30 Flag of the brave! thy folds shall fly, Flag of the seas! on ocean wave 40 45 50 WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT (1794-1878) William Cullen Bryant is usually classed with the Knickerbocker group of writers, but in all of his poetic work that is distinctive he was no more a Knickerbocker than was Whittier. He was a New Englander of the New Englanders, a descendant from several lines of Puritans; he was reared amid the strictest of Puritan ideals, and his poetic art and his outlook upon life were all Puritanic. He was born among the Berkshire Hills at Cummington, Massachusetts, November 3, 1794. His father, a country doctor, had in his youth seen much of the world as a surgeon on a merchant vessel, and it was from him that art and culture had come into the boy's life. He had gathered a notable collection of books which the young Bryant, a precocious lad, made full use of. At thirteen the boy, fragile and over-intellectual, threatened with consumption, was writing poetry that his father thought worthy of publication in pamphlet form, The Embargo (1809), a satire on Madison's administration, so successful that a second edition was prepared. At fifteen he entered the sophomore class at Williams College, but after two terms he discontinued his course, thinking Yale more fitted to give him the training he required. But his means were limited and after an autumn spent at home, a period of poetical reading and composition, during which he produced the first draught of Thanatopsis' and 'Inscription for the Entrance to a Wood,' he turned from the muses and began the study of law. He was admitted to the bar in 1815 and for several years practised his profession with diligence. The publication of Thanatopsis in The North American Review in September, 1817, placed him at a bound among the recognized poets of America, and led him again to turn to poetry. In 1821 he read The Ages before the Phi Beta Kappa Society of Harvard, and the same year he issued in book form the poem with the early North American Review lyrics and a few others added. Its success turned his thoughts to a literary career. In 1825 he removed to New York City, and after a year spent in editing small magazines, he became assistant editor and shortly after editor-in-chief of the Daily Evening Post, a position which he held with distinction for half a century. His distinctively poetic career ended with the volume of poems he published in 1832. He wrote much after this, he was in his later years much in demand as an occasional poet and orator, but the poems that give him his place among the few American poets that may be called classics, were all written before journalism had laid its compelling hand upon him. His translation of the Iliad and the Odyssey in his last years is worthy of mention as a remarkable achievement of a man of his age, but the work is in no other way distinctive. Nor in the embrace of ocean, shall exist Thy growth, to be resolved to earth again, 25 Stranger, 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 wood 5 And view the haunts of Nature. The calm shade Shall bring a kindred calm; and the sweet breeze, 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 haunts of Yet fair as thou art, thou shunn'st to glide, Beautiful stream! by the village side; 25 35 And forest, and meadow, and slope of hill, That fairy music I never hear, 40 Nor gaze on those waters so green and clear, And I envy thy stream, as it glides along, Through its beautiful banks in a trance of song. |