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,
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-

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.

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
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,
In the long way that I must tread alone
Will lead my steps aright.

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
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
Into his darker musings with a mild
And healing sympathy, that steals away
Their sharpness ere he is aware.
Of the last bitter hour come like a blight
Over thy spirit, and sad images

When thoughts

Of the stern agony, and shroud, and pall,

And breathless darkness, and the narrow house,
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-
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,
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
To mix forever 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.
Yet not to thy 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,
The powerful of the earth-the wise, the good,
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
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,
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
Of morning, pierce the Barcan wilderness,
Or lose thyself in the continuous woods
Where rolls the Oregon, and 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 withdraw
In silence from the living, and no friend
Take note of thy departure? All that breathe