CHAPTER XII

HONORS TO THE GREAT POET

We have seen that Bryant was not only a great poet, but a great newspaper editor, an eloquent orator, and a rich man. So he came to be a noted public character, one of the leading citizens of the great city of New York. From this time forward until his death in extreme old age, prominent statesmen, politicians, poets, people of society, hastened to shower honors upon him. He was asked to be a regent of the University of New York, but declined. Banquets were also tendered him, which he also declined. But on his seventieth birthday, November 3, 1864, the Century Club of New York, of which he had been one of the founders, resolved to make a great festival in his honor. Bancroft, the historian, was president of the club, and greeted Bryant with a graceful speech on that great occasion. In Bryant’s reply is the following passage, which will be of interest to all young people as showing that this great and wise man believed in placing responsibility on the young, and not in keeping them in the background for wise old heads.

“Much has been said of the wisdom of Old Age,” said he. “Old Age is wise, I grant, for itself, but not wise for the community. It is wise in declining new enterprises, for it has not the power nor the time to execute them; wise in shirking from difficulty, for it has not the strength to overcome it; wise in avoiding danger, for it lacks the faculty of ready and swift action, by which dangers are parried and converted into advantages. But this is not wisdom for mankind at large, by whom new enterprises must be undertaken, dangers met, and difficulties surmounted. What a world this would be if it were made up of old men!”

Oliver Wendell Holmes was there, and read a beautiful poem composed for the occasion. There were also other poems read by their authors, and Whittier and Lowell, who could not be there, sent their poems to be read, while Longfellow and a great many other famous people wrote letters of congratulation.

Here are some of the beautiful lines from the poem which Dr. Holmes read:

How can we praise the verse whose music flows With solemn cadence and majestic close, Pure as the dew that filters through the rose?

How shall we thank him that in evil days He faltered never,—nor for blame nor praise, Nor hire nor party, shared his earlier days?

But as his boyhood was of manliest hue, So to his youth his manly years were true, All dyed in royal purple through and through.

Ralph Waldo Emerson was there, and made a speech, which he closed with this verse, written by the poet Crabbe:

True bard, and simple as the race Of heaven-born poets always are, When stooping from their starry place They’re children near but gods afar.

This means that great poets seem very great and magnificent when we think of them after they are dead and gone, or when they live by themselves at a great distance; but really when you know them, they are as natural and human as children. That perfectly describes William Cullen Bryant.

In 1874 Bryant was elected an honorary member of the Russian Academy of St. Petersburg. The same year, on his eightieth birthday, he was presented with an address of honor, signed by thousands and thousands of people. This was accompanied by a special vase, completed sometime afterward, which commemorated his literary career. A little later in the same year he visited Governor Tilden at Albany, and was tendered a public reception. After that some of his friends proposed that he should be nominated as one of the electors on the Tilden electoral ticket, when Tilden was a candidate for the presidency of the United States.

These and many other public honors were heaped upon him in his old age. When over eighty-three years of age he was invited to deliver an address on the unveiling of a statue of Mazzini, the Italian patriot, in Central Park, New York City. After it was over, he was very much exhausted, but walked across the park to the house of a friend. On the steps he fell, being old and feeble and very tired. His head hit on a stone and he fainted away. Less than two weeks later, June 12, 1878, he died from the effects of this fall.