Part 31
Come Muse, O Muse, so often scorned by me, The hope of sorrow and the balm of care,-- Give to me speech and song, that I may be Unchid by grief; grant me such graces rare As other ministering souls may never see Who boast thy laurel, and thy myrtle wear. I know no joy wherein thou hast not part, My speeding wind, my anchor, and my goal, Come, fair Parnassus, lift thou up my heart; Come, Helicon, renew my thirsty soul. A cypress crown, O Muse, is thine to give, And pain eternal: take this weary frame, Touch me with fire, and this my death shall live On all men's lips and in undying fame.
WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT
(1794-1878)
BY GEORGE PARSONS LATHROP
Distinguished as he was by the lofty qualities of his verse, William Cullen Bryant held a place almost unique in American literature, by the union of his activity as a poet with his eminence as a citizen and an influential journalist, throughout an uncommonly long career. Two traits still further define the peculiarity of his position--his precocious development, and the evenness and sustained vigor of all his poetic work from the beginning to the end. He began writing verse at the age of eight; at ten he made contributions in this kind to the county gazette, and produced a finished and effective rhymed address, read at his school examination, which became popular for recitation; and in his thirteenth year, during the Presidency of Thomas Jefferson, he composed a political satire, 'The Embargo.' This, being published, was at first supposed by many to be the work of a man, attracted much attention and praise, and passed into a second edition with other shorter pieces.
But these, while well wrought in the formal eighteenth-century fashion, showed no special originality. It was with 'Thanatopsis,' written in 1811, when he was only seventeen, that his career as a poet of original and assured strength began. 'Thanatopsis' was an inspiration of the primeval woods of America, of the scenes that surrounded the writer in youth. At the same time it expressed with striking independence and power a fresh conception of "the universality of Death in the natural order." As has been well said, "it takes the idea of death out of its theological aspects and restores it to its proper place in the vast scheme of things. This in itself was a mark of genius in a youth of his time and place." Another American poet, Stoddard, calls it the greatest poem ever written by so young a man. The author's son-in-law and biographer, Parke Godwin, remarks upon it aptly, "For the first time on this continent a poem was written destined to general admiration and enduring fame;" and this indeed is a very significant point, that it began the history of true poetry in the United States,--a fact which further secured to Bryant his exceptional place. The poem remains a classic of the English language, and the author himself never surpassed the high mark attained in it; although the balanced and lasting nature of his faculty is shown in a pendant to this poem, which he created in his old age and entitled 'The Flood of Years.' The last is equal to the first in dignity and finish, but is less original, and has never gained a similar fame.
Another consideration regarding Bryant is, that representing a modern development of poetry under American inspiration, he was also a descendant of the early Massachusetts colonists, being connected with the Pilgrim Fathers through three ancestral lines. Born at Cummington, Massachusetts, November 3d, 1794, the son of a stalwart but studious country physician of literary tastes, he inherited the strong religious feeling of this ancestry, which was united in him with a deep and sensitive love of nature. This led him to reflect in his poems the strength and beauty of American landscape, vividly as it had never before been mirrored; and the blending of serious thought and innate piety with the sentiment for nature so reflected gave a new and impressive result.
Like many other long-lived men, Bryant suffered from delicate health in the earlier third of his life: there was a tendency to consumption in his otherwise vigorous family stock. He read much, and was much interested in Greek literature and somewhat influenced by it. But he also lived a great deal in the open air, rejoiced in the boisterous games and excursions in the woods with his brothers and sisters, and took long rambles alone among the hills and wild groves; being then, as always afterwards, an untiring walker. After a stay of only seven months at Williams College, he studied law, which he practiced for some eight years in Plainfield and Great Barrington. In the last-named village he was elected a tithingman, charged with the duty of keeping order in the churches and enforcing the observance of Sunday. Chosen town clerk soon afterwards, at a salary of five dollars a year, he kept the records of the town with his own hand for five years, and also served as justice of the peace with power to hear cases in a lower court. These biographical items are of value, as showing his close relation to the self-government of the people in its simpler forms, and his early practical familiarity with the duties of a trusted citizen.
Meanwhile, however, he kept on writing at intervals, and in 1821 read before the Phi Beta Kappa Society at Harvard a long poem, 'The Ages,' a kind of composition more in favor at that period than in later days, being a general review of the progress of man in knowledge and virtue. With the passage of time it has not held its own as against some of his other poems, although it long enjoyed a high reputation; but its success on its original hearing was the cause of his bringing together his first volume of poems, hardly more than a pamphlet, in the same year. It made him famous with the reading public of the United States, and won some recognition in England. In this little book were contained, besides 'The Ages' and 'Thanatopsis,' several pieces which have kept their hold upon popular taste; such as the well-known lines 'To a Waterfowl' and the 'Inscription for the Entrance to a Wood.'
[Illustration: WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT.]
The year of its publication also brought into the world Cooper's 'The Spy,' Irving's 'Sketch Book' and 'Bracebridge Hall,' with various other significant volumes, including Channing's early essays and Daniel Webster's great Plymouth Oration. It was evident that a native literature was dawning brightly; and as Bryant's productions now came into demand, and he had never liked the profession of law, he quitted it and went to New York in 1825, there to seek a living by his pen as "a literary adventurer." The adventure led to ultimate triumph, but not until after a long term of dark prospects and hard struggles.
Even in his latest years Bryant used to declare that his favorite among his poems--although it is one of the least known--was 'Green River'; perhaps because it recalled the scenes of young manhood, when he was about entering the law, and contrasted the peacefulness of that stream with the life in which he would be
"Forced to drudge for the dregs of men, And scrawl strange words with the barbarous pen, And mingle among the jostling crowd, Where the sons of strife are subtle and loud."
This might be applied to much of his experience in New York, where he edited the New York Review and became one of the editors, then a proprietor, and finally chief editor of the Evening Post. A great part of his energies now for many years was given to his journalistic function, and to the active outspoken discussion of important political questions; often in trying crises and at the cost of harsh unpopularity. Success, financial as well as moral, came to him within the next quarter-century, during which laborious interval he had likewise maintained his interest and work in pure literature and produced new poems from time to time in various editions.
From this point on until his death, June 12th, 1878, in his eighty-fourth year, he was the central and commanding figure in the enlarging literary world of New York. His newspaper had gained a potent reputation, and it brought to bear upon public affairs a strong influence of the highest sort. Its editorial course and tone, as well as the earnest and patriotic part taken by Bryant in popular questions and national affairs, without political ambition or office-holding, had established him as one of the most distinguished citizens of the metropolis, no less than its most renowned poet. His presence and co-operation were indispensable in all great public functions or humanitarian and intellectual movements. In 1864 his seventieth birthday was celebrated at the Century Club with extraordinary honors. In 1875, again, the two houses of the State Legislature at Albany paid him the compliment, unprecedented in the annals of American authorship, of inviting him to a reception given to him in their official capacity. Another mark of the abounding esteem in which he was held among his fellow-citizens was the presentation to him in 1876 of a rich silver vase, commemorative of his life and works. He was now a wealthy man; yet his habits of life remained essentially unchanged. His tastes were simple, his love of nature was still ardent; his literary and editorial industry unflagging.
Besides his poems, Bryant wrote two short stories for 'Tales of the Glauber Spa'; and published 'Letters of a Traveler' in 1850, as a result of three journeys to Europe and the Orient, together with various public addresses. His style as a writer of prose is clear, calm, dignified, and denotes exact observation and a wide range of interests. So too his editorial articles in the Evening Post, some of which have been preserved in his collected writings, are couched in serene and forcible English, with nothing of the sensational or the colloquial about them. They were a fitting medium of expression for his firm conscientiousness and integrity as a journalist.
But it is as a poet, and especially by a few distinctive compositions, that Bryant will be most widely and deeply held in remembrance. In the midst of the exacting business of his career as an editor, and many public or social demands upon his time, he found opportunity to familiarize himself with portions of German and Spanish poetry, which he translated, and to maintain in the quietude of his country home in Roslyn, Long Island, his old acquaintance with the Greek and Latin classics. From this continued study there resulted naturally in 1870 his elaborate translation of Homer's Iliad, which was followed by that of the Odyssey in 1871. These scholarly works, cast in strong and polished blank verse, won high praise from American critics, and even achieved a popular success, although they were not warmly acclaimed, in England. Among literarians they are still regarded as in a manner standards of their kind. Bryant, in his long march of over sixty-five years across the literary field, was witness to many new developments in poetic writing, in both his own and other countries. But while he perceived the splendor and color and rich novelty of these, he held in his own work to the plain theory and practice which had guided him from the start. "The best poetry," he still believed--"that which takes the strongest hold of the general mind, not in one age only but in all ages--is that which is always simple and always luminous." He did not embody in impassioned forms the sufferings, emotions, or problems of the human kind, but was disposed to generalize them, as in 'The Journey of Life,' the 'Hymn of the City,' and 'The Song of the Sower,' it is characteristic that two of the longer poems, 'Sella' and 'The Little People of the Snow,' which are narratives, deal with legends of an individual human life merging itself with the inner life of nature, under the form of imaginary beings who dwell in the snow or in water. On the other hand, one of his eulogists observes that although some of his contemporaries went much beyond him in fullness of insight and nearness to the great conflicts of the age, "he has certainly not been surpassed, perhaps not been approached, by any writer since Wordsworth, in that majestic repose and that self-reliant simplicity which characterized the morning stars of song." In 'Our Country's Call,' however, one hears the ring of true martial enthusiasm; and there is a deep patriotic fervor in 'O Mother of a Mighty Race.' The noble and sympathetic homage paid to the typical womanhood of a genuine woman of every day, in 'The Conqueror's Grave,' reveals also great underlying warmth and sensitiveness of feeling. 'Robert of Lincoln,' and 'The Planting of the Apple-Tree' are both touched with a lighter mood of joy in nature, which supplies a contrast to his usual pensiveness.
Bryant's venerable aspect in old age--with erect form, white hair, and flowing snowy beard--gave him a resemblance to Homer; and there was something Homeric about his influence upon the literature of his country, in the dignity with which he invested the poetic art and the poet's relation to the people.
[Illustration: Signature: George Parsons Lathrop]
[All Bryant's poems were originally published by D. Appleton and Company.]
THANATOPSIS
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 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 for ever 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 mold.
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-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 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 fresh spring and he who goes In the full strength of years, matron and maid, The speechless babe and the gray-headed man-- Shall one by one be gathered 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, sustained 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.
THE CROWDED STREET
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 lost 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 dead.
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 slender 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 gleam again? Who 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 pleasures call, They pass, and heed each other not. There is 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.
D. Appleton and Company, New York.
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 sere. Heaped in the hollows of the grove, the autumn leaves lie dead; They rustle to the eddying gust, and to the rabbit's tread. The robin and the wren are flown, and from the shrubs the jay, And from the wood-top calls the crow through all the gloomy day.
Where are the flowers, the fair young flowers, that lately sprang and stood In brighter light and softer airs, a beauteous sisterhood? Alas! they all are in their graves; the gentle race of flowers Are lying in their lowly 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 orchis died amid the summer glow; But on the hills the golden-rod, and the aster in the wood, And the yellow sunflower 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 from 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 forests 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.
THE CONQUEROR'S GRAVE
Within this lowly grave a Conqueror lies, And yet the monument proclaims it not, Nor round the sleeper's name hath chisel wrought The emblems of a fame that never dies,-- Ivy and amaranth, in a graceful sheaf, Twined with the laurel's fair, imperial leaf. A simple name alone, To the great world unknown, Is graven here, and wild-flowers rising round, Meek meadow-sweet and violets of the ground, Lean lovingly against the humble stone.
Here, in the quiet earth, they laid apart No man of iron mold and bloody hands, Who sought to wreak upon the cowering lands The passions that consumed his restless heart: But one of tender spirit and delicate frame, Gentlest, in mien and mind, Of gentle womankind, Timidly shrinking from the breath of blame; One in whose eyes the smile of kindness made Its haunts, like flowers by sunny brooks in May, Yet, at the thought of others' pain, a shade Of sweeter sadness chased the smile away.
Nor deem that when the hand that molders here Was raised in menace, realms were chilled with fear, And armies mustered at the sign, as when Clouds rise on clouds before the rainy East-- Gray captains leading bands of veteran men And fiery youths to be the vulture's feast. Not thus were waged the mighty wars that gave The victory to her who fills this grave: Alone her task was wrought, Alone the battle fought; Through that long strife her constant hope was staid On God alone, nor looked for other aid.
She met the hosts of Sorrow with a look That altered not beneath the frown they wore, And soon the lowering brood were tamed, and took Meekly her gentle rule, and frowned no more. Her soft hand put aside the assaults of wrath, And calmly broke in twain The fiery shafts of pain, And rent the nets of passion from her path. By that victorious hand despair was slain. With love she vanquished hate and overcame Evil with good, in her Great Master's name.
Her glory is not of this shadowy state, Glory that with the fleeting season dies; But when she entered at the sapphire gate What joy was radiant in celestial eyes! How heaven's bright depths with sounding welcomes rung, And flowers of heaven by shining hands were flung! And He who long before, Pain, scorn, and sorrow bore, The Mighty Sufferer, with aspect sweet, Smiled on the timid stranger from his seat; He who returning, glorious, from the grave, Dragged Death disarmed, in chains, a crouching slave.