WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT. WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT was born at Cummington, Mass., November 3, 1794, and he died June 12, 1878, in his eighty-fourth year. He was educated at Williams College. Bryant's precocity was very marked. At the age of ten he published translations from some of the Latin poets, and at thirteen he wrote a vigorous political poem, entitled The Embargo. At eighteen, his beaupoem Thanatopsis was composed. At twenty-one, he was admitted to the bar, and, after several years of successful practice, removed to New York and entered upon his literary life. In 1826, Bryant became connected with The New York Evening Post, where he continued to labor till his death. tiful Besides his work as poet and journalist, he undertook, with Sydney Howard Gay, to prepare a Popular History of the United States, but died before its com pletion. He is author of The Fountain and Other Poems, a Traveler in Europe and America, Thanatop Letters of sis, Death of the Flowers, Forest Hymn, Waiting at the Gate, The Flood of Years, besides translations of the Iliad and Odyssey. Bryant's literary life covers a period of sixty-four years, dating from Thanatopsis, written at eighteen, to The Flood of Years, written at eighty-two. He is master of blank verse, and "his diction is pure and lucid with scarcely a flaw." "Bryant's poetry overflows with natural religion-what Wordsworth calls the religion of nature," and always shows a pious and pure spirit. The following lines are from Thanatopsis: So live, that when thy summons comes to join 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 An Evening Reverie. HE summer day is closed, the sun is set; Well they have done their office, those bright hours, The latest of whose train goes softly out In the red West. The green blade of the ground Flowers of the garden and the waste have blown Their prison shell, or shoved them from the nest, Of the thronged city, have been hollowed out That ne'er before were parted; it hath knit New friendships; it hath seen the maiden plight " Her faith, and trust her peace to him who long By those who watch the dead, and those who twine Yet know not whither. Man foretells afar The courses of the stars; the very hour He knows when they shall darken or grow bright; Come unforwarned. Who next of those I love, Shall pass from life, or sadder yet, shall fall : Into the stilly twilight of my age? Or do the portals of another life, Even now, while I am glorying in my strength, At that broad threshhold, with what fairer forms Forest Hymn. HE groves were God's first temples. Ere man learned And spread the roof above them,--ere he framed |