Go forth, under the open sky, and list

1 This, the first great poem written in America, was published in the North American Review for September, 1817, vol. v, pp. 338-340. Bryant's father had found it, together with the Fragment,' later known as 'Inscription for the Entrance to a Wood,' among other papers in a desk; and had immediately taken it to Boston and shown it to his friend Willard Phillips, one of the editors of the North American Review. When Phillips read the poem to his fellow editors, one of them, Richard H. Dana, exclaimed, Ah, Phillips, you have been imposed upon; no one on this side of the Atlantic is capable of writing such verses; ' and though soon persuaded that the verses really were by an American, the editors still believed that 'Thanatopsis ' must have been written by the young poet's father. Phillips says in a letter to Bryant, December, 1817: "Your"Fragment" was exceedingly liked here. All the best judges say that it and your father's "Thanatopsis" are the very best poetry that has been published in this country.'

As originally printed in the North American Review, the poem began with what is now line 17,

The powerful of the earth the wise, the good,

Fair forms, and hoary seers of ages past, All in one mighty sepulchre. The hills Rock-ribbed and ancient as the sun, the vales

Stretching in pensive quietness between; The venerable woods - rivers that move 46 In majesty, and the complaining brooks That make the meadows green; and, poured

round all,

Old Ocean's gray and melancholy waste,

Oft, in the sunless April day,

Thy early smile has stayed my walk; But midst the gorgeous blooms of May, I passed thee on thy humble stalk.

1 Figures at the left, in italics, give the date of writing; those at the right, in roman, the date of publication. For Bryant's poems the dates are taken from Godwin's standard edition of the Poetical Works.

Mr. Godwin states in his note to Thanatopsis' that the poem was written in the summer of 1811, which would make Bryant only sixteen years old at the time not seventeen, as Mr. Godwin himself elsewhere say Bryant's own account of the matter is given in a lette of 1855, which Mr. Godwin quotes: I cannot give you any information of the occasion which suggested to my mind the idea of my poem "Thanatopsis." It was written when I was seventeen or eighteen years old - I have not now at hand the memorandums [sic] which would enable me to be precise and I believe it was composed in my solitary rambles in the woods.'