Chapter IV: Introduction (2)

William Cullen Bryant was born at Cummington, Hampshire Co., Mass., November 3rd, 1784. His father was a physician, and a man of literary culture who encouraged his son’s early ability, and taught him the value of correctness and compression, and enabled him to distinguish between true poetic enthusiasm and the bombast into which young poets are apt to fall. The feeling and reverence with which Bryant cherished the memory of his father whose life was

“Marked with some act of goodness every day,”

is touchingly alluded to in several of his poems and directly spoken of with pathetic eloquence in the “Hymn to Death” written in 1825:

Alas! I little thought that the stern power
Whose fearful praise I sung, would try me thus
Before the strain was ended. It must cease――
For he is in his grave who taught my youth
The art of verse, and in the bud of life
Offered me to the Muses. Oh, cut off
Untimely! when thy reason in its strength,
Ripened by years of toil and studious search
And watch of Nature’s silent lessons, taught
Thy hand to practise best the lenient art
To which thou gavest thy laborious days,
And, last, thy life. And, therefore, when the earth
Received thee, tears were in unyielding eyes,
And on hard cheeks, and they who deemed thy skill
Delayed their death-hour, shuddered and turned pale
When thou wert gone. This faltering verse, which thou
Shalt not, as wont, o’erlook, is all I have
To offer at thy grave――this――and the hope
To copy thy example.

Bryant was educated at Williams College, but left with an honorable discharge before graduation to take up the study of law, which he practiced one year at Plainfield and nine years at Great Barrington, but in 1825 he abandoned law for literature, and removed to New York where in 1826 he began to edit the “Evening Post,” which position he continued to occupy from that time until the day of his death. William Cullen Bryant and the “Evening Post” were almost as conspicuous and permanent features of the city as the Battery and Trinity Church.

In 1821 Mr. Bryant married Frances Fairchild, the loveliness of whose character is hinted in some of his sweetest productions. The one beginning

“O fairest of the rural maids,”

was written some years before their marriage; and “The Future Life,” one of the noblest and most pathetic of his poems, is addressed to her:――

“In meadows fanned by Heaven’s life-breathing wind,
In the resplendence of that glorious sphere
And larger movements of the unfettered mind,
Wilt thou forget the love that joined us here?

“Will not thy own meek heart demand me there,――
That heart whose fondest throbs to me were given?
My name on earth was ever in thy prayer,
And wilt thou never utter it in heaven?”

Among his best-known poems are “A Forest Hymn,” “The Death of the Flowers,” “Lines to a Waterfowl,” and “The Planting of the Apple-Tree.” One of the greatest of his works, though not among the most popular, is his translation of Homer, which he completed when seventy-seven years of age.

Bryant had a marvellous memory. His familiarity with the English poets was such that when at sea, where he was always too ill to read much, he would beguile the time by reciting page after page from favorite authors. However long the voyage, he never exhausted his resources. “I once proposed,” says a friend, “to send for a copy of a magazine in which a new poem of his was announced to appear. ‘You need not send for it,’ said he, ‘I can give it to you.’ ‘Then you have a copy with you?’ said I. ‘No,’ he replied, ‘but I can recall it,’ and thereupon proceeded immediately to write it out. I congratulated him upon having such a faithful memory. ‘If allowed a little time,’ he replied, ‘I could recall every line of poetry I have ever written.’”

His tenderness of the feelings of others, and his earnest desire always to avoid the giving of unnecessary pain, were very marked. “Soon after I began to do the duties of literary editor,” writes an associate, “Mr. Bryant, who was reading a review of a little book of wretchedly halting verse, said to me: ‘I wish you would deal very gently with poets, especially the weaker ones.’”

Bryant was a man of very striking appearance, especially in age. “It is a fine sight,” says one writer, “to see a man full of years, clear in mind, sober in judgment, refined in taste, and handsome in person.... I remember once to have been at a lecture where Mr. Bryant sat several seats in front of me, and his finely-sized head was especially noticeable.... The observer of Bryant’s capacious skull and most refined expression of face cannot fail to read therein the history of a noble manhood.”

The grand old veteran of verse died in New York in 1878 at the age of eighty-four, universally known and honored. He was in his sixth year when George Washington died, and lived under the administration of twenty presidents and had seen his own writings in print for seventy years. During this long life――though editor for fifty years of a political daily paper, and continually before the public――he had kept his reputation unspotted from the world, as if he had, throughout the decades, continually before his mind the admonition of the closing lines of “Thanatopsis” written by himself seventy years before.

Illustration: (‡ decoration)

* * * * *

THANATOPSIS.¹

The following production is called the beginning of American
poetry.

That a young man not yet 19 should have produced a poem so
lofty in conception, so full of chaste language and delicate
and striking imagery, and, above all, so pervaded by a noble
and cheerful religious philosophy, may well be regarded as one
of the most remarkable examples of early maturity in literary
history.

¹ The following copyrighted selections from Wm. Cullen
Bryant are inserted by permission of D. Appleton & Co.,
the publishers of his works.

TO 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. When thoughts
Of the last bitter hour come like a blight
Over thy spirit, and sad images
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 nourish’d 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 thine 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-ribb’d 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, pour’d 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, traverse Barca’s desert sands,
Or lose thyself in the continuous woods
Where rolls the Oregon, and hears no sound
Save its 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
Will share thy destiny. The gay will laugh
When thou art gone, the solemn brood of care
Plod on, and each one, as before, will chase
His favorite phantom; yet all these shall leave
Their mirth and their employments, and shall come
And make their bed with thee. As the long train
Of ages glides away, the sons of men――
The youth in life’s green spring, and he who goes
In the full strength of years, matron and maid,
And the sweet babe, and the gray-headed man――
Shall, one by one, be gather’d to thy side,
By those who in their turn shall follow them.
So live that, when thy summons comes to join
The innumerable caravan, which moves
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, sustain’d and soothed
By an unfaltering trust, approach thy grave
Like one who wraps the drapery of his couch
About him, and lies down to pleasant dreams.

* * * * *

WAITING BY THE GATE.

BESIDES the massive gateway built up in years gone by,
Upon whose top the clouds in eternal shadow lie,
While streams the evening sunshine on the quiet wood and lea,
I stand and calmly wait until the hinges turn for me.

The tree tops faintly rustle beneath the breeze’s flight,
A soft soothing sound, yet it whispers of the night;
I hear the woodthrush piping one mellow descant more,
And scent the flowers that blow when the heat of day is o’er.

Behold the portals open and o’er the threshold, now,
There steps a wearied one with pale and furrowed brow;
His count of years is full, his ♦allotted task is wrought;
He passes to his rest from a place that needs him not.

In sadness, then, I ponder how quickly fleets the hour
Of human strength and action, man’s courage and his power.
I muse while still the woodthrush sings down the golden day,
And as I look and listen the sadness wears away.

Again the hinges turn, and a youth, departing throws
A look of longing backward, and sorrowfully goes;
A blooming maid, unbinding the roses from her hair,
Moves wonderfully away from amid the young and fair.

Oh, glory of our race that so suddenly decays!
Oh, crimson flush of morning, that darkens as we gaze!
Oh, breath of summer blossoms that on the restless air
Scatters a moment’s sweetness and flies we know not where.

I grieve for life’s bright promise, just shown and then
withdrawn;
But still the sun shines round me; the evening birds sing on;
And I again am soothed, and beside the ancient gate,
In this soft evening sunlight, I calmly stand and wait.

Once more the gates are opened, an infant group go out,
The sweet smile quenched forever, and stilled the sprightly
shout.
Oh, frail, frail tree of life, that upon the greensward strews
Its fair young buds unopened, with every wind that blows!

So from every region, so enter side by side,
The strong and faint of spirit, the meek and men of pride,
Steps of earth’s greatest, mightiest, between those pillars
gray,
And prints of little feet, that mark the dust away.

And some approach the threshold whose looks are blank with
fear,
And some whose temples brighten with joy are drawing near,
As if they saw dear faces, and caught the gracious eye
Of Him, the Sinless Teacher, who came for us to die.

I mark the joy, the terrors; yet these, within my heart,
Can neither wake the dread nor the longing to depart;
And, in the sunshine streaming of quiet wood and lea,
I stand and calmly wait until the hinges turn for me.

♦ ‘alloted’ replaced with ‘allotted’

* * * * *

“BLESSED ARE THEY THAT MOURN.”

O DEEM not they are blest alone
Whose lives a peaceful tenor keep;
The Power who pities man has shown
A blessing for the eyes that weep.

The light of smiles shall fill again
The lids that overflow with tears;
And weary hours of woe and pain
Are promises of happier years.

There is a day of sunny rest
For every dark and troubled night;
And grief may bide an evening guest,
But joy shall come with early light.

And thou, who, o’er thy friend’s low bier,
Sheddest the bitter drops like rain,
Hope that a brighter, happier sphere
Will give him to thy arms again.

Nor let the good man’s trust depart,
Though life its common gifts deny,――
Though with a pierced and bleeding heart,
And spurned of men, he goes to die.

For God hath marked each sorrowing day,
And numbered every secret tear,
And heaven’s long age of bliss shall pay
For all his children suffer here.

* * * * *

THE ANTIQUITY OF FREEDOM.

HERE are old trees, tall oaks, and gnarled pines,
That stream with gray-green mosses; here the ground
Was never touch’d by spade, and flowers spring up
Unsown, and die ungather’d. It is sweet
To linger here, among the flitting birds
And leaping squirrels, wandering brooks and winds
That shake the leaves, and scatter as they pass
A fragrance from the cedars thickly set
With pale blue berries. In these peaceful shades――
Peaceful, unpruned, immeasurably old――
My thoughts go up the long dim path of years,
Back to the earliest days of Liberty.
O FREEDOM! thou art not, as poets dream,
A fair young girl, with light and delicate limbs,
And wavy tresses gushing from the cap
With which the Roman master crown’d his slave,
When he took off the gyves. A bearded man,
Arm’d to the teeth, art thou: one mailed hand
Grasps the broad shield, and one the sword; thy brow,
Glorious in beauty though it be, is scarr’d
With tokens of old wars; thy massive limbs
Are strong and struggling. Power at thee has launch’d
His bolts, and with his lightnings smitten thee;
They could not quench the life thou hast from Heaven.
Merciless Power has dug thy dungeon deep,
And his swart armorers, by a thousand fires,
Have forged thy chain; yet while he deems thee bound,
The links are shiver’d, and the prison walls
Fall outward; terribly thou springest forth,
As springs the flame above a burning pile,
And shoutest to the nations, who return
Thy shoutings, while the pale oppressor flies.
Thy birth-right was not given by human hands:
Thou wert twin-born with man. In pleasant fields,
While yet our race was few, thou sat’st with him,
To tend the quiet flock and watch the stars,
And teach the reed to utter simple airs.
Thou by his side, amid the tangled wood,
Didst war upon the panther and the wolf,
His only foes: and thou with him didst draw
The earliest furrows on the mountain side,
Soft with the Deluge. Tyranny himself,
The enemy, although of reverend look,
Hoary with many years, and far obey’d,
Is later born than thou; and as he meets
The grave defiance of thine elder eye,
The usurper trembles in his fastnesses.
Thou shalt wax stronger with the lapse of years,
But he shall fade into a feebler age;
Feebler, yet subtler; he shall weave his snares,
And spring them on thy careless steps, and clap
His wither’d hands, and from their ambush call
His hordes to fall upon thee. He shall send
Quaint maskers, forms of fair and gallant mien,
To catch thy gaze, and uttering graceful words
To charm thy ear; while his sly imps, by stealth,
Twine round thee threads of steel, light thread on thread,
That grow to fetters; or bind down thy arms
With chains conceal’d in chaplets. Oh! not yet
Mayst thou unbrace thy corslet, nor lay by
Thy sword, nor yet, O Freedom! close thy lids
In slumber; for thine enemy never sleeps.
And thou must watch and combat, till the day
Of the new Earth and Heaven. But wouldst thou rest
Awhile from tumult and the frauds of men,
These old and friendly solitudes invite
Thy visit. They, while yet the forest trees
Were young upon the unviolated earth,
And yet the moss-stains on the rock were new,
Beheld thy glorious childhood, and rejoiced.

* * * * *

TO A WATERFOWL.

WHITHER, ’midst 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 limn’d upon 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 fann’d,
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 shelter’d nest.

Thou’rt gone; the abyss of heaven
Hath swallow’d 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.

* * * * *

ROBERT OF LINCOLN.

MERRILY swinging on brier and weed,
Near to the nest of his little dame,
Over the mountain-side or mead,
Robert of Lincoln is telling his name:
Bob-o’-link, bob-o’-link,
Spink, spank, spink;
Snug and safe is that nest of ours,
Hidden among the summer flowers.
Chee, chee, chee.

Robert of Lincoln is gayly dressed,
Wearing a bright black wedding coat;
White are his shoulders and white his crest,
Hear him call in his merry note:
Bob-o’-link, bob-o’-link,
Spink, spank, spink;
Look what a nice new coat is mine,
Sure there was never a bird so fine.
Chee, chee, chee.

Robert of Lincoln’s Quaker wife,
Pretty and quiet, with plain brown wings,
Passing at home a patient life,
Broods in the grass while her husband sings,
Bob-o’-link, bob-o’-link,
Spink, spank, spink;
Brood, kind creature; you need not fear
Thieves and robbers, while I am here.
Chee, chee, chee.

Modest and shy as a nun is she,
One weak chirp is her only note,
Braggart and prince of braggarts is he,
Pouring boasts from his little throat:
Bob-o’-link, bob-o’-link,
Spink, spank, spink;
Never was I afraid of man;
Catch me, cowardly knaves if you can.
Chee, chee, chee.

Six white eggs on a bed of hay,
Flecked with purple, a pretty sight
There as the mother sits all day,
Robert is singing with all his might:
Bob-o’-link, bob-o’-link,
Spink, spank, spink;
Nice good wife, that never goes out,
Keeping house while I frolic about.
Chee, chee, chee.

Soon as the little ones chip the shell
Six wide mouths are open for food;
Robert of Lincoln bestirs him well,
Gathering seed for the hungry brood.
Bob-o’-link, bob-o’-link,
Spink, spank, spink;
This new life is likely to be
Hard for a gay young fellow like me.
Chee, chee, chee.

Robert of Lincoln at length is made
Sober with work and silent with care;
Off is his holiday garment laid,
Half-forgotten that merry air,
Bob-o’-link, bob-o’-link,
Spink, spank, spink;
Nobody knows but my mate and I
Where our nest and our nestlings lie.
Chee, chee, chee.

Summer wanes; the children are grown;
Fun and frolic no more he knows;
Robert of Lincoln’s a humdrum crone;
Off he flies, and we sing as he goes:
Bob-o’-link, bob-o’-link,
Spink, spank, spink;
When you can pipe that merry old strain,
Robert of Lincoln, come back again.
Chee, chee, chee.

* * * * *

DROUGHT.

PLUNGED amid the limpid waters,
Or the cooling shade beneath,
Let me fly the scorching sunbeams,
And the southwind’s sickly breath!

Sirius burns the parching meadows,
Flames upon the embrowning hill,
Dries the foliage of the forest,
And evaporates the rill.

Scarce is seen the lonely floweret,
Save amid the embowering wood;
O’er the prospect dim and dreary,
Drought presides in sullen mood!

Murky vapours hung in ether,
Wrap in gloom, the sky serene;
Nature pants distressful――silence
Reigns o’er all the sultry scene.

Then amid the limpid waters,
Or beneath the cooling shade,
Let me shun the scorching sunbeams
And the sickly breeze evade.

* * * * *

THE PAST.

No poet, perhaps, in the world is so exquisite in rhythm, or
classically pure and accurate in language, so appropriate in
diction, phrase or metaphor as Bryant.

He dips his pen in words as an inspired painter his pencil
in colors. The following poem is a fair specimen of his deep
vein in his chosen serious themes. Pathos is pre-eminently
his endowment but the tinge of melancholy in his treatment is
always pleasing.

THOU unrelenting Past!
Strong are the barriers round thy dark domain,
And fetters, sure and fast,
Hold all that enter thy unbreathing reign.

Far in thy realm withdrawn
Old empires sit in sullenness and gloom,
And glorious ages gone
Lie deep within the shadow of thy womb.

Childhood, with all its mirth,
Youth, Manhood, Age that draws us to the ground,
And, last, Man’s Life on earth,
Glide to thy dim dominions, and are bound.

Thou hast my better years,
Thou hast my earlier friends――the good――the kind,
Yielded to thee with tears,――
The venerable form――the exalted mind.

My spirit yearns to bring
The lost ones back;――yearns with desire intense,
And struggles hard to wring
Thy bolts apart, and pluck thy captives thence.

In vain:――thy gates deny
All passage save to those who hence depart;
Nor to the streaming eye
Thou giv’st them back,――nor to the broken heart.

In thy abysses hide
Beauty and excellence unknown;――to thee
Earth’s wonder and her pride
Are gather’d, as the waters to the sea;

Labors of good to man,
Unpublish’d charity, unbroken faith,――
Love, that midst grief began,
And grew with years, and falter’d not in death.

Full many a mighty name
Lurks in thy depths, unutter’d, unrevered;
With thee are silent fame,
Forgotten arts, and wisdom disappear’d.

Thine for a space are they:――
Yet shalt thou yield thy treasures up at last;
Thy gates shall yet give way,
Thy bolts shall fall, inexorable Past!

All that of good and fair
Has gone into thy womb from earliest time,
Shall then come forth, to wear
The glory and the beauty of its prime.

They have not perish’d――no!
Kind words, remember’d voices once so sweet,
Smiles, radiant long ago,
And features, the great soul’s apparent seat,

All shall come back; each tie
Of pure affection shall be knit again;
Alone shall Evil die,
And Sorrow dwell a prisoner in thy reign.

And then shall I behold
Him by whose kind paternal side I sprung,
And her who, still and cold,
Fills the next grave,――the beautiful and young.

* * * * *

THE MURDERED TRAVELER.

WHEN spring, to woods and wastes around,
Brought bloom and joy again;
The murdered traveler’s bones were found,
Far down a narrow glen.

The fragrant birch, above him, hung
Her tassels in the sky;
And many a vernal blossom sprung,
And nodded careless by.

The red bird warbled, as he wrought
His hanging nest o’erhead;
And fearless, near the fatal spot,
Her young the partridge led.

But there was weeping far away,
And gentle eyes, for him,
With watching many an anxious day,
Were sorrowful and dim.

They little knew, who loved him so,
The fearful death he met,
When shouting o’er the desert snow,
Unarmed and hard beset;

Nor how, when round the frosty pole,
The northern dawn was red,
The mountain-wolf and wild-cat stole
To banquet on the dead;

Nor how, when strangers found his bones,
They dressed the hasty bier,
And marked his grave with nameless stones,
Unmoistened by a tear.

But long they looked, and feared, and wept,
Within his distant home;
And dreamed, and started as they slept,
For joy that he was come.

Long, long they looked――but never spied
His welcome step again.
Nor knew the fearful death he died
Far down that narrow glen.

* * * * *

THE BATTLEFIELD.

Soon after the following poem was written, an English critic,
referring to the stanza ♦beginning――“Truth crushed to earth
shall rise again,”――said: “Mr. Bryant has certainly a rare
merit for having written a stanza which will bear comparison
with any four lines as one of the noblest in the English
language. The thought is complete, the expression perfect.
A poem of a dozen such verses would be like a row of pearls,
each beyond a king’s ransom.”

♦ ‘begining’ replaced with ‘beginning’

ONCE this soft turf, this rivulet’s sands,
Were trampled by a hurrying crowd,
And fiery hearts and armed hands
Encounter’d in the battle-cloud.

Ah! never shall the land forget
How gush’d the life-blood of her brave,――
Gush’d, warm with hope and courage yet,
Upon the soil they fought to save.

Now all is calm, and fresh, and still,
Alone the chirp of flitting bird,
And talk of children on the hill,
And bell of wandering kine, are heard.

No solemn host goes trailing by
The black-mouth’d gun and staggering wain;
Men start not at the battle-cry:
Oh, be it never heard again!

Soon rested those who fought; but thou
Who minglest in the harder strife
For truths which men receive not now,
Thy warfare only ends with life.

A friendless warfare! lingering long
Through weary day and weary year;
A wild and many-weapon’d throng
Hang on thy front, and flank, and rear.

Yet nerve thy spirit to the proof,
And blench not at thy chosen lot;
The timid good may stand aloof,
The sage may frown――yet faint thou not,

Nor heed the shaft too surely cast,
The foul and hissing bolt of scorn;
For with thy side shall dwell, at last,
The victory of endurance born.

Truth, crush’d to earth, shall rise again;
The eternal years of God are hers;
But Error, wounded, writhes in pain,
And dies among his worshippers.

Yea, though thou lie upon the dust,
When they who help’d thee flee in fear,
Die full of hope and manly trust,
Like those who fell in battle here.

Another hand thy sword shall wield,
Another hand the standard wave,
Till from the trumpet’s mouth is peal’d
The blast of triumph o’er thy grave.

* * * * *

THE CROWDED STREETS.

LET me move slowly through the street,
Filled with an ever-shifting train,
Amid the sound of steps that beat
The murmuring walks like autumn rain.

How fast the flitting figures come;
The mild, the fierce, the stony face――
Some bright, with thoughtless smiles, and some
Where secret tears have left their trace.

They pass to toil, to strife, to rest――
To halls in which the feast is spread――
To chambers where the funeral guest
In silence sits beside the bed.

And some to happy homes repair,
Where children pressing cheek to cheek,
With mute caresses shall declare
The tenderness they cannot speak.

And some who walk in calmness here,
Shall shudder as they reach the door
Where one who made their dwelling dear,
Its flower, its light, is seen no more.

Youth, with pale cheek and tender frame,
And dreams of greatness in thine eye,
Go’st thou to build an early name,
Or early in the task to die?

Keen son of trade, with eager brow,
Who is now fluttering in thy snare,
Thy golden fortunes tower they now,
Or melt the glittering spires in air?

Who of this crowd to-night shall tread
The dance till daylight gleams again?
To sorrow o’er the untimely dead?
Who writhe in throes of mortal pain?

Some, famine struck, shall think how long
The cold, dark hours, how slow the light;
And some, who flaunt amid the throng,
Shall hide in dens of shame to night.

Each where his tasks or pleasure call,
They pass and heed each other not;
There is one who heeds, who holds them all
In His large love and boundless thought.

These struggling tides of life that seem
In wayward, aimless course to tend,
Are eddies of the mighty stream
That rolls to its appointed end.

* * * * *

NOTICE OF FITZ-GREEN HALLECK.

As a specimen of Mr. Bryant’s prose, of which he wrote much,
and also as a sample of his criticism, we reprint the following
extract from a Commemorative Address which he delivered
before the New York Historical Society in February 1869. This
selection is also valuable as a character sketch and a literary
estimate of Mr. Halleck.

“WHEN I look back upon Halleck’s literary life, I cannot help thinking that if his death had happened forty years earlier, his life would have been regarded as a bright morning prematurely overcast. Yet Halleck’s literary career may be said to have ended then. All that will hand down his name to future years had already been produced. Who shall say to what cause his subsequent literary inaction was owing? It was not the decline of his powers; his brilliant conversation showed that it was not. Was it then indifference to fame? Was it because he put an humble estimate on what he had written, and therefore resolved to write no more? Was it because he feared lest what he might write would be unworthy of the reputation he had been so fortunate as to acquire?

“I have my own way of accounting for his literary silence in the latter half of his life. One of the resemblances which he bore to Horace consisted in the length of time for which he kept his poems by him, that he might give them the last and happiest touches. Having composed his poems without committing them to paper, and retaining them in his faithful memory, he revised them in the same manner, murmuring them to himself in his solitary moments, recovering the enthusiasm with which they were first conceived, and in this state of mind heightening the beauty of the thought or of the expression....

“In this way I suppose Halleck to have attained the gracefulness of his diction, and the airy melody of his numbers. In this way I believe that he wrought up his verses to that transparent clearness of expression which causes the thought to be seen through them without any interposing dimness, so that the thought and the phrase seem one, and the thought enters the mind like a beam of light. I suppose that Halleck’s time being taken up by the tasks of his vocation, he naturally lost by degrees the habit of composing in this manner, and that he found it so necessary to the perfection of what he wrote that he adopted no other in its place.”

* * * * *

A CORN-SHUCKING IN SOUTH CAROLINA.

_From “The Letters of a Traveler.”_

In 1843, during Mr. Bryant’s visit to the South, he had
the pleasure of witnessing one of those antebellum southern
institutions known as a Corn-Shucking――one of the ideal
occasions of the colored man’s life, to which both men and
women were invited. They were free to tell all the jokes, sing
all the songs and have all the fun they desired as they rapidly
shucked the corn. Two leaders were usually chosen and the
company divided into two parties which competed for a prize
awarded to the first party which finished shucking the allotted
pile of corn. Mr. Bryant thus graphically describes one of
these novel occasions:

BARNWELL DISTRICT,
South Carolina, March 29, 1843.

BUT you must hear of the corn-shucking. The one at which I was present was given on purpose that I might witness the humors of the Carolina negroes. A huge fire of _light-wood_ was made near the corn-house. Light-wood is the wood of the long-leaved pine, and is so called, not because it is light, for it is almost the heaviest wood in the world, but because it gives more light than any other fuel.

The light-wood-fire was made, and the negroes dropped in from the neighboring plantations, singing as they came. The driver of the plantation, a colored man, brought out baskets of corn in the husk, and piled it in a heap; and the negroes began to strip the husks from the ears, singing with great glee as they worked, keeping time to the music, and now and then throwing in a joke and an extravagant burst of laughter. The songs were generally of a comic character; but one of them was set to a singularly wild and plaintive air, which some of our musicians would do well to reduce to notation. These are the words:

Johnny come down de hollow.
Oh hollow!
Johnny come down de hollow.
Oh hollow!
De nigger-trader got me.
Oh hollow!
De speculator bought me.
Oh hollow!
I’m sold for silver dollars.
Oh hollow!
Boys, go catch the pony.
Oh hollow!
Bring him round the corner.
Oh hollow!
I’m goin’ away to Georgia.
Oh hollow!
Boys, good-by forever!
Oh hollow!

The song of “Jenny gone away,” was also given, and another, called the monkey-song, probably of African origin, in which the principal singer personated a monkey, with all sorts of odd gesticulations, and the other negroes bore part in the chorus, “Dan, dan, who’s the dandy?” One of the songs commonly sung on these occasions, represents the various animals of the woods as belonging to some profession or trade. For example――

De cooter is de boatman――

The cooter is the terrapin, and a very expert boatman he is.

De cooter is de boatman.
John John Crow.

De red-bird de soger.
John John Crow.

De mocking-bird de lawyer.
John John Crow.

De alligator sawyer.
John John Crow.

The alligator’s back is furnished with a toothed ridge, like the edge of a saw, which explains the last line.

When the work of the evening was over the negroes adjourned to a spacious kitchen. One of them took his place as musician, whistling, and beating time with two sticks upon the floor. Several of the men came forward and executed various dances, capering, prancing, and drumming with heel and toe upon the floor, with astonishing agility and perseverance, though all of them had performed their daily tasks and had worked all the evening, and some had walked from four to seven miles to attend the corn-shucking. From the dances a transition was made to a mock military parade, a sort of burlesque of our militia trainings, in which the words of command and the evolutions were extremely ludicrous. It became necessary for the commander to make a speech, and confessing his incapacity for public speaking, he called upon a huge black man named Toby to address the company in his stead. Toby, a man of powerful frame, six feet high, his face ornamented with a beard of fashionable cut, had hitherto stood leaning against the wall, looking upon the frolic with an air of superiority. He consented, came forward, demanded a bit of paper to hold in his hand, and harangued the soldiery. It was evident that Toby had listened to stump-speeches in his day. He spoke of “de majority of Sous Carolina,” “de interests of de state,” “de honor of ole Ba’nwell district,” and these phrases he connected by various expletives, and sounds of which we could make nothing. At length he began to falter, when the captain with admirable presence of mind came to his relief, and interrupted and closed the harangue with an hurrah from the company. Toby was allowed by all the spectators, black and white, to have made an excellent speech.

Illustration: CORN-SHUCKING IN SOUTH CAROLINA.

Illustration: (‡ decoration)

EDGAR ALLEN POE.

THE WEIRD AND MYSTERIOUS GENIUS.

EDGAR Allen Poe, the author of “The Raven,” “Annabel Lee,” “The Haunted Palace,” “To One in Paradise,” “Israfel” and “Lenore,” was in his peculiar sphere, the most brilliant writer, perhaps, who ever lived. His writings, however, belong to a different world of thought from that in which Bryant, Longfellow, Emerson, Whittier and Lowell lived and labored. Theirs was the realm of nature, of light, of human joy, of happiness, ease, hope and cheer. Poe spoke from the dungeon of depression. He was in a constant struggle with poverty. His whole life was a tragedy in which sombre shades played an unceasing role, and yet from out these weird depths came forth things so beautiful that their very sadness is charming and holds us in a spell of bewitching enchantment. Edgar Fawcett says of him:――

“He loved all shadowy spots, all seasons drear;
All ways of darkness lured his ghastly whim;
Strange fellowships he held with goblins grim,
At whose demoniac eyes he felt no fear.

By desolate paths of dream where fancy’s owl
Sent long lugubrious hoots through sombre air,
Amid thought’s gloomiest caves he went to prowl
And met delirium in her awful lair.”

Edgar Poe was born in Boston February 19th, 1809. His father was a Marylander, as was also his grandfather, who was a distinguished Revolutionary soldier and a friend of General Lafayette. The parents of Poe were both actors who toured the country in the ordinary manner, and this perhaps accounts for his birth in Boston. Their home was in Baltimore, Maryland.

When Poe was only a few years old both parents died, within two weeks, in Richmond, Virginia. Their three children, two daughters, one older and one younger than the subject of this sketch, were all adopted by friends of the family. Mr. John Allen, a rich tobacco merchant of Richmond, Virginia, adopted Edgar (who was henceforth called Edgar Allen Poe), and had him carefully educated, first in England, afterwards at the Richmond Academy and the University of Virginia, and subsequently at West Point. He always distinguished himself in his studies, but from West Point he was dismissed after one year, it is said because he refused to submit to the discipline of the institution.

In common with the custom in the University of Virginia at that time, Poe acquired the habits of drinking and gambling, and the gambling debts which he contracted incensed Mr. Allen, who refused to pay them. This brought on the beginning of a series of quarrels which finally led to Poe’s disinheritance and permanent separation from his benefactor. Thus turned out upon the cold, unsympathetic world, without business training, without friends, without money, knowing not how to make money――yet, with a proud, imperious, aristocratic nature,――we have the beginning of the saddest story of any life in literature――struggling for nearly twenty years in gloom and poverty, with here and there a ray of sunshine, and closing with delirium tremens in Baltimore, October 7th, 1849, at forty years of age.

To those who know the full details of the sad story of Poe’s life it is little wonder that his sensitive, passionate nature sought surcease from disappointment in the nepenthe of the intoxicating cup. It was but natural for a man of his nervous temperament and delicacy of feeling to fall into that melancholy moroseness which would chide even the angels for taking away his beautiful “Annabel Lee;” or that he should wail over the “Lost Lenore,” or declare that his soul should “nevermore” be lifted from the shadow of the “Raven” upon the floor. These poems and others are but the expressions of disappointment and despair of a soul alienated from happy human relations. While we admire their power and beauty, we should remember at what cost of pain and suffering and disappointment they were produced. They are powerful illustrations of the prodigal expense of human strength, of broken hopes and bitter experiences through which rare specimens of our literature are often grown.

To treat the life of Edgar Allen Poe, with its lessons, fully, would require the scope of a volume. Both as a man and an author there is a sad fascination which belongs to no other writer, perhaps, in the world. His personal character has been represented as pronouncedly double. It is said that Stevenson, who was a great admirer of Poe, received the inspiration for his novel, “Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde” from the contemplation of his double character. Paul Hamilton Hayne has also written a poem entitled, “Poe,” which presents in a double shape the angel and demon in one body. The first two stanzas of which we quote:――

“Two mighty spirits dwelt in him:
One, a wild demon, weird and dim,
The darkness of whose ebon wings
Did shroud unutterable things:
One, a fair angel, in the skies
Of whose serene, unshadowed eyes
Were seen the lights of Paradise.

To these, in turn, he gave the whole
Vast empire of his brooding soul;
Now, filled with strains of heavenly swell,
Now thrilled with awful tones of hell:
Wide were his being’s strange extremes,
’Twixt nether glooms, and Eden gleams
Of tender, or majestic dreams.”

It must be said in justice to Poe’s memory, however, that the above idea of his being both demon and angel became prevalent through the first biography published of him, by Dr. Rufus Griswold, who no doubt sought to avenge himself on the dead poet for the severe but unanswerable criticisms which the latter had passed upon his and other contemporaneous authors’ writings. Later biographies, notably those of J. H. Ingram and Mrs. Sarah Ellen Whitman, as well as published statements from his business associates, have disproved many of Griswold’s damaging statements, and placed the private character of Poe in a far more favorable light before the world. He left off gambling in his youth, and the appetite for drink, which followed him to the close of his life, was no doubt inherited from his father who, before him, was a drunkard.

It is natural for admirers of Poe’s genius to contemplate with regret akin to sorrow those circumstances and characteristics which made him so unhappy, and yet the serious question arises, was not that character and his unhappy life necessary to the productions of his marvelous pen? Let us suppose it was, and in charity draw the mantle of forgetfulness over his misguided ways, covering the sad picture of his personal life from view, and hang in its place the matchless portrait of his splendid genius, before which, with true American pride, we may summon all the world to stand with uncovered heads.

As a writer of short stories Poe had no equal in America. He is said to have been the originator of the modern detective story. The artful ingenuity with which he works up the details of his plot, and minute attention to the smallest illustrative particular, give his tales a vivid interest from which no reader can escape. His skill in analysis is as marked as his power of word painting. The scenes of gloom and terror which he loves to depict, the forms of horror to which he gives almost actual life, render his mastery over the reader most exciting and absorbing.

As a poet Poe ranks among the most original in the world. He is pre-eminently a poet of the imagination. It is useless to seek in his verses for philosophy or preaching. He brings into his poetry all the weirdness, subtlety, artistic detail and facility in coloring which give the charm to his prose stories, and to these he adds a musical flow of language which has never been equalled. To him poetry was music, and there was no poetry that was not musical. For poetic harmony he has had no equal certainly in America, if, indeed, in the world. Admirers of his poems are almost sure to read them over and over again, each time finding new forms of beauty or charm in them, and the reader abandons himself to a current of melodious fancy that soothes and charms like distant music at night, or the rippling of a nearby, but unseen, brook. The images which he creates are vague and illusive. As one of his biographers has written, “He heard in his dreams the tinkling footfalls of angels and seraphim and subordinated everything in his verse to the delicious effect of musical sound.” As a literary critic Poe’s capacities were of the greatest. “In that large part of the critic’s perceptions,” says Duyckinck, “in knowledge of the mechanism of composition, he has been unsurpassed by any writer in America.”

Poe was also a fine reader and elocutionist. A writer who attended a lecture by him in Richmond says: “I never heard a voice so musical as his. It was full of the sweetest melody. No one who heard his recitation of the ‘Raven’ will ever forget the beauty and pathos with which this recitation was rendered. The audience was still as death, and as his weird, musical voice filled the hall its effect was simply indescribable. It seems to me that I can yet hear that long, plaintive ‘nevermore.’”

Among the labors of Poe, aside from his published volumes and contributions to miscellaneous magazines, should be mentioned his various positions from 1834 to 1848 as critic and editor on the “Literary Messenger” of Richmond, Virginia, the “Gentleman’s Magazine” of Philadelphia, “Graham’s Magazine” of Philadelphia, the “Evening Mirror” of New York, and the “Broadway Journal” of New York, which positions he successively held. The last he gave up in 1848 with the idea of starting a literary magazine of his own, but the project failed, perhaps on account of his death, which occurred the next year. His first volume of poems was published in 1829. In 1833 he won two prizes, one for prose and one for poetic composition, offered by the Baltimore “Saturday Visitor,” his “Manuscript Found in a Bottle” being awarded the prize for prose and the poem “The Coliseum” for poetry. The latter, however, he did not ♦receive because the judges found the same author had won them both. In 1838 Harper Brothers published his ingenious fiction, “The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket.” In 1840 “Tales of the Grotesque and Arabesque” were issued in Philadelphia. In 1844 he took up his residence at Fordham, New York, where his wife died in 1847, and where he continued to reside for the balance of his life. His famous poem the “Raven” was published in 1845, and during 1848 and 1849 he published “Eureka” and “Elalume,” the former being a prose poem. It is the crowning work of his life, to which he devoted the last and most matured energies of his wonderful intellect. To those who desire a further insight into the character of the man and his labors we would recommend the reading of J. H. Ingram’s “Memoir” and Mrs. Sarah Ellen Whitman’s “Edgar Poe and His Critics,” the latter published in 1863.

♦ ‘recieve’ replaced with ‘receive’

Illustration: (‡ decoration)

* * * * *

Illustration: THE CITY IN THE SEA.

THE CITY IN THE SEA.

LO! Death has rear’d himself a throne
In a strange city lying alone
Far down within the dim west,
Where the good and the bad and the worst and the best
Have gone to their eternal rest.
There shrines, and palaces, and towers,
(Time-eaten towers that tremble not!)
Resemble nothing that is ours.
Around, by lifting winds forgot,
Resignedly beneath the sky
The melancholy waters lie.
No rays from the holy heaven come down
On the long night-time of that town;
But light from out the lurid sea
Streams up the turrets silently――
Gleams up the pinnacles far and free――
Up domes――up spires――up kingly halls――
Up fanes――up Babylon-like walls――
Up shadowy, long-forgotten bowers
Of sculptured ivy and stone flowers――
Up many and many a marvellous shrine
Whose wreathed friezes intertwine
The viol, the violet, and the vine.
Resignedly beneath the sky
The melancholy waters lie.
So blend the turrets and shadows there
That all seem pendulous in air,
While from a proud tower in the town
Death looks gigantically down.
There open fanes and gaping graves
Yawn level with the luminous waves;
But not the riches there that lie
In each idol’s diamond eye――
Not the gayly-jewell’d dead
Tempt the waters from their bed;
For no ripples curl, alas!
Along that wilderness of glass――
No swellings tell that winds may be
Upon some far-off happier sea――
No heavings hint that winds have been
On seas less hideously serene.
But lo, a stir is in the air!
The wave――there is a movement there!
As if the towers had thrust aside,
In slightly sinking, the dull tide――
As if their tops had feebly given
A void within the filmy heaven.
The waves have now a redder glow――
The hours are breathing faint and low――
And when, amid no earthly moans,
Down, down that town shall settle hence,
Hell, rising from a thousand thrones,
Shall do it reverence.

* * * * *

ANNABEL LEE.

IT was many and many a year ago,
In a kingdom by the sea,
That a maiden there lived whom you may know
By the name of ANNABEL LEE;
And this maiden she lived with no other thought
Than to love and be loved by me.

_I_ was a child and _she_ was a child,
In this kingdom by the sea;
But we loved with a love that was more than love――
I and my ANNABEL LEE――
With a love that the winged seraphs of heaven
Coveted her and me.

And this was the reason that, long ago,
In this kingdom by the sea,
A wind blew out of a cloud, chilling
My beautiful ANNABEL LEE;
So that her highborn kinsman came
And bore her away from me,
To shut her up in a sepulchre,
In this kingdom by the sea.

The angels, not half so happy in heaven,
Went envying her and me――
Yes!――that was the reason (as all men know,
In this kingdom by the sea),
That the wind came out of the cloud by night,
Chilling and killing my ANNABEL LEE.

But our love it was stronger by far than the love
Of those who were older than we――
Of many far wiser than we――
And neither the angels in heaven above,
Nor the demons down under the sea,
Can ever dissever my soul from the soul
Of the beautiful ANNABEL LEE:

For the moon never beams, without bringing me dreams
Of the beautiful ANNABEL LEE;
And the stars never rise, but I feel the bright eyes
Of the beautiful ANNABEL LEE:
And so, all the night-tide, I lie down by the side
Of my darling――my darling――my life and my bride,
In her sepulchre there by the sea――
In her tomb by the sounding sea.

* * * * *

TO HELEN.

The following poem was published first “To ――――,” afterwards
the title was changed, “To Helen.” It seems to have been
written by Poe to Mrs. Sarah Ellen Whitman whom many years
afterwards he was engaged to marry. The engagement was,
however, broken off. The poem was no doubt written before
his acquaintance with the lady; even before his marriage or
engagement to his wife, and at a time perhaps when he did not
expect to be recognized as a suitor by the unknown woman who
had completely captured his heart, in the chance meeting which
he here so beautifully describes.

I SAW thee once――once only――years ago:
I must not say how many――but not many.
It was a July midnight; and from out
A full-orbed moon that, like thine own soul, soaring,
Sought a precipitant pathway up through heaven,
There fell a silvery-silken veil of light,
With quietude, and sultriness, and slumber,
Upon the upturned faces of a thousand
Roses that grew in an enchanted garden,
Where no wind dared to stir, unless on tiptoe――
Fell on the upturned faces of these roses
That gave out, in return for the love-light,
Their odorous souls in an ecstatic death――
Fell on the upturned faces of these roses
That smiled and died in this parterre, enchanted
By thee and by the poetry of thy presence.

Illustration: CLAD ALL IN WHITE, UPON A VIOLET BANK
I SAW THEE HALF RECLINING; WHILE THE MOON
FELL ON THE UPTURNED FACES OF THE ROSES,
AND ON THINE OWN, UPTURNED――ALAS! IN SORROW.