WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT.

WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT was born at Cummington, Mass., November 3, 1794, and he died June 12, 1878, in his eighty-fourth year. He was educated at Williams College. Bryant's precocity was very marked. At the age of ten he published translations from some of the Latin poets, and at thirteen he wrote a vigorous political poem, entitled The Embargo. At eighteen, his beaupoem Thanatopsis was composed. At twenty-one, he was admitted to the bar, and, after several years of successful practice, removed to New York and entered upon his literary life. In 1826, Bryant became connected with The New York Evening Post, where he continued to labor till his death.

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Besides his work as poet and journalist, he undertook, with Sydney Howard Gay, to prepare a Popular History of the United States, but died before its com

pletion.

He is author of The Fountain and Other Poems, a Traveler in Europe and America, Thanatop

Letters of

sis, Death of the Flowers, Forest Hymn, Waiting at the Gate, The Flood of Years, besides translations of the

Iliad and Odyssey.

Bryant's literary life covers a period of sixty-four years, dating from Thanatopsis, written at eighteen, to The Flood of Years, written at eighty-two.

He is master of blank verse, and "his diction is pure and lucid with scarcely a flaw." "Bryant's poetry overflows with natural religion-what Wordsworth calls the religion of nature," and always shows a pious and pure spirit. The following lines are from Thanatopsis:

So live, that when thy summons comes to join
The innumerable caravan that moves

To that mysterious realm, where each shall take

His chamber in the silent halls of death,

Thou go not, like the quarry slave at night,

Scourged to his dungeon; but, sustained and soothed

By an unfaltering trust, approach thy grave

Like one who wraps the drapery of his couch
About him, and lies down to pleasant dreams.

An Evening Reverie.

HE summer day is closed, the sun is set;

Well they have done their office, those bright hours, The latest of whose train goes softly out

In the red West. The green blade of the ground
Has risen, and herds have cropped it; the young twig
Has spread its plaited tissues to the sun;

Flowers of the garden and the waste have blown
And withered; seeds have fallen upon the soil
From bursting cells, and in their grave await
Their resurrection. Insects from the pools
Have filled the air awhile with humming wings,
That now are still forever; painted moths
Have wandered the blue sky, and died again;
The mother-bird hath broken for her brood

Their prison shell, or shoved them from the nest,
Plumed for their carliest flight. In bright alcoves,
In woodland cottages with barky walls,
In noisome cells of tumultous towns,
Mothers have clasped with joy the newborn babe.
Graves by the lonely forest, by the shore
Of rivers and of ocean, by the ways

Of the thronged city, have been hollowed out
And filled, and closed. This day hath parted friends

That ne'er before were parted; it hath knit

New friendships; it hath seen the maiden plight

"

Her faith, and trust her peace to him who long
Had wooed, and it hath heard, from lips which late
Were eloquent with love, the first harsh word,
That told the wedded one her peace was flown.
Farewell to the sweet sunshine! One glad day
Is added now to childhood's merry days,
And one calm day to those of quiet age.
Still the fleet hours run on; and as I lean,
Amid the thickening darkness, lamps are lit,

By those who watch the dead, and those who twine
Flowers for the bride. The mother from the eyes
Of her sick infant shades the painful light,
And sadly listens to his quick-drawn breath.
O thou great movement of the universe,
Or change or flight of time-for ye are one-
That bearest silently this visible scene
Into night's shadow and the streaming rays
Of starlight, whither art thou bearing me?
I feel the mighty current sweep me on,

Yet know not whither. Man foretells afar

The courses of the stars; the very hour

He knows when they shall darken or grow bright;
Yet doth the eclipse of sorrow and of death

Come unforwarned.

Who next of those I love,

Shall pass from life, or sadder yet, shall fall
From virtue? Strife with foes, or bitterer strife
With friends, or shame and general scorn of men-
Which who can bear?-or the fierce rack of pain,-
Lie they within my path? Or shall the years
Push me, with soft and inoffensive pace,

:

Into the stilly twilight of my age?

Or do the portals of another life,

Even now, while I am glorying in my strength,
Impend around me? Oh, beyond the bourne,
In the vast cycle of being which begins

At that broad threshhold, with what fairer forms
Shall the great law of change and progress clothe
Its workings? Gently, so have good men taught,
Into the new; the eternal flow of things,
Like a bright river of the fields of heaven,
Shall journey onward in perpetual peace.

Forest Hymn.

HE groves were God's first temples. Ere man learned
To hew the shaft, and lay the architrave,

And spread the roof above them,--ere he framed
The lofty vault, to gather and roll back
The sound of anthems,-in the darkling wood,
Amid the cool and silence, he knelt down
And offered to the Mightiest solemn thanks
And supplication. Let me, then, at least,
Here, in the shadow of this aged wood,
Offer one hymn-thrice happy, if it find
Acceptance in his ear.