Communion with his Maker. These dim vaults,

These winding aisles, of human pomp or pride

Report not. No fantastic carvings show The boast of our vain race to change the form

Of thy fair works. But Thou art here

Thou fill'st

41

The solitude. Thou art in the soft winds That run along the summit of these trees In music; Thou art in the cooler breath That from the inmost darkness of the place Comes, scarcely felt; the barky trunks, the ground,

The fresh moist ground, are all instinct with Thee.

Here is continual worship; - Nature, here, 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,

Wells softly forth and wandering steeps the

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

Who deemed it were not well to pass life

Dost scare the world with tempests, set on fire

The heavens with falling thunderbolts, or fill,

With all the waters of the firmament,
The swift dark whirlwind that uproots the
woods

And drowns the villages; when, at thy call,
Uprises the great deep and throws himself
Upon the continent, and overwhelms
Its cities

who forgets not, at the sight

1 These are lines of whose great rhythmical beauty it is scarcely possible to speak too highly.' (POE.)

2 Among the minor poems of Bryant, none has so much impressed me as the one which he entitles 'June.' The rhythmical flow, here, is even voluptuous-nothing could be more melodious. The poem has always affected me in a remarkable manner. The intense melancholy which seems to well up, perforce, to the surface of all the poet's cheerful sayings about his grave, we find thrilling us to the soul while there is the truest poetic elevation in the thrill. The impression left is one of a pleasurable sadness. And if, in the remaining compositions which I shall introduce to you, there be more or less of a similar tone always apparent, let me remind you that (how or why we know not) this certain taint of sadness is inseparably connected with all the higher manifestations of true Beauty. (POE.)

AY, thou art welcome, heaven's delicious breath!

When woods begin to wear the crimson leaf, And suns grow meek, and the meek suns grow brief,

And the year smiles as it draws near its death.

Wind of the sunny south! oh, still delay In the gay woods and in the golden air, Like to a good old age released from care, Journeying, in long serenity, away.

In such a bright, late quiet, would that I

3 Bryant died in the month of June (1878), and was buried in the beautiful village cemetery at Roslyn, Long Island.

1 Compare with this poem Wordsworth's 'To the Small Celandine,' and others.

Notice that Bryant addresses his verses to a distinctively American flower; as later he chooses an American bird, the bobolink, for the subject of a poem which is to be contrasted with Wordsworth's To the Skylark,' To the Green Linnet,' etc. Bryant gives the reason for this choice in a letter to his brother John, February 19, 1832: 'I saw some lines by you to the skylark. Did you ever see such a bird? Let me counsel you to draw your images, in describing Nature, from what you observe around you, unless you are professedly composing a description of some foreign country, when. of course, you will learn what you can from books. The skylark is an English bird, and an American who has never visited Europe has no right to be in raptures about it.'

and successful warfare which he kept up at the head of a few daring followers, that they sent an officer to remonstrate with him for not coming into the open field and fighting 'like a gentleman and a Christian.' (BRYANT.)

On the occasion of a reception given to Bryant in Charleston, South Carolina, in 1873, one of the speakers said that the Song of Marion's Men' had been sung in many a Southern bivouac, and warmed the soldier's heart at many a Confederate camp-fire.' See Godwin's Life of Bryant, vol. ii, pp. 330, 331.

2 In the edition of Bryant's poems published in England in 1832, and edited by Washington Irving, this line was changed to

The foeman trembles in his camp. Considerable discussion over this change arose later in America, of which a full account can be found in Bigelow's Life of Bryant, pp. 129-139.