Poetical Works of William Cullen Bryant

WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT

The ancestry of William Cullen Bryant might have been inferred from the character of his writings, which reflect whatever is best and noblest in the life and thought of New England. It was a tradition that the first Bryant of whom there is any account in the annals of the New World came over in the Mayflower, but the tradition is not authenticated. What is known of this gentleman, Mr. Stephen Bryant, is that he came over from England, and that he was at Plymouth, Massachusetts, as early as 1632. He married Abigail Shaw, who had emigrated with her father, and who bore him several children between 1650 and 1665, it is to be presumed at Plymouth, of which town he was chosen constable in 1663. Stephen Bryant had a son named Ichabod, who was the father of Philip Bryant, who was born in 1732. Philip Bryant married Silence Howard, the daughter of Dr. Abiel Howard, of West Bridgewater, whose profession he adopted, being a practitioner in medicine in North Bridgewater. He was the father of nine children, one of whom, Peter Bryant, born in 1767, succeeded him in his profession. Young Dr. Bryant became enamored of Miss Sarah Snell, the daughter of Mr. Ebenezer Snell, of Bridgewater, who removed his family to Cummington, whither he was followed by his future son-in-law, who married the lady of his love in 1792. Two years later, on the 3d of November, there was born to him a man-child, who was to win, and to leave,

Dr. Bryant was proud of his profession; and in the hope, no doubt, that his son would become a shining light therein, he perpetuated at his christening the name of a great medical authority, who had departed this life four years before – William Cullen. Dr. Bryant was the last of his family to practise the healing art; for Nature, wiser than he, early determined the future course of Master William Cullen Bryant. He was not to be a doctor, but a poet. A poet, that is, if he lived to be anything; for the chances were against his living at all. The lad was exceedingly frail, and had a head the immensity of which troubled his anxious father. How to reduce it to the normal size was a puzzle which Dr. Bryant solved in a spring of clear, cold water, which burst out of the ground on or near his homestead, and into which the child was immersed every morning, head and all, by two of Dr. Bryant's students – kicking lustily, we may be sure, at this matutinal dose of hydropathy.

William Cullen Bryant came of Mayflower stock, his mother being a descendant of John Alden; and the characteristics of his family included some of the sterner qualities of the Puritans. Grandfather Snell was a magistrate, and, without doubt a severe one, for the period was not one which favored leniency to criminals. The whipping-post was still extant in Massachusetts, and the poet remembered that it stood about a mile from his early home at Cummington, and that he once saw a young fellow of eighteen who had received forty lashes as a punishment for a theft he had committed. It was, he thought, the last example of corporal punishment inflicted by law in that neighborhood, though the whipping-post remained in its place for several years, a possible terror to future evildoers. "Spare the rod, spoil the child," was the Draconian code then; and the rod, in the shape of a little bundle of birchen twigs, bound together with a small cord, was generally suspended on a nail against the wall in the kitchen, and was as much a part of the necessary furniture as the crane that hung in the fireplace or the shovel and tongs.

Magistrate Snell was a disciplinarian of the stricter sort; and as he and his wife resided with Dr. Bryant and his family, the latter stood in awe of him, so much so that young William Cullen was prevented from feeling anything like affection for him. It was an age of repression, not to say oppression, for children, who had few rights that their elders were bound to respect. To the terrors of the secular arm were added the deeper terrors of the spiritual law, for the people of that primitive period were nothing if not religious. The minister was the great man, and his bodily presence was a restraint upon the unruly, and the ruly too, for that matter. The lines of our ancestors did not fall in pleasant places as far as recreations were concerned; for they were few and far between, consisting, for the most part, of militia musters, "raisings," corn-huskings, and singing-schools, diversified with the making of maple sugar and cider. Education was confined to the three R's, though the children of wealthy parents were sent to colleges as they now are. It was not a genial social condition, it must be confessed, to which William Cullen Bryant was born, though it might have been worse but for his good father, who was in many respects superior to his rustic neighbors. A broad-shouldered, muscular gentleman, proud of his strength, his manners were gentle and reserved, his disposition was serene, and he was fond of society. He was not without political distinction, for he was elected to the Massachusetts House of Representatives for several terms, and afterward to the State Senate, and he associated with the cultivated circles of Boston both as a legislator and a physician.

William Cullen Bryant was fortunate in his father, who, if he was disappointed when he found that his son was born to be a follower of Apollo and not of Æsculapius, kept his disappointment to himself, and encouraged the lad in his poetical attempts. We have the authority of the poet himself that his father taught his youth the art of verse, and that he offered him to the Muses in the bud of life. His first efforts were several clever "Enigmas," in imitation of the Latin writers, a translation from Horace, and a copy of verses which were written in his twelfth year, to be recited at the close of the winter school, "in the presence of the Master, the Minister of the parish, and a number of private gentlemen." They were printed on the 18th of March, 1807, in the Hampshire Gazette, from which these particulars are derived, and which was favored with other contributions from the pen of "C. B."

The juvenile poems of William Cullen Bryant are as clever as those of Chatterton, Pope, and Cowley; but they are in no sense original, and it would have been strange if they had been. There was no original writing in America at the time they were written; and if there had been, it would hardly have commended itself to the old-fashioned taste of Dr. Bryant, to whom Pope was still a power in poetry, as Addison, no doubt, was in prose. It was natural, therefore, that he should offer his boy to the strait-laced Muses of Queen Anne's time; that the precocious boy should lisp in heroic couplets, and that he should endeavor to be satirical. Politics were running high in the first decade of the present century, and the favorite bug-bear in New England was President Jefferson, who in 1807 had laid an embargo on American shipping, in consequence of the decrees of Napoleon, and the British orders in council in relation thereto. This act was denounced, and by no one more warmly than by Master Bryant, who made it the subject of a satire, which was published in Boston in 1808. It was entitled "The Embargo; or, Sketches of the Times," and was printed for the purchasers, who were found in sufficient numbers to exhaust the first edition. It is said to have been well received, but doubts were expressed as to whether the author was really a youth of thirteen. His friends came to his rescue in an "Advertisement," which was prefixed to a second edition of his little brochure, published in the following year, and certified to his age from their personal knowledge of himself and his family. They also certified to his extraordinary talents, though they should prefer to have him judged by his works, without favor or affection. They concluded by stating that the printer was authorized to disclose their names and places of residence.

The early poetical exercises of William Cullen Bryant, like those of all young poets, were colored by the books which he read. Among these were the works of Pope, as I have already intimated, and, no doubt, the works of Cowper and Thomson. The latter, if they were in the library of Dr. Bryant, do not appear to have impressed his son at this time; nor, indeed, does any English poet except Pope, so far as we can judge from his contributions to the Hampshire Gazette, which were continued from time to time. They were bookish and patriotic; one, which was written at Cummington on the 8th of January, 1810, being "The Genius of Columbia;" and another, "An Ode for the Fourth of July, 1812," to the tune of "Ye Gentlemen of England." These productions are undeniably clever, but they are not characteristic of their writer, nor of the nature which surrounded his birthplace, with which he was familiar, and of which he was a close observer, as his poetry was soon to disclose.

He entered Williams College, in Williamstown, Mass., in his sixteenth year, and remained there until 1812, distinguishing himself for aptness and industry in classical learning and polite literature. At the end of two years he withdrew, and commenced the study of law, first with Judge Howe, of Worthington, and afterward with Mr. William Baylies, of Bridgewater. So far he had written nothing but clever amateur verse; but now, in his eighteenth year, he wrote an imperishable poem. The circumstances under which it was composed have been variously stated, but they agree in the main particulars, and are thus given in "The Bryant Homestead Book" (1870), apparently on authentic information: "It was here at Cummington, while wandering in the primeval forests, over the floor of which were scattered the gigantic trunks of fallen trees, mouldering for long years, and suggesting an indefinitely remote antiquity, and where silent rivulets crept along through the carpet of dead leaves, the spoil of thousands of summers, that the poem entitled 'Thanatopsis' was composed. The young poet had read the poems of Kirke White, which, edited by Southey, were published about that time, and a small volume of Southey's miscellaneous poems; and some lines of those authors had kindled his imagination, which, going forth over the face of the inhabitants of the globe, sought to bring under one broad and comprehensive view the destinies of the human race in the present life, and the perpetual rising and passing away of generation after generation who are nourished by the fruits of its soil, and find a resting-place in its bosom." We should like to know what lines in Southey and Kirke White suggested "Thanatopsis," that they might be printed in letters of gold hereafter.

When the young poet quitted Cummington to begin his law studies, he left the manuscript of this incomparable poem among his papers in the house of his father, who found it after his departure. "Here are some lines that our William has been writing," he said to a lady to whom he showed them. She read them, and, raising her eyes to the face of Dr. Bryant, burst into tears – a tribute to the genius of his son in which he was not ashamed to join. Blackstone bade his Muse a long adieu before he turned to wrangling courts and stubborn law; and our young lawyer intended to do the same (for poetry was starvation in America seventy years ago), but habit and nature were too strong for him. There is no difficulty in tracing the succession of his poems, and in a few instances the places where they were written, or with which they concerned themselves. "Thanatopsis," for example, was followed by "The Yellow Violet," which was followed by the "Inscription for the Entrance to a Wood," and the song beginning "Soon as the glazed and gleaming snow." The exquisite lines "To a Waterfowl" were written at Bridgewater, in his twentieth year, where he was still pursuing the study of law, which appears to have been distasteful to him. The concluding stanza sank deeply into a heart that needed its pious lesson:

The lawyer-poet had a long way before him, but he did not tread it alone; for, after being admitted to the bar in Plymouth, and practising for a time in Plainfield, near Cummington, he removed to Great Barrington, in Berkshire, where he saw the dwelling of the Genevieve of his chilly little "Song," his Genevieve being Miss Frances Fairchild of that beautiful town, whom he married in his twenty-seventh year, and who was the light of his household for nearly half a century. It was to her, the reader may like to know, that he addressed the ideal poem beginning "O fairest of the rural maids" (circa 1825), "The Future Life" (1837), and "The Life that Is" (1858); and her memory and her loss are tenderly embalmed in one of the most touching of his later poems, "October, 1866."

"Thanatopsis" was sent to the North American Review (whether by its author or his father we are not told), and with such a modest, not to say enigmatical, note of introduction, that its authorship was left in doubt. The Review was managed by a club of young literary gentlemen, who styled themselves "The North American Club," two of whose members, Mr. Richard Henry Dana and Mr. Edward Tyrrel Channing, were considered its editors. Mr. Dana read the poem carefully, and was so surprised at its excellence that he doubted whether it was the production of an American, an opinion in which his associates are understood to have concurred. While they were hesitating about its acceptance, he was told that the writer was a member of the Massachusetts Senate; and, the Senate being then in session, he started immediately from Cambridge for Boston. He reached the State House, and inquired for Senator Bryant. A tall, middle-aged man, with a business-like look, was pointed out to him. He was satisfied that he could not be the poet he sought, so he posted back to Cambridge without an introduction. The story ends here, and rather tamely; for the original narrator forgot, or perhaps never knew, that Dr. Bryant was a member of the Senate, and that it was among the possibilities that he was the Senator with a similar name. American poetry may be said to have commenced in 1817 with the September number of the North American Review, which contained "Thanatopsis" and the "Inscription for the Entrance of a Wood," the last being printed as a "Fragment." Six months later, in March, 1818, the impression which "Thanatopsis" created was strengthened by the appearance of the lines "To a Waterfowl," and the "Version of a Fragment of Simonides."

Mr. Bryant's literary life may now be said to have begun, though he depended upon the practice of his profession for his daily bread. He continued his contributions to the North American Review in the shape of prose papers on literary topics, and maintained the most friendly relations with its conductors; notably so with Mr. Dana, who was seven years his elder, and who possessed, like himself, the accomplishment of verse. At the suggestion of this poetical and critical brother, he was invited to deliver a poem before the Phi Beta Kappa Society at Harvard College – an honor which is offered only to those who have already made a reputation, and are likely to reflect credit on the Society as well as on themselves. He accepted, and in 1821 wrote his first poem of any length, "The Ages," which still remains the best poem of the kind that was ever recited before a college society either in this country or in England; grave, stately, thoughtful, presenting in animated, picturesque stanzas a compact summary of the history of mankind. A young Englishman of twenty-one – Thomas Babington Macaulay – delivered in the same year a poem on "Evening," before the students of Trinity College, Cambridge; and it is instructive to compare his conventional heroics with the spirited Spenserian stanzas of William Cullen Bryant.

The lines "To a Waterfowl," which were written at Bridgewater in 1815, were followed by "Green River," "A Winter Piece," "The West Wind," "The Burial-Place," "Blessed are they that mourn," "No man knoweth his Sepulchre," "A Walk at Sunset," and "The Hymn to Death."

These poems, which cover a period of six busy years, are interesting to the poetic student as examples of the different styles of their writer, and of the changing elements of his thoughts and feelings. "Green River," for example, is a momentary revealment of his shy temperament and his daily pursuits. Its glimpses of nature are charming, and his wish to be beside its waters is the most natural one in the world. The young lawyer is not complimentary to his clients, whom he styles "the dregs of men," while his pen, which does its best to serve them, becomes "a barbarous pen." He is dejected, but a visit to the river will restore his spirits; for, as he gazes upon its lonely and lovely stream,

"A Winter Piece" is a gallery of woodland pictures which anything of the kind in the language. "A Walk at Sunset" is notable in that it is the first poem in which we see (faintly, it must be confessed) the aboriginal element, which was soon to become a prominent one in Mr. Bryant's poetry. It was inseparable from the primeval forests of the New World, but he was the first to perceive its poetic value. The "Hymn to Death" – stately, majestic, consolatory – concludes with a touching tribute to the worth of his good father, who died while he was writing it, at the age of fifty-four. The year 1821 was an important one to Mr. Bryant, for it witnessed the publication of his first collection of verse, his marriage, and the death of his father.

The next four years of Mr. Bryant's life were more productive than any that had preceded them, for he wrote upward of thirty poems during that time. The aboriginal element was creative in "The Indian Girl's Lament," "An Indian Story," "An Indian at the Burial-Place of his Fathers," and, noblest of all, "Monument Mountain;" the Hellenic element predominated in "The Massacre at Scio" and "The Song of the Greek Amazon;" the Hebraic element touched him lightly in "Rizpah" and the "Song of the Stars;" and the pure poetic element was manifest in "March," "The Rivulet" (which, by the way, ran through the grounds of the old homestead at Cummington), "After a Tempest," "The Murdered Traveler," "Hymn to the North Star," "A Forest Hymn," "O fairest of the rural maids," and the exquisite and now most pathetic poem, "June." These poems and others not specified here, if read continuously and in the order in which they were composed, show a wide range of sympathies, a perfect acquaintance with many measures, and a clear, capacious, ever-growing intellect. They are all distinctive of the genius of their author, but neither exhibits the full measure of his powers. We can say of none of them, "The man who wrote this will never write any better."

The publication of Mr. Bryant's little volume of verse was indirectly the cause of his adopting literature as a profession. It was warmly commended, and by no one more so than by Mr. Gulian C. Verplanck, in the columns of the New York American. He was something of a literary authority at the time, a man of fortune and college-bred, known in a mild way as the author of an anniversary discourse delivered before the New York Historical Society in 1818, of a political satire entitled "The Bucktail Bards," and later of an "Essay on the Doctrine of Contracts." Among his friends was Mr. Henry D. Sedgwick, a summer neighbor, so to speak, of Mr. Bryant's, having a country-house at Stockbridge, a few miles from Great Barrington, and a house in town, which was frequented by the literati of the day, such as Verplanck, Halleck, Percival, Cooper, and others of less note. An admirer of Mr. Bryant, Mr. Sedgwick set to work, with the assistance of Mr. Verplanck, to procure him literary employment in New York, in order to enable him to escape his hated bondage to the law; and he was appointed assistant editor of a projected periodical called the New York Review and Athenæum Magazine. The at last enfranchised lawyer dropped his barbarous pen, closed his law-books, and in the winter or spring of 1825 removed with his household to New York. The projected periodical was started, as these sanguine ventures always are, with fair hopes of success. It was well edited, and its contributors were men of acknowledged ability. The June number contained two poems which ought to have made a great hit. One was "A Song of Pitcairn's Island;" the other was "Marco Bozzaris." There was no flourish of trumpets over them, as there would be now; the writers merely prefixed their initials, "B." and "H." The reading public of New York were not ready for the Review, which had been projected for their mental enlightenment; so, after about a year's struggle, it was merged in the New York Literary Gazette, which began its mission about four years before. This magazine shared the fate of its companion in a few months, when it was consolidated with the United States Literary Gazette, which in two months was swallowed up in the United States Review. The honor of publishing and finishing the last was shared by Boston and New York. Profit in these publications there was none, though Bryant, Halleck, Willis, Dana, Bancroft, and Longfellow wrote for them. Too good, or not good enough, they lived and died prematurely. Mr. Bryant's success as a metropolitan man of letters was not brilliant so far; but there were other walks than those of pure literature open to him, as to others, and into one of the most bustling of these he entered in his thirty-second year. In other words, he became one of the editors of the Evening Post. Henceforth he was to live by journalism.

Journalism, though an exacting pursuit, leaves its skillful followers a little leisure in which to cultivate literature. It the heyday of those ephemeral trifles, Annuals, and Mr. Bryant found time to edit one, with the assistance of his friend Mr. Verplanck, and his acquaintance Mr. Robert C. Sands (who, by the way, was one of the editors of the Commercial Advertiser), and a very creditable work it was. His contributions to "The Talisman" included some of his best poems. Poetry was the natural expression of his genius – a fact which he could never understand, for it always seemed to him that prose was the natural expression of all mankind. His prose was, and always continued to be, masterly. Its earliest examples, outside of his critical papers in the North American Review and other periodicals (and outside of the Evening Post, of course), are two stories entitled "Medfield" and "The Skeleton's Cave," contributed by him to "Tales of the Glauber Spa" (1832) – a collection of original stories by Mr. James K. Paulding, Mr. Verplanck, Mr. Sands, Mr. William Leggett, and Miss Catharine Sedgwick. Three years before (1828) he had become the chief editor of the Evening Post. Associated with him was Mr. Leggett, who had shown some talent as a writer of sketches and stories, and who had failed, like himself, in conducting a critical publication, for which his countrymen were not ready. He made a second collection of his poems at this time (1832), a copy of which was sent by Mr. Verplanck to Mr. Washington Irving, who was then, what he had been for years, the idol of English readers, and not without weight with the Trade. Would he see if some English house would not reprint it? No leading publisher nibbled at it, not even Murray, who was Mr. Irving's publisher; but an obscure bookseller named Andrews finally agreed to undertake it, if Mr. Irving would put his valuable name on the title-page as the editor. He was not acquainted with Mr. Bryant, but he was a kind-hearted, large-souled gentleman, who knew good poetry when he saw it, and he consented to "edit" the book. He was not a success in the estimation of Andrews, who came to him one day, by no means a merry Andrew, and declared that the book would ruin him unless one or more changes were made in the text. What was amiss in it? He turned to the "Song of Marion's Men," and stumbled over an obnoxious couplet in the first stanza:

"That won't do at all, you know." The absurdity of the objection must have struck the humorist comically; but as he wanted the volume republished, he good-naturedly saved the proverbial valor of the British soldier by changing the first line to