 letters it would seem also that, with Macaulay, he had come to believe 
 it more than questionable "whether the rules and doctrines observed 
 among lawyers be agreeable to reason and morahty." He was certainly 
 ill at ease among the "hoary-headed wranglers" of court-rooms, and 
 was conscious of a gross perversion of his refined poetic faculties in 
 continuing to "drudge for the dregs of men." In 1835, therefore, he 
 abandoned the law, went to New York as a "literary adventurer," and 
 soon became editor of the " New York Review and Athenaeum." 
 But in this position there was little promise of success or even of a 
 livelihood. The sombre little poem, "The Journey of Life," written 
 at this time, shows him groping in the darkness where— 
 
 " The lights that tell of cheerful homes appear 
 Far off"; and die like hope amid the glooms." 
 
 The next year he became assistant editor, and in 1829 editor-in-chief, 
 of the "Evening Post," with which journal he continued to be asso- 
 ciated the remainder of his life. Poetry was now necessarily neglected, 
 and his best energies were engaged in the fervid toil of daily journalism, 
 where genius loses its individuality and serves only to make a part of 
 that vague force for good in the world known as the " power of the 
 press." His long career as a journali.->t was to a remarkable degree 
 successful and honorable ; but it is as a poet, not as a journalist, that, 
 posterity will continue to honor him. 
 
 In 18 ;3 a volume containing al)Out ninety poems appeared. It was. 
 republished in England, witli a dedication to the poet Rogers by Wash- 
 
6 GEKEEAL Il^TEOmiCTION. 
 
 ington Irving, and won much unwilling praise from the English critics. 
 In 1836 another edition was issued, and in 18i2 a little volume containing 
 twenty new poems appeared under the title of "The Fountain and Other 
 Poems." Henceforth new poems were added, at infrequent intervals, 
 until the last year of his life. Among the most popular of the later 
 poems are "The Song of the Sower," "Planting of the Apple Tree," 
 "Among the Trees," and the two fairy pieces, "Sella" and "The Little 
 People of the Snow." The grand music of the "Forest Hymn " of his 
 early years is continued in "A Hymn of the Sea," and in "The Flood 
 of Years," written in his eighty-second year, the lofty and solemn chord 
 of " Thanatopsis " and the " Hymn to Death " is again sounded. 
 
 As material prosperity increased, Bryant became a great traveller, 
 visiting the old world six times, and many of the remoter parts of his 
 own country. About the only literary fruits of his extensive journeying 
 are the "Letters of a Traveller " and "Letters from the East." These, 
 and a volume of "Orations and Addresses " constitute his prose works 
 which are likely to live. A "Popular History of the United States" 
 bears his name, to which, however, he contributed only the preface. 
 He edited a popular anthology, " The Library of Poetry and Song," and 
 was associated with Mr. E. A. Duyckinck in editing an edition of Shakes- 
 peare, which is yet to appear. 
 
 That " grim power " whose praises the poet had sung in his youth, in 
 1866 took from him his wife, who for forty-five years had been "the 
 brightness of his life." She is frequently alluded to in his poetry, and 
 an unfinished piece, found upon his desk seven years after her death, is 
 filled with the tenderest memories of "that happy past," beginning : 
 
 " The morn hath not the glory that it wore, 
 Nor doth the day so beautifully die, 
 Since I can call thee to my side no more, 
 To gaze upon the sky. 
 
 " For thy dear hand with each return of Spring, 
 I sought in sunny nooks the flowers she gave ; 
 I seek them still, and sorrowfully bring 
 The choicest to thy grave." 
 
 Probably to escape the depression of spirits caused by this great 
 sorrow, Bryant began in 1866 the translation of Homer, and five years 
 later gave us a complete version of the great world-poet, the best, per- 
 haps, ever made in English. After this crowning achievement the 
 sabbath calm of his days was not often broken. His life, as he had 
 hoped, was now— 
 
 "Journeying in long serenity away." 
 
GEITERAL INTRODUCTION-. 7 
 
 He was always active in promoting every movement of art, literature, 
 and benevolence, and, though instinctively shrinking from publicity, 
 was often sought by his fellow-citizens to assume the chief honor at 
 public festivals. While performing one of these characteristic duties, 
 the delivery of an address at the unveHing of a statue to Mazzini in 
 Central Park, he was stricken by the heat of the sun and died a few 
 days later, June 12, 1878. It was as he had fancifully wished in his 
 poem "June," written fifty-three years before— that he might be laid 
 to rest "in flowery June," the season of— 
 
 "Soft airs, and song, and light, and bloom." 
 
 The proper rank of Bryant among our great poets it would be difficult 
 to fix, so many and so uncertain are the tests of poetical greatness. 
 The range of his poetic conceptions was limited, and it was a part of 
 his wisdom to recognize the limitations of his genius and never to 
 poach upon the domains of other poets. His thoughts are at times 
 even commonplace, but it was his peculiar merit to be able to think the 
 most common thoughts with most uncommon force and beauty. Cer- 
 tain it is that in the spiritual depth of the inspiration of his nature- 
 poetry and in its grave, majestic music, he has not been equalled by 
 any American poet. He is superior also in what may be called the 
 power of condensed imagination, "the art of presenting the greatest 
 things in the fewest words and of suggesting the indescribable and the 
 illimitable." He has been called the "American Wordsworth, ' but the 
 epithet is Ukely to be misleading if used to describe his poetry. ' He 
 is not merely a worshipper at Nature's shrine," says Whipple, but a 
 priest of her mysteries, and an interpreter of her symbolic language to 
 men Though he resembles Wordsworth in this bias of his genius, he 
 resembles him in little else, and imitates nobody." His love of nature 
 was intense, and the extent and accuracy of his knowledge of even the 
 minutest facts of the outward world was hardly surpassed ^7 that of 
 the trained naturalist. " 1 was always from my earliest years a delighted 
 observer of external nature," he says. Nearly two-thirds of his poems 
 are direct suggestions from some object or aspect of natui-e. He pos- 
 sessed the instinct of the artist for detecting everywhere even the 
 most evanescent shades of beauty, and the instinct of the moralist for 
 perceiving the remotest analogies of spiritual truth. 
 
 His poetry has never been popular, in the ordinary sense of the word ; 
 neither has the poetry of Shelley and Wordsworth, to whom, among 
 English poets, he stands nearest in poetical kinship. He is too medita- 
 tiv? and too distant from average human sympathies to give general 
 pleasure Besides, he loved nature better than he did men, and m 
 nature he loved best the solemn and sublime aspects. His reflections 
 are always serious and often sad. The burden of his song is the transi- 
 
8 GEKERAL INTRODUCTION". 
 
 toriness of life. The voices of nature are constantly repeating this 
 message in his attentive ear. It is whispered in the rustling leaves by 
 the winds, murmured by the complaining brooks, and echoed by the 
 rock-bound hills. Deliberate moralizing in poetry is perhaps never 
 artistic and not often pleasing; but Bryant's morals are pointed so 
 delicately and gracefully that they cannot offend, and cannot often fail 
 to please. 
 
 Of the technical qualities of his poetry, its simplicity will always 
 command admiration. No poet has ever iDustrated so well the sus- 
 tained power and beauty of simple Saxon speech. Of blank verse he 
 was an acknowledged master. " Among modern authors," says Bayard 
 Taylor, "not one has shown a finer natural perception of the best 
 qualities of blank verse, or has employed that simplest, yet most difficult 
 of measures, with more distinguished success." In the refining of his 
 expression, Bryant was scrupulously nice, sometimes almost finical. 
 An unpoetic phrase or unrhythmic line can hardly be found in his 
 poetry. It is not surprising, therefore, that the quantity of his verse is 
 small ; but it is enough for his fame. It is natural to regret that so 
 much of his energy was given to journalism and so little to poetry, but 
 possibly his poetry is the better for it. Poetry loses its divinity when 
 it becomes a regular occupation. The muses are alwa3's poor servants. 
 Had Longfellow given much more time to the work of his professor- 
 ship, no harm would have resulted to his best poetic fame. Indeed, 
 it is rather appalling to contemplate the extent to which the works 
 of many a great poet might be abridged without serious effect upon the 
 reader's pleasure or the writer's reputation. Bryant never wrote except 
 in strict accord with his poetic conscience, and therefore what he gave 
 us was of the very essence of his finest being, and none of it could well 
 be spared. 
 
 Note.— Through the courtesy of Mr. Parke Godwin, the son-in-law of Mr. 
 Bryant and executor of his estate, the editor has been allowed to use the poems 
 contained in this collection. 
 
Bkyant's Poems 
 
 Thanatopsis.* 
 
 Introductory Note,— This remarkable poem was written in the author's 
 seventeenth year, shortly after leaving Williams College. Contrary to his cus- 
 tom, he did not submit it to his father for criticism, but hid it carefully in a desk, 
 with a few other shorter poems. About six years later Dr. Bryant discovered 
 it and procured its publication in the North Atnerican Review for September, 
 1817. "I believe it was composed in my solitary rambles in the woods," says 
 the poet. The pale cast of thought which was upon him in these rambles is 
 not sufficiently accounted for by saying that his mind was naturally disposed 
 to pensive and sombre musings. It is probable that the books which he hap- 
 pened to be reading at this time had much to do with directing his thoughts to 
 " the last bitter hour." He had recently come upon the melancholy verses of 
 Henry Kirke White, which he read, he says, ■•' with great eagerness, and so often 
 that I had committed several of them to memory." He was also reading that 
 singular poem, Blair's "Grave," " duelling with great pleasure upon its finer 
 liassages," and another poem in blank verse on "Death" by Bishop Porteus. 
 From these crude "melodies of death" the suggestion of "Thanatopsis" un- 
 doubtedly arose. The passages from Blair's poem given in the notes will indicate 
 the nature of the indebtedness. 
 
 The poem was well received at its fi.rst appearance, and in all these years no 
 criticism concerning it has been uttered except in praise, by those who are 
 capable of appreciating its sublime qualities. Christopher North declared it to be 
 "a noble example of true poetic enthusiasm," and added that " it alone would 
 establish the author's claim to the honors of genius." " If we did not know," 
 says Stoddard, " that 'Thanatopsis ' was the work of a young man, we would 
 never guess that such was the fact, it is so serious, so elevated, so noble." Of 
 another phase of the poem's significance George William Curtis says : " It was 
 the first adequate poetic voice of the solemn New England spirit ; and in the 
 grandeur of the hills, in the heroic Puritan tradition of sacrifice and endurance, 
 in the daily life, saddened by imperious and awful theolo^ic dogma, in the hard 
 circumstances of the pioneer household, the contest with the wilderness, the 
 grim legends of Indians and the war— have we not some outward clue to the 
 strain of ' Thanatopsis '—the depthless and entrancing sadness, as of inexorable 
 fate, that murmurs, like the autumn wind through the forest, in the melancholy 
 cadences of this h.^onn to Death ? Moreover, it^was without a harbinger in our 
 literature, and without a trace of the English masters of the hour." 
 
 The poem as originally written consisted of forty-nine lines ; four rhymed 
 stanzas on the subject of death were at first prefixed to it, mistakenly supposed 
 by Dr. Bryant ro be an introduction. It appeared with its present introduction 
 and conclusion in the edition of 1821. As a comparison of the poem as we now 
 know it with the original form will be found instructive, it is here presented 
 as first printed : 
 
 — " Yet a few days, and thee. 
 The all-beholding sun, shall see no more. 
 In all his course ; nor yet in the cold ground, 
 Where thy pale form was laid, with many tears, 
 Nor in th' embrace of ocean shall exist 
 Thy image. Earth, that nourished thee, shall claim 
 
 * The word Thanatopsis signifies a view or contemplation of death ; from the 
 Greek ea.i'aTo<;, death, and 6i//is, a view. 
 
10 BKYANT'S POEMS. 
 
 Thy growth, to be resolv'cl to earth again ; 
 
 And, lost each human trace, surrend'ring up 
 
 Thine individual being, shalt thou go 
 
 To mix forever with the elements, 
 
 To be a brother to th' insensible rock 
 
 And to the sluggish clod, which the rude swain 
 
 Turns with his share, and treads upon. The oak 
 
 Shall send his roots abroad, and pierce thy mould. 
 
 Yet not to thy eternal resting place 
 
 Shalt thou retire alone— nor couldst thou wish 
 
 Couch more magnificent. Tliou shalt lie down 
 
 With patriarchs of the infant world — with kings 
 
 The powei'ful of the earth — the wise, the good, 
 
 Fair forms, and hoary seers of ages past, 
 
 All in one mighty sepulchre.— The hills, 
 
 Rock-ribb'd and ancient as the sun,— the vales 
 
 Stretching in pensive quietness between ; 
 
 The venerable woods— the floods that move 
 
 In majesty,— and the complaining brooks. 
 
 That wind among the meads, and make them green, 
 
 Are btit the solemn decorations all, 
 
 Of the great tomb of man.— The golden sun, 
 
 The planets, all the infinite host of heaven 
 
 Are glowing on the sad abodes of death. 
 
 Through the still lapse of ages. All that tread 
 
 The globe are but a handful to the tribes 
 
 That slumber in its bosom.— Take the wings 
 
 Of morning- and the Borean desert pierce— 
 
 Or lose thyself in the continuous woods 
 
 That veil Oregan. where he hears no sound 
 
 Save his own dashings — yet— the dead are there, 
 
 And millions in those solitudes, since first 
 
 The flight of years began, have laid them down 
 
 In their last sleep— the dead reign there alone. — 
 
 So shalt thou rest— and what if thou shalt fall 
 
 Unnoticed by the living— and no friend 
 
 Take note of thy departure ? Thousands more 
 
 Will share thy destiny.— The tittering, world 
 
 Dance to the grave. The busy brood of care 
 
 Plod on.and each one chases as before 
 
 His favourite phantom.— Yet all these shall leave 
 
 Their mirth and their employments, and shall come 
 
 And make their bed with thee 1 " 
 
 To him who in the love of Nature holds 
 Communion with her visible forms, she speaks 
 A various language ; for his gayer hours 
 She has a voice of gladness, and a smile 
 And eloquence of beauty, and she glides 5 
 
 Into his darker musings, with a mild 
 And healing sympathy, that steals away 
 Their sharpness, ere he is aware. When thoughts 
 Of the last bitter hour come like a blight 
 Over thy spirit, and sad images 10 
 
THAN^ATOPSIS. 11 
 
 Of the stern agony, and shroud, and pall, 
 
 And breathless darkness, and the narrow bouse. 
 
 Make thee to shudder, and grow sick at heart ; — 
 
 Go forth, under the open sky, and list 
 
 To Nature's teachings, while from all around — 15 
 
 Earth and her waters, and the depths of air — 
 
 Comes a still voice — Yet a few days, and thee 
 
 The all-beholding sun shall see no more 
 
 In all his course ; nor yet in the cold ground. 
 
 Where thy pale form was laid, with many tears, 20 
 
 Nor in the embrace of ocean, shall exist 
 
 Thy image. Earth, that nourished thee, shall claim 
 
 Thy growth, to be resolved to earth again, 
 
 And, lost each human trace, surrendering up 
 
 Thine individual being, shalt thou go 25 
 
 To mix for ever with the elements. 
 
 To be a brother to the insensible rock 
 
 And to the sluggish clod, which the rude swain 
 
 Turns with his share, and treads upon. The oak 
 
 Shall send his roots abroad, and pierce thy mould. 30 
 
 Yet not to thine eternal resting-place 
 Shalt thou retire alone, nor couldst thou wish 
 Couch more magnificent. Thou shalt lie down 
 With patriarchs of the infant world — with kings, 
 
 23. Growth, i.e., the product of g:rowth. Resolved here used in its strictly 
 etymological sense, as in Dryden's lines : — 
 
 " Ye immortal souls, who once were men, 
 And now resolved to elements again." 
 33 ef seq. Compare with this part of the poem the following passages from 
 Blair's "Grave" : — 
 
 — " 'Tis here all meet. 
 The shivering Icelander and sunburnt Moor, 
 Men of all climes who never met before, 
 And of all creeds, the Jew, the Turk, the Christian. 
 Here the proud prince, and favorite yet prouder, 
 His sovereign's keeper and the people's scourge." 
 * * ***** 
 
 " Here are the wise, the generous, and the brave, 
 The just, the good, the worthless, the profane." 
 -^******* 
 — " What is this world ? 
 What but a spacious burial-field un walled 
 Strewed with death's spoils, the spoils of animals 
 Savage and tame, and full of dead men's bones. 
 Compare also Job iii, lS-19. 
 
12 BRYANT'S POEMS. 
 
 The powerful of the earth — the wise, the good, 35 
 
 Fair forms, and hoary seers of ages past, 
 
 All in one mighty sepulchre. The hills 
 
 Rock-ribbed and ancient as the sun, — the vales 
 
 Stretching in pensive quietness between ; 
 
 The venerable woods — rivers that move 40 
 
 In majesty, and the complaining brooks 
 
 That make the meadows green ; and, poured round all, 
 
 Old ocean's gray and melancholy waste, — 
 
 Are but the solemn decorations all 
 
 Of the great tomb of man. The golden sun, 45 
 
 The planets, all the infinite host of heaven, 
 
 Are shining on the sad abodes of death. 
 
 Through the still lapse of ages. All that tread 
 
 The globe are but a handful to the tribes 
 
 That slumber in its bosom. — Take the wings ■ 50 
 
 Of morning, pierce the Barcan wilderness. 
 
 Or lose thyself in the continuous woods 
 
 Where rolls the Oregon, and hears no sound, 
 
 37. The hills, etc. Notice the force and beauty of the epithets in this sen- 
 tence. " Rock-ribbed" is hardly equaled in Bryant's other descriptions of hills 
 and mountains, and is as good as Shakespeare's •'heaven-kissing hills." Sted- 
 man borrowed it in his poem on " The Death of Bryant," making "rock-ribbed 
 heights." "The venerable woods" suggests Keats' "green-robed senators of 
 mighty wood." " Complaining " is thus used again in " The Wind and Stream." 
 
 42, 43. These two lines are a substitute for the original line— 
 
 " That wind among the meads and make them green." 
 
 "The grandest of all his changes is the addition which he made to the natural 
 scenery that surrounds the great tomb of man, and which rounds oflFand encloses 
 the whole with a Homeric t)r Hebraic glimpse of the sea."— ^. H. IStoddard. 
 
 48. " The number of the dead long exceedeth all that shall live. The night of 
 time far surpas^igth the day, and who knows when was the equinox ? '"—Sir 
 Thomas Browne' s'^ydriotaphia. 
 
 50. " If I take the wings of the morning, and dwell in the uttermost parts of 
 the sea.''— Psalms cxxxix, 9. 
 
 51. Pierce the Barcan wilderness. Originallv written " the Barcan 
 desert pierce." Fearing that one could not " pierce " a 'desert, the poet changed 
 the line to •' traverse Barca's desert sands," but soon restored the original w ord 
 at the advice of his friend Eichard H. Dana. " It is the very term," he writes, 
 " and aflects the mind with any poetry in it, as if making its way straight through 
 the mists of that whose verge liad never been passed before." 'in the later edi- 
 tions, however, the word "wilderness" was adopted, used in its primitive 
 signification— i.e., any wild or desert place (A. §. wild-dcor, wild animal). Barca 
 is a country of northern Africa, bordering on the Libyan desert. 
 
 53. Oregon is another name for the Columbia River. Lewis and Clarke 
 made their famous expedition to the mouth of this river in 1804-6. The thrilling 
 narratives current upon the return of these explorers would readily suggest this 
 region as the best example of a vast primeval forest. 
 
 Compare this hue with the original. 
 
THANATOPSIS. 13 
 
 Save his own dasliings — yet tlie dead are there : 
 
 And millions in those solitudes, since first 55 
 
 The flight of years began, have laid them down 
 
 In their last sleep — the dead reign there alone. 
 
 So shalt thou rest, and what if thou withdraw 
 
 In silence from the living, and no friend 
 
 Take note of thy departure ? All that breathe 60 
 
 Will share thy destiny. The gay will laugh 
 
 When thou art gone, the solemn brood of care 
 
 Plod on, and each one as before will chase 
 
 His favorite phantom ; yet all these shall leave 
 
 Their mirth and their employments, and shall come 65 
 
 And make their bed with thee. As the long train 
 
 Of ages glides away, the sons of men, 
 
 The youth in life's fresh spring, and he who goes 
 
 In the full strength of years, matron, and maid, 
 
 The speechless babe, and the gray-headed man, — 70 
 
 Shall one by one be gathered to thy side, 
 
 By those, who in their turn shall follow them. 
 
 58. 59. Originally "what if thou shalt fall unnoticed hy the living." Other 
 readings are "what if thou f*hould!^t fiill," and "what if thou withdraw unheeded 
 by the liAMng." 
 
 66. And make tlieii- bed with tliee. A scriptural phrase. See Psalms 
 cxxxix, 8. Compare Blair's lines— 
 
 " 'Tis but a night, a long and moonless night, 
 We make the grave our bed, and then are gone. 
 
 67. Glides, written slide in many editions. 
 
 67-72. Compare with these lines the following passages from Blair's 
 " Grave " : — 
 
 " Here querulous old-age winds up his tale ; 
 Here is the large-limb'd peasant ; here the child 
 Of a span long that never saw the sun, 
 ******* 
 The sober widow and the young green virgin, 
 Cropp'd like a rose before 'tis fully blown. 
 ******* 
 The verv turf on which we tread once lived, 
 And we'that live must lend our carcases 
 To cover our own oft'spring ; in their turns 
 They too must cover theirs." 
 
 68. Life's fresh spring. In many editions, "Life's green spring." 
 70. This line is a substitute for two in the edition of 1821 :— 
 
 " The bowed with age, the infant in the smile 
 And beauty of its innocent age cut off. 
 The improvement made by the change mav be questioned, as the present line 
 is somewhat hackneyed. " The speechless babe " was first written " And the 
 sweet babe." 
 
14 BBYAI^^T'S POEMS. 
 
 So live, that when thy summons comes to join 
 The innumerable caravan, which moves 
 To that mysterious realm, where each shall take 
 His chamber in the silent halls of death, 
 Thou go not, like the quarry-slave at night. 
 Scourged to his dungeon, but, sustained and soothed 
 By an unfaltering trust, approach thy grave, 
 Like one who wraps the drapery of his couch 
 About him, and lies down to pleasant dreams. 
 
 To a Waterfowl. 
 
 Introductory Note.— This poem was sugije^M^ed by the flight of a wild dnck 
 which the poet saw while ou his way to Plainfield, where he was about to begin 
 the practice of law. The incident is thus described by his biographer, Parke 
 Godwin : " He says in a letter that he felt, as he wallsed up the hills, very for- 
 lorn and desolate indeed, not knowing what was to become of him in the big 
 world, which grew bigger as he ascended, and yet darker with the coming on of 
 night. The sun had already set, leaving behind it one of those brilliant seas of 
 chrysolite and opal which often flood the New England skies ; and. while he was 
 looking upon the rosy splendor with wrapt admiration, a solitary bird made 
 wing along the illuminated horizon. He watched the lone wanderer until it was 
 lost in the distance, asking himself whither it had come and to what far home it 
 was flying. When he went to the house where he was to stop for the night, his 
 mind was still full of what he had seen and felt, and he wrote those lines, as 
 imperishable as our language, ' The Waterfowl.' " 
 
 It would be diflicult to find in all our literature a more beautiful expression of 
 the lesson of confidence in divine goodness than this little poem. In its chaste 
 simplicity it is as perfect a piece of art as the cutting upon an ancient gem. 
 " Nothing more exquisite can be conceived," says Dr. Eay Palmer, "than the pic- 
 ture it presents to the mental eye of the imaginative reader. The melody of the 
 verse is as sweet as it is simple. The choice of language is perfect. Made up 
 very largely of monosyllabic words, the stanzas are clear and strong." 
 
 The form of the stanza was suggested by Southey's poem, " The Ebb Tide," 
 It is used again in "Autumn Woods." 
 
 Whither, midst falling dew. 
 While glow the heavens with the last steps of day, 
 Far, through their rosy depths, dost thou pursue 
 
 Thy solitary way ? 
 
 Vainly the fowler's eye 5 
 
 Mig-ht mark thy distant flight to do thee wrong, 
 
 75. To that inysterious realm. Bryant first wrote " To the pale realms 
 of shade," which his friend Dana good-naturedly pronounced " utterly abomi- 
 nable." Compare Hamlet iii, 1 : — 
 
 " The undiscovered country from whose bourn 
 No traveller returns." 
 
TO A WATERFOWL. 15 
 
 As, darkly painted on the crimson sky. 
 Thy figure floats along. 
 
 Seek'st thou the plashy brink 
 Of weedy lake, or marge of river wide, 10 
 
 Or where the rocking billows rise and sink 
 
 On the chafed ocean side ? 
 
 There is a Power whose care 
 Teaches thy way along that pathless coast — 
 The desert and illimitable air — 15 
 
 Lone wandering, but not lost. 
 
 All day thy wings have fanned. 
 At that far height, the cold, thin atmosphere. 
 Yet stoop not, weary, to the welcome land, 
 
 Though the dark night is near. 20 
 
 And soon that toil shall end ; 
 Soon shalt thou find a summer home and rest, 
 And scream among thy fellows ; reeds shall bend, 
 
 Soon, o'er thy sheltered nest. 
 
 7. Darkly painted on the crimson sky. In various editions of the 
 poems we find ■•limned upon," "shadowed on," and "seen against," the last 
 form appearing in nearly all of the later editions. 
 
 "From a very early period," says Bryant,— "I am not sure that it was not 
 from the verv time that I wrote the poem— there seemed to me an incongruity 
 hetween the ulea of a figure painted on the sky and a figure moving. ' floating ' 
 across its fiice. If the figure were painted, then it would be fixed. The incon- 
 gruity distressed me, and I could not be easy until I had made the change. I 
 preferred a plain prosaic expression to a picturesque one which seemed to me 
 false ' Painted ' expresses well the depth and strength of color which fixed my 
 attention when I saw the bird— for the scene was founded on a real mcident— 
 but it contradicted the motion of the wiuds and the progress of the bird thi-ough 
 the air." :, , ^, . 
 
 Is not the critical conscience of the poet too seriously aflfected by this mcon- 
 ffruity? It is not the truth of a physical fact that he wishes to express, but the 
 truth of an artistic impression upon the imagination. Moreover, because of the 
 '- distant flight " the bird's motion is hardly perceptible, and the eflTect 9f the 
 w^hole scene upon the beholder is simply that of a picture upon whose crimson 
 backofround the floating bird seems to be painted. 
 
 9. Plashy, Essentially the same as splashy, from an old root-verb, meaning 
 to strike with the palm, beat, slap. An old substantive jjlash means a puddle, a 
 shallow pool. " Plashy snow " occurs in " A Winter Piece." 
 
 18. Wby "cold, thin" atmosphere? , „, „ , 
 
 22. Compare with this poem the address to the flying swan m Snelley s 
 "Alastor": 
 
 " Thou hast a home. 
 Beautiful bird ! thou voyagest to thine home," &c. 
 
16 BRYANT'S POEMS. 
 
 Thou'rt gone, the abyss of heaven 25 
 
 Hath swallowed up thy form ; yet, on my heart 
 Deeply hath sunk the lesson thou hast given. 
 
 And shall not soon depart. 
 
 He who, from zone to zone. 
 Guides through the boundless sky thy certain flight, 30 
 In the long way that I must tread alone, 
 
 Will lead my steps aright. 
 
 Green River. 
 
 Introductory Note.— Green River is tlie name of a small tributary of the 
 Housatonic which runs near the village of Great Barrington, where the poet was 
 practising law when this poem was written, in 1819. The poem is notably auto- 
 biographical, expressing clearly the increasing dissatisfaction with his profes- 
 sion. Washington Allston, on reading "Green River," remarked, "That man 
 is a true poet, his heart is in it. What he gives you comes from his own 
 spirit." 
 
 When breezes are soft and skies are fair, 
 I steal an hour from study and care. 
 And hie me away to the woodland scene, 
 Where wanders the stream with waters of green, 
 As if the bright fringe of herbs on its brink 5 
 
 Had given their stain to the wave they drink ; 
 And they, whose meadows it murmurs through, 
 Have named the stream from its own fair hue. 
 
 Yet pure its waters — its shallows are bright 
 With colored pebbles and sparkles of light, 10 
 
 And clear the depths where its eddies play. 
 And dimples deepen and whirl away, 
 And the plane-tree's speckled arms o'ershoot 
 The swifter current that mines its root, 
 Through whose shifting leaves, as you walk the hill, 15 
 The quivering glimmer of sun and rill 
 With a sudden flash on the eye is thrown, 
 Like the ray that streams from the diamond-stone. 
 
 13. Plane-tree. Also called Button-wood and Sycamore. 
 
GREEN KIVER. 17 
 
 Oil, loveliest there the spring days come, 
 
 With blossoms, and birds, and wild bees' liuii ; 20 
 
 The tiowers of summer are fairest there, 
 
 And freshest the breath of the summer air ; 
 
 And sweetest the golden autumn day 
 
 In silence and sunshine glides away. 
 
 Yet, fair as thou art, thou shunnest to glide, 2^ 
 
 Beautiful stream ! by the villacre side ; 
 But windest away from haunts of men, 
 To quiet valley and shaded glen ; 
 And forest, and meadow, and slope of hill. 
 Around thee, are lonely, lovely, and still. 30 
 
 Lonely, save when, by thy rippling tides, 
 From thicket to thicket the angler glides ; ' 
 Or the simpler comes, with basket and book, 
 For herbs of power on thy banks to look ; 
 Or haply, some idle dreamer, like me, 35 
 
 To wander, and muse, and gaze on thee. 
 Still — save the chirp of birds that feed 
 On the river cherry and seedy reed. 
 And thy own wild music gushing out 
 
 With mellow murmur or fairy shout, 40 
 
 From dawn to the blush of another day, 
 Like traveller singing along his way. 
 
 That fairy music I never hear. 
 Nor gaze on those waters so green and clear, 
 And mark them winding away from sight, 45 
 
 Darkened with shade or flashing with light. 
 While o'er them the vine to its thicket clings, 
 And the zephyr stoops to freshen his wings. 
 But I wish that fate had left me free 
 To wander these quiet haunts with thee, 50 
 
 23, 24. The edition of 1821 bad, instead of these two lines :— 
 " And the swimmer comes in the season of heat 
 To bathe in those waters so pure and sweet." 
 33. Simpler. Simples is the old word for herbs, so-called from the belief that 
 each vegetable possesses some particular virtue, thus constituting a simple 
 remedv. 
 40. the edition of lS3fi has and instead oior. 
 
18 BRYANT'S POEMS. 
 
 Till the eating cares of eartli should depart, 
 And the peace of the scene pass into my heart ; 
 And I envy thy stream, as it glides along 
 Through its beautiful banks in a trance of song. 
 
 Though forced to drudge for the dregs of men, 55 
 
 And scrawl strange words with the barbarous pen, 
 And mingle among the jostling crowd, 
 Where the sons of strife are subtle and loud — 
 I often come to this quiet place, 
 
 To breathe the airs that ruffle thy face, GO 
 
 And gaze upon thee in silent dream. 
 For in thy lonely and lovely stream 
 An image of that calm life appears 
 That won my heart in my greener years. 
 
 The West Wind. 
 
 Beneath the forest's skirt 1 rest. 
 
 Whose branching pines rise dark and high, 
 
 And hear the breezes of the West 
 Among the thread-like foliage sigh. 
 
 Sweet Zephyr ! why that sound of woe ? 5 
 
 Is not thy home among the flowers? 
 Do not the bright June roses blow, 
 
 To meet thy kiss at morning hours ? 
 
 And lo ! thy glorious realm outspread — 
 
 Yon stretching valleys, green and gay, 10 
 
 And yon free hill-tops, o'er whose head 
 
 The loose white clouds are borne away. 
 
 And there the full broad river runs, 
 
 And many a fount wells fresh and sweet 
 
 To cool thee when the mid day suns 15 
 
 Have made thee faint beneath their heat. 
 
 4. "The threaded foliage," in some editions. 
 
IKSCEIPTIOi^r FOR THE ENTRANCE TO A WOOD. 19 
 
 Thou wind of joy, and youth, and love ; 
 
 Spirit of the new- wakened year ! 
 The sun, in his blue realm above. 
 
 Smooths a bright path when thou art here. 20 
 
 In lawns the murmuring bee is heard, 
 
 The wooing ring-dove in the sliade ; 
 On thy soft breath the new-fledged bird 
 
 Takes wing, half happy, half afraid. 
 
 Ah ! thou art like our wayw^ard race ; — 
 
 When not a shade of pain or ill 
 Dims the bright smile of Nature's face, 
 
 Thou lov'st to siffh and murmur still. 
 
 Inscription for the Entrance to a Wood. 
 
 Introductory Note. — In the same package with " Thanatopsis" Dr. Bryant 
 found this poem^ and it was published in the same number of the North Ameri- 
 can, September, 1817. As tirst printed the poem ended at the middle of the 
 thirty-ninth line, and throughout it has been very much changed and improved. 
 The wood for which the " inscription " was written is nearly In front of the old 
 homestead at Cummington. 
 
 Compare with tlie opening lines a passage from Emerson's essay on "Na- 
 ture" :—" The tempered light of the woods" is like a perpetual morning, and is 
 stimulating and heroic. The anciently reported spells of these places creep on 
 us. The stems of pines, hemlocks, and oaks almost gleam like iron on the 
 excited eye. The incommunicable trees begin to persuade us to live with them, 
 and quit "our life of solemn trifles. Here no history, or church, or state is inter- 
 polated on the divine sky and the immortal year." 
 
 Stbanger, if thou hast learned a truth which needs 
 
 No school of long experience, that the world 
 
 Is full of guilt and misery, and hast seen 
 
 Enough of all its sorrows, crimes, and cares, ' 
 
 To tire thee of it, enter this wild w^ood 5 
 
 And view the haunts of Nature. The calm shade 
 
 Shall bring a kindred calm, and the sweet breeze 
 
 22. Kins-dove. " A species of pigeon, so called from the white feathers 
 which form a portion of a ring round its neck." Also called ring-pigeon and 
 wood-pigeon. 
 
 2. Originally " Experience more than reason.' In the next line "known" 
 instead of "seen." 
 
 7. Kindred calm. First written " kinder calm."' 
 
20 BKTANT'S POEMS. 
 
 That makes the green leaves dance, shall waft a balm 
 
 To thy sick heart. Thou wilt find nothing here 
 
 Of all that pained thee in the hanuts of men 10 
 
 And made thee loathe thy life. The primal curse 
 
 Fell, it is true, upon the unsinning earth, 
 
 Bat not in vengeance. God hath yoked to ^uilt 
 
 Her pale tormentor, misery Hence these shades 
 
 Are still the abodes of gladness ; the thick roof 15 
 
 Of green and stirring branches is alive 
 
 And musical with birds, that sing and sport 
 
 In w^antonness of spirit ; while below 
 
 The squirrel, with raised paws and form erect. 
 
 Chirps merrily. Throngs of insects in the shade 20 
 
 Try their thin wings and dance in the warm beam 
 
 That waked them into life. Even the green trees 
 
 Partake the deep contentment ; as they bend 
 
 To the soft winds, the sun from the blue sky 
 
 Looks in and sheds a blessing on the scene. 25 
 
 Scarce less the cleft- born wild-flower seems to enjoy 
 
 Existence, than the winged plunderer 
 
 That sucks its sweets. The mossy r<,cks themselves, 
 
 And the old and ponderous trunks of prostrate trees 
 
 That lead from knoll to knoll a causey rude, 30 
 
 Or bridge the sunken brook, and their dark roots, 
 
 With all their earth upon them, twisting high. 
 
 Breathe fixed tranquillity. The rivulet 
 
 Sends forth glad sounds, and tripping o'er its bed 
 
 Of pebbly sands, or leaping down the rocks, 35 
 
 9. Originally "Here thou wilt nothing find." 
 13-18. These lines at first read thus :— 
 
 — "Misery is wed 
 To guilt. Hence in these shades \vc still behold 
 The abodes of gladness : here from tree to tree 
 And through tlie rustling branches flit the birds 
 In wantonness of spirit ; theirs are strains 
 Of no dissembled rapture." 
 
 20, 21. Originally :— 
 
 " In the warm glade the throngs 
 Of dancing insects sport in the mild beams 
 That waked them into life." 
 
 25. liooks. Substituted for " Peeps." 
 31. Brook. Substituted for " stream." 
 
AUTUMN WOODS. 21 
 
 Seems, with continuous laughter, to rejoice 
 
 In its own being. Softly tread the marge. 
 
 Lest from her midway perch thou scare the wren 
 
 That dips her bill in water. The cool wind, 
 
 That stirs the stream in play, shall come to thee, 40 
 
 Like one that loves thee nor will let thee pass 
 
 Ungreeted, and shall give its light embrace. 
 
 Autumn Woods. 
 
 Ere, in the northern gfale, 
 The summer tresses of the trees are gone, 
 The woods of Autumn, all around our vale, 
 
 Have put their glory on. 
 
 The mountains that infold, 5 
 
 In their wide sweep, the colored landscape round, 
 Seem groups of giant kings, in purple and gold, 
 
 That guard the enchanted ground. 
 
 I roam the w^oods that crown 
 The upland, where the mingled splendors glow, 10 
 
 Where the gay company of trees look down 
 
 On the green fields below. 
 
 My steps are not-alone 
 In these bright walks ; the sweet south-w^est at play. 
 Flies, rustling, where the painted leaves are strown 15 
 
 Along the winding way. 
 
 1 Northern gale. Winds especially abounded in the region of Bryant's 
 early home, and references to them are very frequent throughout his poems. 
 J We have in this poem "gale," "northern gale," "breeze," "gentle wind, 
 ' •'■ sweet south-west," and ""soft south-west." 
 
 1^. That is, before the trees in the valley have lost their " summer tresses," 
 the woods upon the hills around put on their autumn colors ; a familiar fact to 
 those acquainted with autumn scenery in New England. 
 
 3. Our vale. The view from the poet's Cummington home is thus described 
 by Mr. H. N. Powers : "The center of the view is hollowed to a deep and nar- 
 row valley, where flows a branch of the Westfield River, and on the eastern rim 
 are the pleasant slopes of Plainfield. Spring lags on these high grounds, and 
 Autumn here puts on imperial splendors ; for the trees, among which the sugar- 
 maple predominates, are of a kind to glow royally under the effects of frost." 
 
^^ Bryant's poems. 
 
 And far in heaven, the while. 
 The sun, that sends that gale to wander here. 
 Pours out on the fair earth his quiet smile,—' 
 
 The sweetest of the year. 20 
 
 Where now the solemn shade. 
 Verdure and gloom where many branches meet ; 
 So grateful, when the noon of summer made 
 
 The valleys sick with heat ? 
 
 Let in through all the trees 25 
 
 Come the strange lays ; the forest depths are briglit ; 
 Their sunny-colored foliage, in the breeze, 
 
 Twinkles like beams of light. 
 
 The rivulet, late unseen, 
 Where bickering through the shrubs its waters run, 30 
 Shines with the image of its golden screen 
 
 And glimmerings of the sun. 
 
 But, 'neath yon crimson tree, 
 Lover to listening maid might breathe his flame, 
 Nor mark, within its roseate canopy, ' 35 
 
 Her blush of maiden shame. 
 
 Oh, Autumn ! why so soon 
 Depart the hues that make thy forests glad. 
 Thy gentle wind and thy fair sunny noon, ' 
 
 And leave thee wild and sad ? 
 
 40 
 
 Ah ! 'twere a lot too blest 
 For ever in thy colored shades to stray ; 
 Amid the kisses of the soft south-west 
 
 To rove and dream for aye ; 
 
 And leave the vain low strife 
 That makes men mad— the tug for wealth and power, 
 The passions and the cares that wither life. 
 
 And waste its little hour. 
 
 45 
 
 ^?terf!^e'^L7m!S'^^ ^^ " ^^«^-™^" " ? I^^ "Our Fellow-Worshippers'' the 
 a iminted sa-S ^""^''""^ '^^'''^ ^°''^''' '''''^ overhangs the stream is reflected as 
 43. Note the different expressions in tlie poem for wmd-^\x in all. 
 
HYMN TO THE isORTH STAR. 23 
 
 Hymn to the North Star. 
 
 " The reader on whom the solemnity and majesty of this hymn make no 
 imjn-ession, has no poetry in his soul."" —\Y . J. Snelling. 
 
 The sad and solemn night 
 Hath yet her multitude of cheerful fires ; 
 
 The glorious host of light 
 Walk the dark hemisphere till she retires ; 
 All through her silent watches, gliding slow, 5 
 
 Her constellations come, and climb the heavens, and go. 
 
 Day, too, hath many a star 
 To grace his gorgeous reign, as bright as they ; 
 
 Through the blue fields afar. 
 Unseen, they follow in his flaming way: 10 
 
 Many a bright lingerer, as the eve grows dim, 
 Tells what a radiant troop arose and set with him. 
 
 And thou dost see them rise. 
 Star of the Pole ! and thou dost see them set. 
 
 Alone, in thy cold skies, 15 
 
 Thou keep'st thy old unmoving station yet, 
 Nor join'st the dances of that glittering train, 
 Nor dipp'st thy virgin orb in the blue western main. 
 
 There, at morn's rosy birth, 
 Thou lookest meekly through the kindling air, 20 
 
 And eve that round the earth 
 Chases the day, beholds thee watching there ; 
 There noontide finds thee, and the hour that calls 
 The shapes of polar flame to scale heaven's azure walls. 
 
 Alike, beneath thine eye, 25 
 
 The deeds of darkness and of light are done ; 
 High towards the star-lit sky 
 
 8. Host. Printed Iiosts in Godwin's edition of the poems. 
 6. Climb. Originally " round.'' 
 18. Spenser lias— 
 
 " the steadfast star 
 That was in ocean waves yet never wet." 
 
24 BRYANT'S POEMS. 
 
 Towns blaze, the smoke of battle blots the sun. 
 
 The night -storm on a thousand hills is loud, 
 
 And the strong wind of day doth mingle sea and cloud. 30 
 
 On thine unaltering blaze. 
 The half- wrecked mariner, his compass lost, 
 
 Fixes his steady gaze, 
 And steers, undoubting, to the friendly coast ; 
 And they who stray in perilous wastes, by night, 35 
 
 Are glad when thou dost shine to guide their footsteps 
 right. 
 
 And, therefore, bards of old, 
 Sages, and hermits of the solemn wood. 
 
 Did in thy beams behold 
 A beauteous type of that unchanging good, 40 
 
 That bright eternal beacon, by whose ray 
 The voyager of time should shape his heedful way. 
 
 The Death of the Flowers. 
 
 Introductory Note.— The title under which the poem was at first printed 
 was " The CJose'of Autumn." Of the words of this piece ninety-two per cent, 
 are Saxon. It should be compared in this respect with '' Thanatopsis," which 
 has eighty -four per cent, of Saxon. The beautiful adaptation of the rhythm to 
 the subject should be noticed : compare it in this respect with " The Gladness 
 of Nature." 
 
 The melancholy days are come, the saddest of the year, 
 
 Of wailing winds, and naked woods, and meadows brown and sere, 
 
 Heaped in the hollows of the grove, the autumn leaves lie dead ; 
 
 They rastle to the eddying gust, and to the rabbit's tread. 
 
 The robin and the wren are flown, and from the shrubs the jay, 5 
 
 And from the wood-top calls the crow through all the gloomy day. 
 
 2. Force of the word seref 
 
 " The leaves they were withered and sere." 
 Aud- 
 
 " Our thoughts they were palsied and sere." 
 
 Foe's TJlalume. 
 
 3. Auttimn leaves. Other readings are "withered leaves " and " summer 
 
 leaves." 
 
THE DEATH OF THE FLOWEKS. 25 
 
 Where are the flowers, the fair young flowers, that lately sprang 
 
 and stood 
 In brighter light, and softer airs, a beauteous sisterhood ? 
 Alas ! they all are in their graves, the gentle race of flowers 
 Are lying in their lowly beds, with the fair and good of ours. 10 
 The rain is falling where they lie, but the cold November rain 
 Calls not from out the gloomy earth the lovely ones again. 
 
 The wind-flower and the violet, they perished long ago. 
 And the brier-rose and the orchis died amid the summer glow ; 
 But on the hill the golden-rod, and the aster in the wood, 15 
 
 And the yellow sun-flower by the brook in autumn beauty stood. 
 Till fell the frost from the clear cold heaven, as falls the plague 
 
 on men, 
 And the brightness of their smile was gone, from upland, glade, 
 
 and glen. 
 
 And now, when comes the calm mild day, as still such days will come, 
 To call the squirrel and the bee from out their winter home ; 20 
 When the sound of dropping nuts is heard, though all the trees 
 are still, 
 
 7, 8. These lines stood at first :— 
 
 " Where are the flowers, the bright, gay flowers, that smiled beneath the feet. 
 With hues so passing beautiful, with'breath so passing sweet." 
 
 11. Where they lie. Originally " on their gi-aves." 
 
 13. Wind-flower. The anemone, one of the earliest spring flowers. From 
 the Greek a;/eju,o?, the wind, so named because the flower was thought to open 
 only when the wind blows, or " because easily stripped of its leaves." The 
 most pleasing of Bryant's references to this flower is in "A Winter Piece." 
 
 " Lodged in sunny cleft, 
 Where the cold breezes come not, blooms alone 
 The little wind-flower, whose just opened eye 
 Is blue as the spring heaven it gazes at — 
 Startling the loiterer in the naked groves 
 With unexpected beauty, for the time 
 Of blossoms and green leaves is yet afar." 
 
 16. Yellow sun-flower. Not the familiar denizen of the kitchen garden, 
 but a tall, showy wild-flower, common along fence-rows and road-sides. 
 • Notice the happy manner in which the succession of the seasons is described 
 in this stanza. 
 
 18. Originally " And the blossoms never smiled again." 
 
 19-24. •' These halcyons may be looked for with a little more assurance in that 
 pure October weather, which we distinguish by the name of the Indian summer. 
 The day, immeasurably long, sleeps over the broad hills and warm wide fields. 
 To have lived through all its sunny hours seems longevity enough."— Emerson's 
 
 See also the charming descriptions of this season in Longfellow's " Evan- 
 geline." 
 
26 BRYAN-T*S POEMS. 
 
 And twinkle in the smoky light the waters of the rill. 
 
 The south wind searches for the flowers whose fragrance late he bore. 
 
 And sighs to find them in the wood and hy the stream no more. 
 
 And then 1 think of one who in her youthful beauty died, 25 
 
 The fair meek blossom that grew up and faded by my side : 
 
 In the cold moist earth we laid her, when the forest cast the leaf, 
 
 And we wept that one so lovely should have a life so brief: 
 
 Yet not unmeet it was that one, like that young friend of ours. 
 
 So gentle and so Toeautif ul, should perish with the flowers. 30 
 
 Summer Wind. 
 
 Introductory Note.— The minute accuracy of the description in this poem 
 is noteworthy, exhibiting an observation remarkably trained in the subtle 
 movements of nature. As an example of what may be effected by one kind of 
 " word-painting," it may. well be used in any comparison of the limitations of 
 painting and of poetry. The manner in which movement and sound are intro- 
 duced into the scene as effects of the gradual approach of the wind, is especially 
 striking. The attentive reader cannot fall to hear the " mingling of unnumbered 
 sounds," and feel a positive relief from the '■too potent fervors" of the sultry 
 day. 
 
 It is a sultry day ; the sun has drunk 
 The dew that lay upon the morning grass ; 
 « There is no rustling in the lofty elm 
 
 That canopies my dwelling, and its shade 
 
 Scarce cools me. All is silent save the faint 5 
 
 And interrupted murmur of the bee, 
 
 Settlino- on the sick flowers, and then again 
 
 Instantly on the wing. The plants around 
 
 Feel the too potent fervors ; the tall maize 
 
 Rolls up its long green leaves ; the clover droops 10 
 
 Its tender foliage, and declines its blooms. 
 
 But far, in the fierce sunshine, tower the hills, 
 
 25. The allusion in this stanza is to the poet's favorite sister, who died at an 
 early age. She is referred to in "■' The Past " as " the beautiful and young," and 
 also in the sonnet " To ," entitled in some editions " Consumption." 
 
 — " Death should come 
 Gently, to one of gentle mould like thee, 
 As light winds wandering through groves of bloom 
 Detach the delicate blossoms from the tree. 
 
SUMMER WIKD. 27 
 
 Witli all their growth of woods, silent and stern* 
 
 As if the scorching heat and dazzling light 
 
 Were but an element they loved. Bright clouds, 15 
 
 Motionless pillars of the brazen heaven, — 
 
 Their bases on the mountains — their white tops 
 
 Shining in the far ether — fire the air 
 
 With a reflected radiance, and make turn 
 
 The gazer's eyes away. For me, I lie 20 
 
 Languidly in the shade, where the thick turf. 
 
 Yet virgin from the kisses of the sun, 
 
 Retains some freshness, and I woo the wind 
 
 That still delays his coming. Why so slow. 
 
 Gentle and voluble spirit of the air? 25 
 
 Oh, come and breathe upon the fainting earth 
 
 Coolness and life. Is it that in his caves 
 
 He hears me '? See, on yonder woody ridge, 
 
 The pine is bending his proud top, and now 
 
 Among the nearer groves, chestnut and oak 30 
 
 Are tossing their green boughs about. He comes ! 
 
 Lo, where the grassy meadow runs in waves 1 
 
 The deep distressful silence of the scene 
 
 Breaks up with mingling of unnumbered sounds 
 
 And universal motion. He is come, 35 
 
 Shaking a shower of blossoms from the shrubs, 
 
 And bearing on their fragrance ; and he brhigs 
 
 Music of birds, and rustling of young boughs, 
 
 And sound of swaying branches, and the voice 
 
 Of distant waterfalls. All the green herbs 40 
 
 Are stirring in his breath ; a thousand flowers. 
 
 By the road-side and the borders of the brook. 
 
 Nod gayly to each other ; glossy leaves 
 
 Are twinkling in the sun, as if the dew 
 
 Were on them yet, and silver waters break 45 
 
 Into small waves and sparkle as he comes. 
 
28 BEYANT'S POEMS. 
 
 Evening Wind. 
 
 Introductory Note.— "He sees the regions of land and sea, that the wind 
 has blown over on its journey to his lattice. lie knows that it is a delight to 
 others as well as to himself ; to the higher forms of nature as well as to man- 
 kind ; that it rocks the little bird in his nest, curls the still waters, summons the 
 forest harmonies from innumerable boughs, and takes its pleasant way over the 
 closing flowers. The old man leans his silver head to feel it ; it kisses the sleep- 
 ing child, and dries the moistened curls on his temples • and those who watch by 
 the sick man's bed part his curtains to allow it to cool nis burning brow. This 
 large, far-reaching sympathy with his fellow-creatures is a marked characteristic 
 of Bryant's poetry, and distinguishes it from that of every other American poet, 
 living or dead."— ^. H. Stoddard. 
 
 In the "New Library of Poetry and Song," edited by Bryant, this poem appears 
 with an additional stanza, inserted between the third and fourth : 
 
 " Stoop o'er the place of graves and softly sway 
 The sighing herbage by the gleaming stone, 
 That they who near the churchyard willows stray, 
 
 And listen in the deepening gloom, alone, 
 May think of gentle souls who passed away. 
 
 Like thy pure breath into the vast unknown; 
 Sent forth from heaven among the sons of men, 
 And gone into the boundless heaven again." 
 
 But it seems not to have satisfied the poet, as it was not allowed in the 
 standard editions of his poems. Indeed, is not the reason clearly apparent t 
 
 Spirit that breatliest through ray lattice, thou 
 
 That cool'st the twilight of the sultry day, 
 Gratefully flows thy freshness round my brow ; 
 
 Thou hast been out upon the deep at play, 
 Riding all day the wild blue waves till now, 5 
 
 Roughening their crests, and scattering high their spray, 
 And swelling the white sail. I welcome thee 
 To the scorched land, thou wanderer of the sea 
 
 Nor I alone ; a thousand bosoms round 
 
 Inhale thee in the fulness of delight ; 10 
 
 And languid forms rise up, and pulses bound 
 
 Livelier, at coming of the wind of night ; 
 And, languishing to hear thy grateful sound. 
 
 Lies the vast inland stretched beyond the sight. 
 Go forth into the gathering shade ; go forth, 15 
 
 God's blessing breathed upon the fainting earth ! 
 
 Go, rock the little wood-bird in his nest, 
 Curl the still waters, bright with stars, and rouse 
 
EGBERT OF LINCOLN. ^9 
 
 The wide old wood from liis majestic rest. 
 
 Summoning from tlie innumerable boughs 20 
 
 The strange, deep harmonies that haunt his breast : 
 
 Pleasant shall be thy way where meekly bows 
 The shutting flower, and darkling waters pass, 
 And where the o'ershadowing branches sweep the grass. 
 
 The faint old man shall lean his silver head 2o 
 
 To feel thee ; thou shalt kiss the child asleep, 
 
 And dry the moistened curls that overspread 
 
 His temples, while his breathing grows more deep ; 
 
 And they who stand about the sick man's bed, 
 
 Shall joy to listen to thy distant sweep, 80 
 
 And softly part his curtains to allow 
 
 Thy visit, grateful to his burning brow. 
 
 Go — but the circle of eternal change, 
 
 Which is the life of Nature, shall restore. 
 With sounds and scents from all thy mighty range, 35 
 
 Thee to thy birthplace of the deep once more ; 
 Sweet odors in the sea-air, sweet and strange, 
 
 Shall tell the home-sick mariner of the shore ; 
 And, listening to thy murmur, he shall deem 
 He hears the rustling leaf and running stream. 40 
 
 Robert of Lincoln. 
 
 Introductory Note.— " I am very little given to envy but I had a feeling 
 very near akin to it when I read your ' Robert of Lincoln/ It is po bird-like, 
 so charming in its simplicity and its rollicking life I Just what Bob himself 
 would sing if he could only find a publisher. Nay, 1 am inclined to think he 
 does sing it, and you were his inspired interpreter,'"— Z^/c^ia Maria Child. 
 
 "I know of no other song-bird that expresses so much self-consciousness and 
 vanity and comes so near being an ornithological coycomb," says that excellent 
 authority on biid-lore, John Burroughs. His song " at its best, is a remarkable 
 performance, a unique performance, as it contains not the slightest hmt or sug- 
 gestion, either in tone, or manner, or effect, of any other bird-song to be heard. 
 * * No bird has yet been found that could imitate him or even repeat or sug- 
 gest a single note, as if his song were the product of a new set of organs. It is 
 
 20 22. Boughs-bows. The fault of this rhyme was pointed out by a critic 
 in the Edinburgh Review and Bryant was much disturbed by it, making 
 several attempts to amend it. It is a fault, but on'i for which a precedent can 
 be found in the works of every great poet. 
 
30 BRYANT'S POEMS. 
 
 said that the mocking-bird is dumb in the presence of the bobolink." See 
 Scribner's Monthly, vols, vi and xii. 
 
 Mekrily swinging on brier and weed, 
 
 Near to the nest of his little dame, 
 Over the mountain-side or mead, 
 Robert of Lincoln is telling his name : 
 
 Bob-o' link, bob-o'-link, 5 
 
 Spink, spank, spink ; 
 Snug and safe is that nest of ours, 
 Hidden among the summer flowers. 
 Chee, chee, chee. 
 
 Robert of Lincoln is gayly drest, 10 
 
 Wearing a bright black wedding-coat; 
 White are his shoulders and white his crest. 
 Hear him call in his merry note : 
 Bob o'-link, bob-o'-link, 
 
 Spink, spank, spink ; 15 
 
 Look, what a nice new coat is mine, 
 Sure there was never a bird so fine. 
 Chee, chee, chee. 
 
 Robert of Lincoln's Quaker wife. 
 
 Pretty and quiet, with plain brown wings, 20 
 
 Passing at home a patient life, 
 Broods in the grass while her husband sings : 
 Bob-o'-link, bob-o'-link, 
 Spink, spank, spink ; 
 Brood, kind creature ; you need not fear 25 
 
 Thieves and robbers while I am here. 
 -Chee, chee, chee. 
 
 Modest and shy as a nun is she ; 
 
 One weak chirp is her only note. 
 Braggart and prince of braggarts is he, 30 
 
 Pouring boasts from his little throat: 
 Bob-o'-link, bob-o'-link, 
 Spink, spank, spink ; 
 Never was I afraid of man ; 
 
ROBERT OF LINCOLN. 31 
 
 Catch me, cowardly knaves, if you can 1 35 
 
 Chee, chee, chee. 
 
 Six wliite eggs on a bed of hay, 
 
 Flecked with purple, a pretty sight ! 
 There as the mother sits all day, 
 
 Robert is singing with all his might : 40 
 
 Bob-o'-link, bob-o'-link, 
 Spink, spank, spink ; 
 Nice goodr wife, that never goes out. 
 Keeping house while I frolic about. 
 
 Chee, chee, chee. 45 
 
 Soon as the little ones chip the shell 
 Six little mouths are open for food ; 
 Eobert of Lincoln bestirs him well, 
 Gathering seeds for the hungry brood. 
 
 Bob-o'-link, bob-o'-link, 50 
 
 Spink, spank, spink : 
 This new life is likely to be 
 Hard for a gay young fellow like me. 
 Chee, chee, chee. 
 
 Robert of Lincoln at length is made 55 
 
 Sober with work, and silent with care ; 
 Off is his holiday garment laid. 
 Half forgotten that merry air : 
 Bob-o'-link, bob-o'-link, 
 
 Spink, spank, spink ; * 60 
 
 Nobody knows but my mate and I 
 Where our nest and our nestlings lie. 
 Chee, chee, chee. 
 
 Summer wanes ; the children are grown ; 
 
 Fun and frolic no more he knows ; 65 
 
 Robert of Lincoln's a humdrum crone ; 
 Off he flies, and we sing as he goes : 
 Bob-o'-link, bob-o'-link, 
 Spink, spank, spink ; 
 When you can pipe that merry old strain, 70 
 
 Robert of Lincoln, come back again. 
 Chee, chee, chee. 
 
32 BRYAJST'S POEMS. 
 
 To the Fringed Gentian. 
 
 Thou blossom bright with autumn dew, 
 And colored with the heaven's own blue. 
 That openest when the quiet light 
 Succeeds the keen and frosty night. 
 
 Thou comest not when violets lean 5 
 
 O'er wandering brooks and springs unseen, 
 Or columbines, in purple dressed, 
 Nod o'er the ground-bird's hidden nest. 
 
 Thou waitest late and com'st alone, 
 
 When woods are bare and birds are flown, 10 
 
 And frosts and shortening days portend 
 
 The aged year is near his end. 
 
 Then doth thy sweet and quiet eye 
 
 Look through its fringes to the sky, 
 
 Blue— blue— as if that sky let fall 15 
 
 A flower from its cerulean wall. 
 
 I would that thus, when I shall see 
 The hour of death draw near to me, 
 Hope, blossoming within my heart. 
 May look to heaven as I depart. 20 
 
 The Wind and Stream. 
 
 Introductory Note.— In a letter to a frieucl. written in 1866, Richard H. 
 Dana speaks of '"' that most exquisite of exquisite little things, ' The Wind and 
 the Stream,' " and adds, " What a dear httle child he makes of it, so happy in its 
 child-like, flattered vanity — all so pretty ; and then its little heart broken that 
 it is so deserted— left all alone. What a heart for nature must the man have 
 who could write that I " 
 
 1. Thou blossom bright. The flower is the Gentiana crinita of the botanies. 
 It is mentioned in the sonnet " November " :— 
 
 " And the blue gentian flower, that, in the breeze, 
 Nods lonely, of her beauteous race the last." 
 And in the " Song of the Sower ":— 
 
 " Loose the tired steer and let him go 
 To pasture where the gentians blow." 
 
The Gladness of Nature. 
 
 10 
 
 THE WIKD AND STREAM. 33 
 
 A BROOK came stealing from tlie ground ; 
 
 You scarcely saw its silvery gleam 
 Among the herbs that hung around 
 
 The borders of that winding stream, 
 The pretty stream, the placid stream, 5 
 
 The softly gliding, bashful stream. 
 
 A breeze came wandering from the sky. 
 
 Light as the whispers of a dream ; 
 He put the o'erhanging grasses by, 
 
 And softly stooped to kiss the stream, 
 The pretty stream, the flattered stream, 
 The shy, yet unreluctant stream. 
 The water, as the wind passed o'er. 
 
 Shot upward many a glancing beam. 
 Dimpled and quivered more and more, 14 
 
 And tripped along, a livelier stream, 
 The flattered stream, the simpering stream. 
 The fond, delighted, silly stream. 
 
 Away the airy wanderer flew 
 
 To where the fields with blossoms teem, 20 
 
 To sparkling springs and rivers blue. 
 
 And left alone that little stream. 
 The flattered stream, the cheated stream, 
 The sad, forsaken, lonely stream. 
 
 That careless wind came never back ; 25 
 
 He wanders yet the fields, I deem. 
 But, on its melancholy track, 
 
 Complaining went that little stream, 
 The cheated stream, the hopeless stream, 
 The ever-murmuring, mourning stream. 
 
 30 
 
 Is this a time to be cloudy and sad, 
 
 When our mother Nature laughs around ; 
 
 When even the deep blue heavens look glad. 
 
 And gladness breathes from the blossoming ground 
 
34 BRTAii^T'S POEMS. 
 
 There are notes of joy from the hang-bird and wren, 5 
 
 And the gossip of swallows through all the sky ; 
 
 The ground-squirrel gayly chirps by his den. 
 And the wilding bee hums merrily by. 
 
 The clouds are at play in the azure space. 
 
 And their shadows at play on the bright green vale, 10 
 And here they stretch to the frolic chase. 
 
 And there they roll on the easy gale. 
 
 There's a dance of leaves in that aspen bower. 
 There's a titter of winds in that beechen tree, 
 
 There's a smile on the fruit and a smile on the flower, 15 
 And a laugh from the brook that runs to the sea. 
 
 And look at the broad-faced sun, how he smiles 
 On the dewy earth that smiles in his ray. 
 
 On the leaping waters and gay young isles ; 
 Ay, look, and he'll smile thy gloom away. 20 
 
 The Past. 
 
 Introductory Note,— From passages in the private letters of Bryant it ap- 
 pears that he regarded this poem as the " best thing " he had written up to that 
 time, 1828, an opinion shared by some of his friends. The poet Stoddard says of 
 it :— " There is a depth, a grandeur, a solemnity in this poem which Bryant had not 
 before attained, and an imaginative presentation of things intangible, which the 
 strong art of the poet summons before us, we know not how. He contrives to 
 re-people 
 
 ' The dark backward and abysm of time ' 
 
 with awful, and sorrowful, and beautiful shapes and shadows." 
 
 Thou unrelenting Past ! 
 Strong are the barriers round thy dark domain, 
 
 5. Hang-bird, A familiar name for the Baltimore Oriole, so-called from the 
 nest which is suspended from the limb of a tree. Ground squirrel, in the 
 same stanza, is better known as the Chipmonk, or Chipmuk. 
 
 20. Smile thy gloom away. This poem was written in 1826. " The Journey 
 of Life " had just been written, in which despondency is expressed, arising from 
 the discouragements of the poet's new career in New York, He felt himself to 
 be like one walking at night "beneath the waning moon," where all things are 
 but "dim uncertain shapes that cheat the sight." and journeying on "with fal- 
 tering footsteps." We see in this piece how he attempted to throw off the 
 burden of despondency. 
 
THE PAST. 35 
 
 And fetters, sure and fast, 
 Hold all that enter thy unbreatliing reign. 
 
 Far in thy realm withdrawn 5 
 
 Old empires sit in sullenness and gloom, 
 
 And glorious ages gone 
 Lie deep within the shadow of thy womb. 
 
 Childhood, with all its mirth, 
 Youth, Manhood, Age that draws us to the ground, 10 
 
 And last, Man's Life on earth, 
 Glide to thy dim dominions, and are bound. 
 
 Thou hast my better years, 
 Thou hast my earlier friends, the good, the kind, 
 
 Yielded to thee with tears — 15 
 
 The venerable form, the exalted mind. 
 
 My spirit yearns to bring 
 The lost ones back — yearns with desire intense. 
 
 And struggles hard to wring 
 Thy bolts apart, and pluck thy captives thence. 20 
 
 In vain — thy gates deny 
 All passage save to those who hence depart ; 
 
 Nor to the streaming eye 
 Thou giv'st them back — nor to the broken heart. 
 
 In thine abysses hide 25 
 
 Beauty and excellence unknown ; to thee 
 
 Earth's wonder and her pride 
 Are gathered, as the waters to the sea ; 
 
 Labors of good to man. 
 Unpublished charity, unbroken faith,— 30 
 
 16. The venerable form, the exalted mind. The allusion here is to 
 the poet's father— 
 
 "Who taught my youth 
 The art of verse, and in the bud of life 
 Offered me to the Muses." 
 
36 BRYANT'S POEMS. 
 
 Love, that midst grief began, 
 And grew with years, and faltered not in death. 
 
 Full many a mighty name 
 Lurks in thy depths, unuttered, unrevered ; 
 
 With thee are silent fame, 35 
 
 Forgotten arts, and wisdom disappeared. 
 
 Thine for a space are they — 
 Yet shalt thou yield thy treasures up at last ; 
 
 Thy gates shall yet give way, 
 Thy bolts shall fall, inexorable Past ! 40 
 
 All that of good and fair 
 Has gone into thy womb from earliest time. 
 
 Shall then come forth to wear 
 The glory and the beauty of its prime. 
 
 They have not perished — no ! 45 
 
 Kind words, remembered voices once so sweet. 
 
 Smiles, radiant long ago, 
 And features, the great soul's apparent seat. 
 
 All shall come back, each tie 
 Of pure affection shall be knit again ; 50 
 
 Alone shall Evil die. 
 And Sorrow dwell a prisoner in thy reign. 
 
 And then shall I behold 
 Him, by whose kind paternal side I sprung, 
 
 And her, who, still and cold, 55 
 
 Fills the next grave — the beautiful and young. 
 
 3a-36. Compare with these lines Gray's " Elegy," of which there are frequent 
 suggestion? in the poem. 
 
 36. "Wisdom disappeared. This Elliptical expression is open to criticism, 
 but was modestly defended by Bryant. " I have sometimes thought it was a 
 boldness," he says. " Disappeared is used nearly in the sense of vanished^ depart- 
 ed^ passed away ; but with more propriety than vanished, since that relates to a 
 sudden disappearance. At all events, I do not find it easy to alter the stanza 
 without spoiling it." 
 
 53. The allusion in this stanza is again to his father, and to his sister. See 
 notes on "Death of the Flowers." 
 
THE PLANTING OF THE APPLE-TREE. 
 The Planting of the Apple-Tree. 
 
 mattef-fSr whTcan toll Hat the great grand-children of ours will think about- 
 
 » 
 
 i;r,rh fi.ovp <5Pt in the <Tround, and woncier wtiat oiu cucty—iui i.. ...^^^^ ^.^j.^ 
 
 matter-for Who can toll what the great^grand-c 
 
 Sat they sprang up of themselves by th e way/ 
 
 Come, let us plant the apple-tree. 
 Cleave the toitgb greensward with the spade ; 
 Wide let its hollow bed be made ; 
 There gently lay the roots, and there 
 Sift the dark mould with kindly care, 5 
 
 And press it o'er them tenderly, 
 As round the sleeping infant's feet 
 We softly fold the cradle-sheet ; 
 
 So plant we the apple-tree. 
 
 What plant we in this apple-tree ? 10 
 
 Buds, which the breath of summer days 
 Shall lengthen into leafy sprays ; 
 Boughs where the thrush, with crimson breast, 
 Shall haunt and sing and hide her nest ; 
 
 We plant, apon the sunny lea, 
 A shadow for the noontide hour, 
 A shelter from the summer shower, 
 
 When we plant the apple-tree. 
 
 15 
 
 What plant we in this apple-tree ? 
 Sweets for a hundred flowery springs 
 To load the May wind's restless wings, 
 When, from the orchard row, he pours 
 Its fragrance through our open doors ; 
 
 A world of blossoms for the bee. 
 Flowers for the sick girl's silent room. 
 For the glad infant sprigs of bloom. 
 
 We plant with the apple-tree. 
 
 20 
 
 35 
 
38 BRTAKT'S POEMS. 
 
 What plant we in this apple-tree ? 
 Fruits that shall swell in sunny June, 
 And redden in the August noon, 30 
 
 And drop, when gentle airs come by. 
 That fan the blue September sky, 
 
 While children come, with cries of glee, 
 And seek them where the fragrant grass 
 Betrays their bed to those who pass, 35 
 
 At the foot of the apple-tree. 
 
 And when, above this apple-tree, 
 The winter stars are quiverinpf bright, 
 And winds go howling through tlie night, 
 Girls, whose young eyes o'erflow with mirth, 40 
 
 Shall peel its fruit by cottage hearth. 
 
 And guests in prouder homes shall see. 
 Heaped with the grape of Cintra's vine. 
 And golden orange of the line. 
 
 The fruit of the apple-tree. 45 
 
 The fruitage of this apple-tree 
 Winds, and our flag of 'stripe and star, 
 Shall bear to coasts that lie afar, 
 Where men shall wonder at the view, 
 And ask in what fair groves they grew ; 50 
 
 And sojourners beyond the sea 
 Shall think of childhood's careless day. 
 And long, long hours of summer play. 
 
 In the shade of the apple-tree. 
 
 Each year shall give this apple-tree • 55 
 
 A broader flush of roseate bloom, 
 A deeper maze of verdurous gloom, 
 And loosen, when the frost -clouds lower. 
 The crisp brown leaves in thicker shower. 
 
 The years shall come and pass, but we 60 
 
 Shall hear no longer, where we lie. 
 The summer's songs, the autumn's sigh, 
 
 In the boughs of the apple-tree. 
 
OUR FELLOW-WORSHIPPERS. 39 
 
 And time shall waste this apple-tree. 
 Oh, when its aged branches throw 65 
 
 Thin shadows on the ground below, 
 Shall fraud and force and iron will 
 Oppress the weak and helpless still ? 
 
 What shall the tasks of mercy be, 
 Amid the toils, the strifes, the tears 70 
 
 Of those who live when length of years 
 
 Is wasting this apple-tree ? 
 
 " Who planted this old apple-tree?" 
 The children of that distant day 
 
 Thus to some aged man shall say ; 75 
 
 And, gazing on its mossy stem, 
 The gray-haired man shall answer them : 
 
 " A poet of the land was he. 
 Born in the rude but good old times ; 
 'Tis said he made some quaint old rhymes 80 
 
 On planting the apple-tree." 
 
 Our Fellow-Worshippers. 
 
 Think not that thou and I 
 Are here the only worshippers to-day, 
 
 Beneath this glorious sky. 
 Mid the soft airs that o'er the meadows play ; 
 
 Those airs, whose breathing stirs 5 
 
 The fresh grass, are our fellow- worshippers. 
 
 See, as they pass, they swing 
 The censers of a thousand flowers that bend 
 
 O'er the young herbs of spring, 
 And the sweet odors like a prayer ascend, 10 
 
 While, passing thence, the breeze 
 Wakes the grave anthem of the forest trees. 
 
 It is as when, of yore. 
 The Hebrew poet called the mountain-steepa. 
 
40 BRYANT'S POEMS. 
 
 The forests, and the shore 15 
 
 Of ocean, and the mighty mid-sea deeps, 
 
 And stormy wind, to raise 
 A miiversal symphony of praise. 
 
 For, lo ! the hills around, 
 Gay in their early green, give silent thanks ; 20 
 
 And, with a joyous sound, 
 The streamlet's huddling waters kiss their banks. 
 
 And, from its sunny nooks, 
 To heaven, with grateful smiles, the valley looks. 
 
 The blossomed apple-tree 25 
 
 Among its flowery tufts, on every spray, 
 
 Offers the wanderino- bee 
 A fragrant chapel for his native lay ; 
 
 And a soft bass is heard 
 From the quick pinions of the humming-bird. 30 
 
 Haply — for who can tell ? — 
 Aerial beings, from the world unseen, 
 
 Haunting the sunny dell, 
 Or slowly floating o'er the flowery green, 
 
 May join our worship here, 35 
 
 With harmonies too fine for mortal ear. 
 
 14. The Hebrew poet called the mountain-steeps. See Psalms, xcvi, 
 11, and xcviii, 7, 8. 
 
 31-36.—" For ray part, I am apt to join in opinion with those who believe 
 that all the regions of nature swarm with spirits, and that we have multitudes 
 of spectators on all our actions, when we think ourselves most alone. * * * j 
 am wonderfnlly pleased to think that I am always engaged with such an in- 
 numerable society in searching out the wonders of the creation, and joining in 
 the same concert of praise and adoration."— J^t^c^wow, in the Spectator, No. 13. 
 
 " Millions of spiritual creatures walk the earth 
 Unseen, both when we wake and when we sleep ; 
 All these with ceaseless praise His works behold 
 Both day and m'^V— Paradise Lost, Bk. iv., 677. 
 
ANGUAGE LESSONS-GRAMMAR-COMPOSITION. 
 A Complete Course in Two Books Only. 
 
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 By Aloxzo Reed, A.M., Instructor in English Grammar in Brook- 
 lyn Collegiate and Polytechnic Institute ; and Brainerd Kellogg, 
 A.M., Professor of English Language and Literature in Brooklyn 
 I Collegiate and Polytechnic Institute. 
 
 TWELVE POINTS WHEREIN WE CLAIM THESE WOEi:S TO EXCEL. 
 
 JPlan.—The science of the language is made tributary to the a -t of expression, 
 rerv principle is fixed in memory and in practice, by an exhaus\\ve drill m com- 
 .ring sentences, arranging and rearranging their parts, contract \ng, expanding, 
 mctuating, and criticising them. There is thus given a complete course m<ec^- 
 ^al grammar and composition, more thorough and attractive than t each subject 
 
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 Velv • tnat each helps the other and furnishes the occasion to teach tne other ; and 
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 A Complete Course tn Grammar and Cotnpo3xtton,tn only ttvo Books. 
 The two books completely cover the ground of grammar and composition from 
 .e time the scholar usually begins the study until it is finished m the High School or 
 
 '^^^Jiod.-The author's method m teaching In these books is as follows : (1) The 
 inciples are presented inductively in the -Hints for Oral Instruction. (2) This 
 LuStion is carefully gathered up In brief definitions for the P.^P^/ ^o memonze. 
 ) A varietv of exercises in analysis, parsing, and composition is given which im- 
 ' 'ess the principles on the mind of the scholar and compel him to understand them. 
 r %uthors--I>ractical Teacher^.-The books were prepared by men who have 
 jtade a life-work of teaching grammar and composition, and both of them occupy 
 
 ^:'^^^!:^S^VsS^l£rheen spared in grading the books so as to afford the 
 ast possible difficulty \o the young student. This is very important and could 
 •areelv be accomplished bj any who are not practical teachers. 
 
 2>e>iuif ion* .-The definitions, principles, and rules are stated m the same ian- 
 I aage in both books, and cannot be excelled. . ^„-_-„„i „„^ ..^^th-v,^ 
 
 \ Models for Parsing .-The models for parsing are simple, ongmal and worthy 
 
 ^ ""svs^emly'magrarns.-The system of dU.grams, although it f oi^s no vital part 
 f the works, is the best extant. The advantage of the use of ^ia?^t,'^«,>^s,= ^i ,,^^tJ 
 resent th^ analvsis to the eve (2) They are fetmiulating and helpful to the pupil in 
 S p?eparat1Sn JfliL^'lesI^^^^^^ (^The/enable the .teacher to exanu^^^^^^^^^^ 
 class Ui about the time he could examine one pupil, if the oral method alone were 
 ^%enfences for .4 na/7/*i« .-The sentences for analysis have been selected with 
 '^%^.'^7tt^.%^ald^^^^^^ Bystemof questions and 
 
 n^^L'p^?Jr-W7orc?n^^^^^^^^ there is a great saving of money, as 
 
 he prices for first introduction, and for subsequent use, are very low. 
 
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English Classics, 
 
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 CLASSES IN ENGLISH LITERATURE, READING, GRAMMAR, ETC. 
 
 Edited bt Eminent English and American Scholars. 
 TciufM contains a Sketch of tJie AuiJior's L\fe, I*refatory and 
 Explanaiori/ Notes^ Etc.^ JEtc 
 
 1 B7Ton*s Prophecy of Dante* (Cantos 
 
 I and II. I 
 8 Milton's L' Al leerr o ond 11 Penneroso. 
 & Lord Bacon's Ksmuys, Civil »nd 
 
 Moral. (Selected.) 
 4 Byron's Prisoner of Chlllon, 
 & Aloore's Fire Worshippers. (T>«na 
 
 Rookh. Selected from parts I. and II.) 
 6 Ooldsmlth's Deserted YII las;e. 
 ? ficott's Marmion* (i:>elecuoiia from 
 
 Canto VI ) 
 8 Scott's Lay of the Last Minstrel. 
 
 (Introduction and Cant ).) 
 8 Burns* Cotter's Saturday Xiffht.and 
 
 Other l^oenis, 
 
 10 Crabbe's the Yillaee. 
 
 11 Campbell's Pleasures of Hope. 
 
 (Abridgment of P;.rt I. ) 
 
 13 Macaulay's Essay on Banyan's PlI. 
 
 grim's Progress. 
 18 Macaulay's Armi 
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 15 C^oldsmith's Traveller, 
 
 16 Iloes's Queen's Wake, 
 
 17 Colerldere's Ancient Mariner, 
 
 18 Addison's Sir Roger de Ceverlcy, 
 
 19 Gray's Elegy iu a Country Churcli* 
 
 yard. 
 «0 Seutt's Lady of the Lake. (Canto I.) 
 
 iada» end Other 
 
 JSSl Shake8peare*s As You Lllie It, etc. 
 
 (S -lections.) 
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 Klchard IL (Seiectior.s.) 
 38 Shakespeare's King Henry IT.. 
 
 King Henry V., and King Henry 
 
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 84 Shakespeare's Henry Till., and 
 
 Julius Ctesar. (Sekctlous ) 
 
 35 Wordsworth's Excursion. (Book I, 
 
 36 Pope's Essay on Criticism. 
 
 3? Spenser's Faery Queene, (Cantos 1. 
 
 and II.) 
 38 Cowper's Task. (Book I.) 
 S9 Hilton's Comus. 
 
 80 Tennyson's Enoch Arden. 
 
 81 Irvlng's Sketch Book. (Selections.) 
 83 Dickens* Christmas Carol, (Ccn. 
 
 deuscd ) 
 88 Carlyle's Hero as n Prophet. 
 8-1 Macaulay's V* arren Hastings. (Con. 
 
 densed.) 
 
 85 Goldsmith's Ylcar of Wakefield. 
 
 (Condensed ■) 
 
 86 Tennyson's The Two Voices and a 
 
 Dream ef Fair \\ omen. 
 
 87 Memory Quotations. 
 
 88 Cavalier Poets. 
 
 89 Dryden's Alexander's Feast and 
 .^ ^MacFleokncc. 
 
 40 Keats' The Eve of St. Agnes. 
 
 41 Irving's Legend ol'Sleepy Hollow, 
 
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 Plan of Preparation (Selected). By Bkainerd Kellogg, A.M., Professor of the 
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 tute, and author of "A Text-Book on Rhetoric," "A Text-Book on English Litera- 
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 and*' Higher Lessons in English.*' 82aio, flexiWe, cloth. 
 
 The text of these plays of Shakespeare has been adapted for use In mixed classes, by the 
 omission of everything that would be considered offensive. The notes have been especially 
 selected to meet the requirements of School and College students, from editions eoited by 
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