CHARACTER The sun set, but set not his hope: He spoke, and words more soft than rain His action won such reverence sweet TERMINUS It is time to be old, To take in sail: The god of bounds, Who sets to seas a shore, Came to me in his fatal rounds, And said: "No more! No farther shoot Thy broad ambitious branches, and thy root. Fancy departs: no more invent; Contract thy firmament To compass of a tent. There's not enough for this and that, Make thy option which of two; Economize the failing river, Not the less revere the Giver, Leave the many and hold the few. Timely wise accept the terms, Still plan and smile, And, fault of novel germs, Mature the unfallen fruit. Curse, if thou wilt, thy sires, Who, when they gave thee breath, The needful sinew stark as once, As the bird trims her to the gale, I man the rudder, reef the sail, Obey the voice at eve obeyed at prime: "Lowly faithful, banish fear, Right onward drive unharmed; The port, well worth the cruise, is near, And every wave is charmed." CHAPTER IX WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT Bryant has been called the Patriarch of American poetry. The title is not inappropriate, nor the distinction unmerited. For, in point of time, Bryant ranks first of our major poets, and the quality of his verse comes up to the standard set by the best of that number. "Thanatopsis," which first proclaimed the rising of his star, was written when its author was not yet out of his teens, and at once took rank as the finest poem which American literature, up to that time, had produced. It bore striking testimony to Bryant's precocious genius and by its appeal to nature and the higher life it demonstrated his admiration for, and adherence to, the best traditions of English poetry, and proved its author a pupil of Wordsworth, the great English singer of nature. While not up to the level of Wordsworth's best verse, "Thanatopsis" is like it in kind and quality-so much so that no critic would have paid the penalty of impaired confidence in his own judgment who might have attributed the anonymous lyric to the famous English laureate. By this one brief song Bryant achieved for himself the enviable reputation of a genuine poet, and immediately established himself as the undisputed laureate of America. Bryant spent most of his life in New York City, and because of this circumstance he is usually placed by the critics in the Knickerbocker group of writers. But he was not essentially of this group. He belonged really to the New England school, both in respect of the character and of the quality of his poetic achievement. He was sprung from the sturdy old Puritan stock, and his ancestors came over in the Mayflower. He therefore enjoyed much the same literary traditions and heritage as his contemporary Longfellow, who was descended from the same stock. Bryant was born November 3, 1794, in the village of Cummington, amid the Hampshire hills of Massachusetts. Here he passed his boyhood in this beautiful country where nature displays her infinite variety of scenery in open field, green meadow with its babbling brook and the wood-clad hills. Young Bryant found keen delight in his picturesque surroundings. With his elder brother Austin he attended the district school hard by the babbling brook and received instruction of the most elementary character. "I was an excellent, almost an infallible speller," he wrote later, speaking of his early school days, "and ready in geography; but in the Catechism, not understanding the abstract terms, I made but little progress." Bryant's father, who was a good country physician and who served his State many years in the Legislature, encouraged his son's aptitude for letters and stimulated his desire for knowledge by allowing him to browse at will in his well-selected library. When William Cullen was in his tenth year, his grandfather gave him a nine-penny coin for turning the first chapter of Job into a rhymed version. About the same time the precocious lad wrote out a rhymed description of the district school he attended, and the lines were honored with a place in the columns of the county paper. At this early age his ambition was kindled with an all-ab sorbing desire to be a poet. He eagerly read all the poetry that came within his reach and still longed for more. In this manner there was early developed in him a peculiar susceptibility to the poetical aspects of nature. "I was always," he tells us, "from my earliest years, a delighted observer of external nature-the splendors of a winter's daybreak over the wide wastes of snow seen from our windows, the glories of the autumnal woods, the gloomy approaches of the thunderstorm and its departure amid sunshine and rainbows, the return of the spring with its flowers, and the first snowfall of winter. The poets fostered this taste in me, and though at that time I rarely heard such things spoken of, it was none the less cherished in my secret mind." It is an interesting, though unimportant, circumstance that Bryant's first original poem was called forth by a political measure the embargo laid upon all the ports of the Republic at the instance of President Jefferson. This measure, which wrought much damage to private interests in New England, rendered Jefferson's administration extremely unpopular in that part of the Union. The Bryants were zealous Federalists. It is small wonder, therefore, that William Cullen, with his characteristic knack for rhyming, should have given expression to his partisan feeling in a satiric poem, entitled "The Embargo." This juvenile production was published in Boston, in 1808, and was intended as a severe indictment against the Democratic party and its great founder. In general, it may be said to have reflected the feelings and temper of the New England Federalists. It is a noteworthy example of the irony of fate that this youthful, ardent Federalist became, in after years, the stanchest advo |