MR. BRYANT'S LIBRARY AT CEDARMERE.

Deem not the framing of a deathless lay
The pastime of a drowsy Summer day.

BRYANT

From "The Dead Master"

To the last hour of his long, honored life,
He never faltered in his love of Nature.
Recluse with men, her dear society,
Welcome at all times, savored of content,
Brightened his happy moments, and consoled
His hours of gloom.

Go where he would, he was not solitary,
Flowers nodded gayly to him, wayside brooks
Slipped by him laughingly, while the emulous birds
Showered lyric raptures that provoked his own.
The winds were his companions on the hills—
The clouds and thunders-and the glorious Sun,
Whose bright beneficence sustains the world,
A visible symbol of the Omnipotent,

Whom not to worship were to be more blind
Than those of old who worshiped stocks and stones.
Who loves and lives with Nature tolerates
Baseness in nothing; high and solemn thoughts
Are his, clean deeds and honorable life.

If he be poet, as our Master was,

His song will be a mighty argument,
Heroic in its structure to support

The weight of the world forever! All great things
Are native to it, as the Sun to Heaven.

Such was thy song, O Master! and such fame

As only the kings of thought receive, is thine;

Be happy with it in thy larger life

Where Time is not, and the sad word-Farewell!

RICHARD HENRY STODDAR

Publishers: Charles Scribner's Sons, New York

Scetist thou in living lays
To liman the beauty of the earth and sky?
Before this inner gaze

Let all that beauty in clear vision lies
Look on it with exceeding love and write
The woods inspired by wonder and delight

Of tempests wouldst thos King.
Ar litt of battles, make thyself a parta
Of the great tumult, cling

To the tossed wreck with terror in the haurt
I.cale, with the assaulting host, the camport's height,
And Strike and struggle in the thickest fight.

So shalt then frame alay
Which haply may endrere from age to age,
And they who read shall say:

"It hat witching hangs upon this poots page!
"What art is his the written spells to find
"That way, from mood to mood, the willing mind ""
William Cullen Bryant

Copred, Occ. 1875

"BLESSINGS be with them, and eternal praise,

Who gave us nobler loves, and nobler cares, The Poets! who on earth have made us heirs Of truth and pure delight by heavenly lays!"

POETS AND POETRY

OF THE

ENGLISH LANGUAGE.

[MR. BRYANT'S INTRODUCTION TO THE FIRST EDITION.]

So large a collection of poems as this demands of its compiler an extensive familiarity with the poetic literature of our language, both of the early and the later time, and withal so liberal a taste as not to exclude any variety of poetic merit. At the request of the Publishers I undertook to write an Introduction to the present work, and in pursuance of this design I find that I have come into a somewhat closer personal relation with the book. In its progress it has passed entirely under my revision, and, although not absolutely responsible for the compilation of its arrangement, I have, as requested, exercised a free hand both in excluding and in adding matter according to my judgment of what was best adapted to the purposes of the enterprise. Such, however, is the wide range of English verse, and such the abundance of the materials, that a compilation of this kind must be like a bouquet gathered from the fields in June, when hundreds of flowers will be left in unvisited spots as beautiful as those which have been taken. It may happen, therefore, that many who have learned to delight in some particular poem will turn these pages, as they might those of other collections, without finding their favorite. Nor should it be matter of surprise, considering the multitude of authors from whom the compilation is made, if it be found that some are overlooked, especially the more recent, of equal merit with many whose poems appear in these pages. It may happen, also, that the compiler, in consequence of some particular association, has been sensible of a beauty and a power of awakening emotions and recalling images in certain poems which other readers will fail to perceive. It should be considered, moreover, that in poetry, as in painting, different artists have different modes of presenting their conceptions, each of which may possess its peculiar merit, yet those whose taste is formed by contemplating the productions of one class take little pleasure in any other. Crabb Robinson relates that Wordsworth once admitted to him that he did not much admire contemporary poetry, not because of its want of poetic merit, but because he had been accustomed to poetry of a different sort, and added that but for this he might have read it with pleasure. I quote from memory,

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