THE POET One of earth's charms: upon her bosom yet, The freshness of her far beginning lies The Song of the Stars,' though not one of Bryant's happiest poems, -the hypercritical reader feeling that the orbs of beauty' and 'spheres of 'flame' might have made a more appropriate metrical choice for their song, shows none the less the poet's strength in dealing with nature in the large. The lines 'To a Waterfowl' are magical in part by virtue of the impression they make of immense distance. With the poet's penetrating vision we can see the solitary way through the rosy depths, the pathless coast, and the one bit of life in The desert and illimitable air. Bryant's mind readily lifts itself from the minute to the massive, as in the poem 'Summer Wind,' a fine example of the crescendo effects he knew so well how to produce. In a few lines he gives the sensation of heat, closeness, exhaustion, and pictures the plants drooping in a stillness broken only by the 'faint and interrupted murmur of the 'bee.' His thought then sweeps upward to the wooded hills towering in scorching heat and dazzling light, and then still higher to the bright clouds, Motionless pillars of the brazen heaven- Shining in the far ether... their white tops The poet never wearies of this majestic pageantry of the natural world. In The Firmament,' in 'The Hurricane' (imitated from Heredia), in' Monument Mountain,' his chief thought is to translate the reader to his own lofty vantage-ground. But Nature is not merely a spectacle, it has a power to heal and invigorate. Life loses its pettiness when one leaves the city and seeks the forest. The holy men who hid themselves deep in 'the woody wilderness' perhaps did not well — But let me often to these solitudes The passions, at thy plainer footsteps shrink The poet finds inspiration not alone in the terror of the storm, the majesty of the forest, the gray waste of ocean, the mystery of the night of stars, but in the humbler things, the rivulet by which he played as a child, the violet growing on its bank, the hum of bees, the notes of hang-bird and wren, the gossip of swallows, and the gay chirp of the ground squirrel. The Yellow Violet and the lines To the Fringed Gentian' spring from this love of the unobtrusive charms of Nature. Less familiar than these, but a faultless example of Bryant's art, is 'The Painted Cup: ' tell me not That these bright chalices were tinted thus THE POET The poet will not call up 'faded fancies of an 'elder world.' If the fresh savannahs must be peopled with creatures of imagination, it may be done without borrowing European elves: Let then the gentle Manitou of flowers, Bryant wrote poems of freedom. The earlier of these, 'The Song of the Greek Amazon,' the 'Massacre at Scio,' the Greek Partisan,' and 'Italy,' voice his sympathy with the oppressed nations of the Old World, the 'struggling multitude 'of states,' that writhe in shackles.' Among his later poems on the same theme, 'Earth,' 'The Winds,' 'The Antiquity of Free'dom,' and 'The Battle Field' are representative. The first three with their many stately lines show how spontaneously his thought, even when nature is not the subject, grows out of the contemplation of nature and then returns to such contemplation as to a resting place. The Battle Field,' the expression of a noble faith in the outcome of 'a friendless warfare,' contains the most inspiring of his quatrains, as it is one of the best contributions made by an American poet to the stock of quotable English verse : Truth, crushed to earth, shall rise again; His patriotic poems are few in number, but Bryant's reticence must be taken into account. Coming from him, the verses mean more than if they came from another. Two of the best are 'Oh 'Mother of a mighty Race' and 'Not Yet.' The second of these, written in July, 1861, has a finely imaginative stanza in which are pictured the dead monarchies of the past eager to welcome another broken and ruined land among their number: Not yet the hour is nigh when they Who deep in Eld's dim twilight sit, To the same year belong the spirited verses 'Our Country's Call :' Strike to defend the gentlest sway That Time in all his course has seen. Few, few were they whose swords of old But we are many, we who hold The grim resolve to guard it well. Strike, for that broad and goodly land, Blow after blow, till men shall see That Might and Right move hand in hand, Such was the temper of men who had looked with philosophic composure and curiosity on the THE POET movements of the sometimes well-nigh frenzied abolitionists. The blow at the integrity of the nation fired their cool patriotism to white heat. What lightness of touch Bryant had is shown in that exquisite lyric The Stream of Life.' He could be conventional, as in the love poem where he celebrates the gentle season' when nymphs 'relent,' and very sensibly advises the young lady 'ere her bloom is past, to secure her lover.' He was not strong in wit or humor. The verses To 'a Mosquito' might have been read with good effect to a party of well-fed clubmen after dinner, but finding them in the same volume with A 'Forest Hymn' gives one an uncomfortable surprise, like finding a pun in Lowell's Cathedral. That Bryant could write agreeable narrative verse, 'The Children of the Snow' and 'Sella' bear witness. That he is at his best in meditative poems, lofty characterizations of Nature, grand visions of Life and Death, is proved by hundreds of felicitous verses which have become an inalienable part of our young literature. He never really excelled the work of his youth. Bryant will always be known as the author of 'Thanatopsis.' This great vision of Death is his stateliest poem and his best, the most felicitous of phrase and the loftiest in imagery. Written by a stoic, magnificently stoical in tone, it offers but a stoic's comfort after all. Perhaps this is a secret of its popularity, on the theory that while pro |