WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT (D. Appleton & Co., Publishers) WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT, poet and journalist, born at Cummington, Mass., 1794; died in New York, 1878. When only nine he wrote his first poems. The Embargo Act stirred the country in 1807, and young Bryant published a number of satirical poems in regard to it that had wide circulation. In 1825 he became an editor of a magazine in New York and his life from that time was devoted entirely to literary work on magazines and newspapers. For many years he was editor and proprietor of the New York Evening Post. TO A WATERFOWL WHITHER, mid'st 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 Might mark thy distant flight to do thee wrong, As, darkly seen against the crimson sky, Thy figure floats along. Seek'st thou the plashy brink Of weedy lake, or marge of river wide, There is a Power whose care Teaches thy way along that pathless coast- Lone wandering, but not lost. All day thy wings have fanned, 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. Thou 'rt gone, the abyss of heaven He who, from zone to zone, Guides through the boundless sky thy certain flight, THE DEATH OF THE FLOWERS THE melancholy days are come, the saddest of the year, Of wailing winds, and naked woods, and meadows brown and sear. Heaped in the hollows of the groves, the withered leaves lie dead; They rustle to the eddying gust, and to the rabbit's tread. The robin and the wren are flown, and from their shrubs the jay, And from the wood-top calls the crow through all the gloomy day. THE DEATH OF THE FLOWERS Where are the flowers, the fair young flowers, that lately sprang and stood In brighter light and softer airs-a beauteous sisterhood? Alas! they are all in their graves: the gentle race of flowers 1 Are lying in their beds, with the fair and good of ours, 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 orchids died amid the summer glow: But on the hill the golden-rod, and the aster in the wood, 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 fron 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, When the sound of dropping nuts is heard, though all the trees are still, 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 by the stream no more. And then I think of one who in her youthful beauty died, 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 beautiful-should perish with the flowers. То THANATOPSIS O him who, in the love of Nature, holds A various language: for his gayer hours When thoughts Of the stern agony, and shroud, and pall, And breathless darkness, and the narrow house, To Nature's teachings, while from all around- And, lost each human trace, surrendering up To be a brother to the insensible rock, And to the sluggish clod, which the rude swain Shalt thou retire alone,-nor couldst thou wish Old ocean's gray and melancholy waste,— Are but the solemn decorations all Of the great tomb of man! The golden sun, |