Or lose thyself in the continuous woods So shalt thou rest, and what if thou withdraw As the long train Of ages glides away, the sons of men, By those who in their turn shall follow them. So live, that when thy summons comes to join To that mysterious realm, where each shall take Thou go not, like the quarry-slave at night, By an unfaltering trust, approach thy grave Like one who wraps the drapery of his couch In 1821, Bryant published, together with other poems, The Ages, a Phi Beta Kappa poem delivered at Harvard College. "There is running through the whole of this little collection a strain of pure and high sentiment, that expands and lifts up the soul, and brings it nearer to the source of moral beauty."* * North American Review, vol. xiii. Abandoning the law in 1825 for literature, he came tc New York, and edited successively "The New York Revieu and Athenæum Magazine,” and “ The United States Review and Literary Gazette." Through these works were ushered into public notice The Disinterred Warrior, The African Chief, The Indian Girl's Lament, and THE DEATH OF THE FLOWERS. THE melancholy days are come, the saddest of the year, 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? The wind-flower and the violet, they perished long ago, But on the hill the golden rod, and the aster in the wood, And the yellow sun-flower 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 bce 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 Murdered Traveller, The Old Man's Funeral, A Forest Hymn, March, and other poems, first appeared in The United States Gazette, published at Boston. The most significant of these we quote: A FOREST HYMN. THE groves were God's first temples. Ere man learned To hew the shaft, and lay the architrave, And spread the roof above them,-ere he framed The lofty vault, to gather and roll back The sound of anthems; in the darkling wood, Amid the cool and silence, he knelt down, For his simple heart Might not resist the sacred influences Which, from the stilly twilight of the place, And from the gray old trunks that high in heaven Ah, why Should we, in the world's riper years, neglect God's ancient sanctuaries, and adore Only among the crowd, and under roofs That our frail hands have raised? Let me, at least, Here, in the shadow of this ancient wood, Father, thy hand Hath reared these venerable columns, thou Didst weave this verdant roof. Thou didst look down All these fair ranks of trees. They, in thy sun, These dim vaults, These winding aisles, of human pomp or pride In music; thou art in the cooler breath That from the inmost darkness of the place Comes, scarcely felt; the barky trunks, the ground, In the tranquillity that thou dost love, Enjoys thy presence. Noiselessly, around, From perch to perch, the solitary bird Passes; and yon clear spring, that, midst its herbs, Of all the good it does. Thou hast not left Of thy perfections. Grandeur, strength, and grace This mighty oak By whose immovable stem I stand and seem In all that proud old world beyond the deep, Wears the green coronal of leaves with which A visible token of the upholding Love, My heart is awed within me when I think Written on thy works I read Lo! all grow old and die—but see again Oh, there is not lost The freshness of her far beginning lies And yet shall lie. Life mocks the idle hate Makes his own nourishment. For he came forth There have been holy men who hid themselves Deep in the woody wilderness, and gave Their lives to thought and prayer, till they outlived The generation born with them, nor seemed Less aged than the hoary trees and rocks Around them;-and there have been holy men |