WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT
1794-1878
William Cullen Bryant was born in 1794 in a log farmhouse in the
beautiful Berkshire Hills of Western Massachusetts. His father was the
country doctor and the child was named after a celebrated physician.
He began his school days in a log school-house beside a little brook
that crept down from the hills and went singing on its way to the
valley.
All around stood the great forest-covered hills, haunted by wolves,
bears, deer and wild-cats, which occasionally crept down even to the
settlements carrying terror to the hearts of the women and children.
Wherever the slopes were cleared, the farm lands had taken possession,
the forest often creeping up close to the little homes.
From the door-yard of the Bryant homestead the whole world seemed to
be made up of hills and forest, and fertile fields, while in the woods
grew the exquisite New England wild flowers, the laurel and azalea,
the violet, the tiger lily, and the fringed gentian. Here also lived
the summer birds of New England, the robins, the blue bird and the
thrush, haunting the woods from early spring until late autumn.
All these sights and sounds sunk into the boy's heart and made
themselves into a poem which he wrote down in words many years after,
and which is as clear and fresh as the voice of the little brook
itself after which it was named. This poem is called _The Rivulet_ and
it shows the poet-child standing upon the banks of the little stream
listening to the song of the birds or gathering wild flowers.
It was his first lesson in that wonder-book of nature from which he
translated so much that was beautiful that he became the distinctive
poet of the woods and streams.
Lessons from books he learned in the little log school-house,
preparing himself for ordeals when the minister came to visit the
school. At these times the pupils were dressed in their best and sat
in solemn anxiety while the minister asked them questions out of the
catechism and made them a long speech on morals and good behavior. On
one of these occasions the ten-year-old poet declaimed some of his own
verses descriptive of the school.
In Bryant's boyhood New England farm life was very simple. The farmers
lived in log or slab houses, whose kitchens formed the living room,
where the meals were generally taken. Heat was supplied by the great
fireplaces that sometimes filled one whole side of the kitchen and
were furnished with cranes, spits, and pothooks. Behind the kitchen
door hung a bundle of birch rods with which mischievous boys were kept
in order, and in the recess of the chimney stood the wooden settle
where the children sat before bed-time to watch the fire or glance up
through the wide chimney at the stars.
Here, when three years old, Bryant often stood book in hand and with
painful attention to gesture repeated one of Watts's hymns, while his
mother listened and corrected. Here he prepared his lessons, and wrote
those first childish poems so carefully criticised by his father,
who was his teacher in the art of composition. In the poem called
_A Lifetime_ Bryant long afterward described many incidents of his
childhood and the influence of his father and mother upon his art,
one developing his talent for composition, and the other directing his
imagination to and enlisting his sympathies with humanity. This poem
shows the boy by his mother's knee, reading the story of Pharaoh and
the Israelites, of David and Goliath, and of the life of Christ. As he
grew older Bryant shared the usual amusements of country life. In
the spring he took his turn in the maple-sugar camp; in the autumn he
attended the huskings when the young people met to husk the corn in
each neighborhood barn successively, until all was done. He helped at
the cider-making bees, and the apple parings, when the cider and apple
sauce were prepared for the year's need; and at the house raisings,
when men and boys raised the frame of a neighbor's house or barn. In
those times the farmers depended upon each other for such friendly
aid, and the community seemed like one great family.
On Sunday everyone went three times to meeting, listened to long
sermons, and sang out of the old Bay Psalm Book. If any unlucky child
fell asleep he was speedily waked up by the tithingman, who would
tickle his nose with a hare's-foot attached to a long pole. Once in a
while a boy might be restless or noisy, and then he was led out of
the meeting-house and punished with the tithingman's rod, a terrible
disgrace.
Throughout his childhood Bryant wrote verses upon every subject
discussed in the family, and in those days New England families
discussed all the great events of the time. The listening children
became public-spirited and patriotic without knowing it. At thirteen
Bryant wrote a most scathing satire upon the policy of Thomas
Jefferson, intended to make the President hang his head in shame. It
was quoted in all the newspapers opposed to Jefferson, and a second
edition of this pamphlet was called for in a few months. Bryant
here prophesies the evils in store for the country if the President
insisted on the embargo that was then laid upon American vessels, and
advises him to retire to the bogs of Louisiana and search for horned
frogs; advice which Jefferson did not feel called upon to follow. It
was Bryant's first introduction to the reading public, but it was not
that path in literature that he was destined to follow. Only one or
two of his earliest verses give any hint of the poet of nature,
though it was during this time that he absorbed those influences that
directed his whole life. It is from the retrospective poem, _Green
River_, that we really know the boy Bryant to whom the charm of sky
and wood and singing brook was so unconscious that it seemed a part of
life itself. In _Green River_, written after he became a man, we hear
the echoes of his young days, and we know that the boy's soul had
already entered into a close communion with nature.
But Bryant had not yet reached manhood when the true voice of his
heart was heard in the most celebrated poem that he ever wrote,
and one of the most remarkable ever written by a youth. This was
_Thanatopsis_, which his father discovered among his papers and sent
to the _North American Review_ without his son's knowledge, so little
did the poet of eighteen, who five years before had published the
tirade against Jefferson, realize that he had produced the most
remarkable verses yet written in America.
_Thanatopsis_ attracted instant attention in this country and in
England. It had appeared anonymously, and American critics insisted
that it could not be the work of an American author as no native poet
approached it either in sublimity of thought or perfection of style.
But _Thanatopsis_ bears no trace of English influence, nor was it
strange that an heir of the Puritan spirit, who had lived in daily
communion with nature, should thus set to the music of poetry the
hopes and inspirations of his race.
_Thanatopsis_ is the first great American poem, and it divides by a
sharp line the poetry hitherto written on our soil from that which was
to follow. Henceforth the poets of the newer England ceased to find
their greatest inspiration in the older land. At the time of the
publication of the poem Bryant was studying law in Great Barrington,
Mass., having been obliged by poverty to leave college after a two
years' course. It was in the brief interval before beginning his
office studies that he wrote _Thanatopsis_ putting it aside for future
revision.
He was already hard at work upon his profession when his sudden
literary success changed all his plans. Destined by nature to be a man
of letters, he poured forth verse and prose during the whole time he
was studying and practising law. Six months after the publication of
_Thanatopsis_ the poem entitled _To a Waterfowl_, suggested by the
devious flight of a wild duck across the sunset sky, appeared.
It is a perfect picture of the reedy river banks, the wet marshes, and
the lonely lakes over which the bird hovered, and it is full of
the charm of nature herself. From this time on Bryant's touch never
faltered. He was the chosen poet of the wild beauty of his native
hills and valleys, and his own pure spirit revealed the most sacred
meanings of this beauty.
In 1821 he published his first volume of poems under the title,
_Poems by William Cullen Bryant_. It was a little book of forty pages,
containing _Thanatopsis_, _Green River_, _To a Waterfowl_, and other
pieces, among which was the charming, _The Yellow Violet_, a very
breath of the spring. This little book was given to the world in the
same year in which Cooper published _The Spy_ and Irving completed
_The Sketch Book_.
In 1825 Bryant removed to New York to assume the editorship of a
monthly review, to which he gave many of his best-known poems. A year
later he joined the staff of the _Evening Post_, with which he was
connected until his death.
From this time his life was that of a literary man. He made of the
_Evening Post_ a progressive, public-spirited newspaper, whose field
embraced every phase of American life. When he became its editor five
days were required for the reports of the Legislature at Albany
to reach New York, these being carried by mail coach. The extracts
printed from English newspapers were a month old, and even this was
considered enterprising journalism. All the despatches from different
cities of the United States bore dates a fortnight old, while it
was often impossible to obtain news at all. The paper contained
advertisements of the stage lines to Boston, Philadelphia, and the
West; accounts of projects to explore the centre of the earth by means
of sunken wells; reports of the possibility of a railroad being built
in the United States; advertisements of lottery tickets; a list of
the unclaimed letters at the post-office, and usually a chapter of
fiction. Such was the newspaper of 1831.
During the fifty-two years of his editorship the United States were
developed from a few struggling colonies bound together by common
interests into one of the greatest of modern nations. And through all
the changes incident to this career Bryant stood always firm to the
principles which he recognized as the true foundations of a country's
greatness.
When he was born the United States consisted of a strip of land lying
between the Atlantic and the Alleghany Mountains, of which more than
half was unbroken wilderness. At his death the Republic extended from
the Atlantic to the Pacific and from the Gulf to Canada. His life-time
corresponded with the growth of his country, and his own work was
a noble contribution to the nation's prosperity. In all times of
national trouble the _Evening Post_ championed the cause of justice,
and Bryant was everywhere respected as a man devoted above all to the
"cause of America and of human nature."
The conduct of the _Evening Post_ did not, however, interfere with his
work as a poet, and in 1832 he published in one volume all the
poems which he had written, most of which had previously appeared in
magazines. A few months later an edition appeared in London with
an introduction by Irving. It was this volume which gave Bryant
an English reputation as great as that he enjoyed in America. Like
Cooper, he revealed an unfamiliar nature as seen in American forests,
hills, and streams, taking his readers with him into those solitary
and quiet places where dwelt the wild birds and wild flowers. The very
titles of his poems show how closely he lived to the life of the world
around him. _The Walk at Sunset_, _The West Wind_, _The Forest Hymn_,
_Autumn Woods_, _The Death of the Flowers_, _The Fringed Gentian_,
_The Wind and Stream_, _The Little People of the Snow_, and many
others disclose how Bryant gathered from every source the beauty which
he translated into his verses.
Among the poems which touch upon the Indian traditions are _The
Indian Girl's Lament_, _Monument Mountain_, and _An Indian at the
Burial-place of his Father_. In these he lingers upon the pathetic
fate of the red man driven from the home of his race and forced into
exile by the usurping whites. They are full of sadness, seeming to
wake once again the memories of other times when the forest was alive
with the night-fires of savage man and the days brought only the
gladness of freedom.
Besides his original work Bryant performed a noble task in the
translation of the _Iliad_ and _Odyssey_ of Homer. He was over seventy
when he began this work, and was five years in completing it. The
poems are put into blank verse, of which Bryant was a master, and they
have caught the very spirit of the old Greek bard; so faithfully
did the modern poet understand that shadowy past that he might have
watched with Helen the burning of Troy, or journeyed with Ulysses
throughout his wanderings in the perilous seas.
The light of Bryant's imagination burned steadily to the end. In his
eighty-second year he wrote his last important poem, _The Flood of
Years_. It is a beautiful confession of faith in the nobility of life
and the immortality of the soul, and a fitting crown for an existence
so beneficent and exalted.
His last public work was to participate in unveiling a monument to the
Italian statesman Mazzini in Central Park, when he was the orator of
the day. On the same evening he was seized with his last illness. He
died on June 12, 1878, and was buried at Roslyn, Long Island, one of
his favorite country homes.