weighing each word in those scales which are obedient to the touch of down or dewdrop.' The finest pictures are, as a rule, those which seem to have cost the artist the least effort; so the finest specimens of word-painting are those in which there is the least betrayal of trials and failures and bitter expostulations with stubborn words and syllables. Such specimens are by no means few and far between in Bryant. Changing the current of our language on this point, and quoting Dr. Johnson's metaphor: 'An imperial crown cannot be made of one continuous diamond: the gems must be held together by baser matter,' it seems to us that the 'baser matter' in which some of our author's gems are set is small in quantity and of superior quality. Although there are many gems in Lowell, we must also admit that there is a large portion of baser metal. It is well known that Lowell's estimate of Bryant's abilities was not very high. When a number of his admirers were comparing him with Wordsworth, Lowell, in humorous satire, remonstrated with them : 'Don't be absurd; he's an excellent Bryant; But, my friends, you'll endanger the life of your client By attempting to stretch him into a giant.' The same writer, in his poem, A Fable for Critics, speaks of him as 'Quiet, as cool and as dignified As a smooth, silent iceberg that never is ignified.' During the greater part of Bryant's life there was no doubt truth in the charge that he was 'quiet and cool,' but in recent years a great change came over him. He frequently spoke at the great national gatherings with impressiveness as well as grace. He only just failed in that mysterious magnetic power which makes men true orators. While ready to render service to his country by speaking at some of their great national meetings, he was also ready, in later years, to attend social meetings of his friends. On such occasions, if speakers alluded to him as the Father of American Poetry,' he often turned aside their smoothlipped sentences. On one such occasion he humorously remarked that he had never known of more than two poems which had been of any service to anybody, one being 'A rainbow in the morning is the sailor's warning; a rainbow at night is the shepherd's delight;' and the other, 'Thirty days hath September, April, June and November, etc.' He well knew his own level, as also the heights to which he could soar, and the depths he could fathom. He never indulged the hope that after spending years in gathering material from historical, metaphysical, scientific and theological stores, he would be able to fuse and mould the mass in the fire of his genius and produce a poem that should equal Milton. His longest poem has but thirty-five Spenserian New change to her of everlasting youth; Still the green soil with joyous living things Swarms; the wide air is full of joyous wings; And myriads still are happy in the sleep Of ocean's azure gulfs, and where he flings The restless surge, Eternal love doth keep In His complacent arms the carth, the air, the deep.' In the seventh stanza he asks whether the merciful One Who stamped our race with His image will Own 'Quench the ray Infused by His own forming smile at first, And leave a work so fair all blighted and accursed?' The Ages contains evidence of great gifts, though some of the lines are heavy, and, as Gilfillan said, the poet wants the comprehension of vision which alone could have rendered a glance at the 'Ages' great. It has been observed that the truest genius takes the world for its theatre. Milton could have written his Paradise Lost in Italy, and Shakespeare could have written his greatest works in Denmark as well as in England. It was said at the time of Bryant's death: The inspiration of his poetry was caught, not born.' From such a statement, even in The Times, we must dissent. He has a very strong claim to be regarded as a born-poet, though not of the highest order. When but ten years of age, he lisped melodious numbers, and while yet a child wrote his Embargo. And although the lines to which we now refer found no place in the edition of his works published by Henry S. King and Co., five years since, yet in some circles the sobs of his childhood have been heard ever since. He learnt in the solemn school of Nature to gather and treasure up for future use important lessons, so that when the barren season of old age came it did not find him with a mind unfurnished and a withered heart. His Thanatopsis, written before he had reached his twentieth made year, him famous beyond his fellows. When Richard H. Dana saw it, he was so impressed with its surpassing merit, that he boldly affirmed no American could have written it. Dana was not the only person who questioned the reputed authorship. It is a 'Meditation amongst the tombs.' We do not remember that any one has more vividly described the Earth as the great tomb of 'The hills, man.' Rock-ribbed and ancient as the sun; the vales, Stretching in pensive quietness between Old ocean's grey and melancholy waste- He goes on to speak of the maiden adorned with virtue and loveliness; of the aged; of the infant; of the saint; of the sinner leaving behind all employment and mirth. If the poem contains a faulty expression, it is the one in which he speaks of the grave as man's 'eternal resting-place." '...The hour is coming, in the which all that are in the graves shall hear' the voice of the Son of Man 'and shall come forth.' This defect was pointed out to him, we believe, some years ago, and the suggestion was made that he might with advantage append a few lines describing 'Life's future triumph over Death.' He did not deem it necessary to alter the phrase to which we have referred, nor to append any lines to the poem which made him so famous before he had attained his majority. He concludes Thanatopsis with the lines: 'Live, that when thy summons comes to join The innumerable caravan that 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 We have no means at hand of ascertaining whether at that time his religious impressions were embodied in any formal confession of faith or in communion with any Christian Church. However this may be, it is manifest he had a creed, to the articles of which he constantly makes allusion. Like Campbell, he ever speaks in reverent tones of God and of the verities of religion. The If his own hopes, purposes and desires find expression in his poetry, we have substantial reasons for assuming that at an early period he exercised that intelligent and resolute faith which could say, 'My Father, Thou art the Guide of my youth.' In 1815, when in his twenty-first year, he wrote his well-known beautiful piece, To a Water-Fowl. occasion of its composition he related to a friend. While studying the law at Plymouth he took a walk into the country. His attention was arrested by the flight of a waterfowl. It seems to us a very trifling incident, but the flight of the bird started a train of moral reflections. That evening he had been sorely distressed as to the course he, as a young man of twenty-one, should take. This association invests the lyric with uncommon interest: 'There is a Power Whose care Teaches thy way along that pathless coast, The desert and illimitable air,— Lone wandering, but not lost. '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.' Although he was no Pantheist, he sence. believed that in a special manner Nature is pervaded by the Divine PreTo him, indeed, Nature was a 'Sacred Temple' filled with the glory of God. Trees, flowers, rivers, lakes, mountains and valleys were to him all alike eloquent. March, June, October and November spoke to him of the Creator's constancy and love. The Saturday Review objected very strongly to Bryant's habit of ' religious padding'; for our own part, we see no sufficient reason for this objection. His lyrics are not, we maintain, surcharged with sentiment, like flowers bending beneath the burden of sparkling dew. He does not, as Wordsworth sometimes does, hang a weight of thought upon natural objects which they are not able to bear. Perhaps, there is no poet with whom he has so much in common as Thomas Campbell. Our limits forbid our arranging in parallel columns corresponding lines from these poets, but it would be an easy task. Without imitating Campbell, Bryant's style, spirit and poetic taste strikingly similar to his. Like Campbell, he subdues by pathos rather than elevates by grandeur; yet, like him, at times he ascends to the realm of calm and pensive loftiness. His hymn to the North Star is a case in point: are 'Alike, beneath thine eye, The deeds of darkness and of light are done; High towards the star-lit sky Towns blaze-the smoke of battle blots the sun; The night-storm on a thousand hills is loud, And the strong wind of day doth mingle sea and cloud. 'On thy unaltering blaze, The half-wrecked mariner, his compass lost, Fixes his steady gaze, And steers undoubting to the friendly coast; And they who stray in perilous wastes by night, Are glad when thou dost shine to guide their steps aright.' scorn the Danube as a tributary, have no green and hoary castles on their banks. They wash no towns whose origin goes back into the dim distance of the past. Their oldest cities and towns are yet children with a brief history. The mountains tell few tales of the past except to geologists. The great lakes are equally void of traditionary interest. For all the purposes of venerable history, America is but of yesterday. The poet who appears in a new country is sometimes compared to the pioneer agriculturist who holds the spade in one hand and the sword in the other. We must so Then, as his manner is, he speaks regard Bryant. He was a practical of the Star as 'A beauteous type of that unchanging Good, That bright, eternal Beacon, by Whose ray The voyager of time should shape his heedful way.' Bryant has been designated a 'poet of American nature.' One of the most striking and salient features in his poetry is its nationality.' His poetic effusions are fragrant with the odour of the American forest pine; we are conscious of being in the clear air of the transatlantic climate. Though some speak of his delineations of American scenery as ' ragged,' 'frowzy' or tame,' we are persuaded such adjectives would not be used were students to bear in mind a few facts touching the American continent and the peculiarities of the American people. Our transatlantic brethren cannot boast of a long national history such as the countries of the Old World can glory in. Those grand historical transactions that fire the genius of the bard are comparatively few, and are all recent. For a similar reason, the grand natural scenery of the Western World cannot awake the inspirations which that panorama of wonders might otherwise call forth. Those noble rivers, which might almost man as well as an artist, and, unlike most, he was able to pursue the double course with singular success. He had little disposition or ability to describe individuals or states of mind. He never made any pretence to the drama. Strictly speaking, he was not a narrative poet, though unquestionably he had gifts for such a line. Although many regarded him as 'a mortal lacking human sympathies,' a study of his career will disprove any such charge. The Conqueror's Grave; The Life that Is; The Future Life; To the Past, are lyrics showing that his sympathies were deep and true. How pathetic are these lines: '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. 6 Thou hast my better years, Yielded to thee with tears- '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.' His Crowded Street shows that he took an interest in other matters besides nature and politics: '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. 'And some to happy homes repair, With mute caresses, shall declare These struggling tides of life, that seem The Flood of Years, to which reference has been made, very touchingly embodies the thoughts which crowded upon him when near the end of life. His most popular pieces are, we believe, The Yellow Violet and The Fringed Gentian. written in early life. Both were The lyric, To the Fringed Gentian, will be always read with interest: 'Thou blossom, bright with autumn dew, that Bryant had a special gift for natural description. The last four lines of the piece we give for the purpose of showing one of the peculiarities of his poems, written in boyhood: 'I would that thus, when I shall see The hour of death draw near to me, Hope blossoming within my heart, May look to heaven as I depart.' Bryant was a man of wealth and position; but he did not live for the gratification of self. He was of temperate habits, and as the result, his declining years were years of health and comfort. Unlike Byron and too many others, he never used his pen to gild the heinousness of vice or defraud virtue of her rights. He has been described as a handsome old man, with fine head, erect form, slightly-built frame, a white and flowing patriarchal beard. When excited with a peculiar yet innocent mirth, his eyes glittered through their half-shut lids with a gem-like brilliancy. Such a form might have been seen amongst the crowds at the unveiling of a statue in the Central Park, New York, on the 29th of May last. That day, however, was his last public appearance. Losing consciousness, it was supposed, through the excessive heat, he fell and struck the back of his head on a stone. The same night he became delirious, and after lingering a short time, he died. So death deprived America of her oldest poet save one: Mr. R. H. Dana was left alone. America will keep green the grave of William Cullen Bryant; and multitudes on this side the Altantic will still give his works an honoured place in the drawing-room and library. |