Chapter William Cullen Bryant of Index by Simonds History of American Literature

The Poet's Awakening.

Bryant's poetical talents were not, however, allowed to lie dormant. In his father's library, he found several volumes of the contemporary English poets, which stimulated his imagination and directly influenced his own expression. From an early age he had read Cowper with delight; he was familiar with Thomson's Seasons; he now read Southey and Kirke White; and it is worthy of note that Blair's morbid but remarkable poem, The Grave, which he discovered at this time, moved him with melancholy pleasure. It must have been during this period -- in the autumn of 1811, as the poet recalled it -- that Thanatopsis was composed.

Studying Law.

At the close of 1811, Bryant became a law student in an office at Worthington. While diligent in his legal studies, poetry still allured him and nature's hold upon his affections was strengthened by a new experience. Bryant now read Wordsworth for the first time. The Lyrical Ballads¹ fell into his hands and, as he said in later life to his friend, Richard Henry Dana, -- "a thousand springs seemed to gush up at once in my heart, and the face of nature of a sudden to change into a strange freshness of life." This influence of the English poet -- the supreme interpreter of nature and chief apostle of simplicity and naturalness in verse -- is to be recognized not as setting a new model for the western poet, but as confirming in his mind the truthfulness and value of conceptions already there. "Now he learned what nature herself might mean to a genuinely poetic spirit, and a new world lay open before him."² He knew that he, too, had received the gift of poetry. Yet he pursued his law studies to their natural close, and in 1815 was admitted to the bar.

To a Waterfowl.

Bryant's twenty-first birthday fell in November, 1815. On an afternoon in December, following, the newly fledged lawyer trudged across the hills seven miles to the village of Plainfield, where it was decided that he should begin the practice of his profession. His spirit was depressed, his ambition seemed thwarted. In the previous year he had written to a friend these lines:--

"And I that loved to trace the woods before,
And climb the hills a playmate of the breeze,
Have vowed to tune the rural lay no more,
Have bid my useless classics sleep at ease,
And left the race of bards to scribble, starve and freeze."

We may well imagine that the dreariness of the wintry landscape on that December afternoon reflected the doubt and despondency of Bryant's mood. Then came a glorious sunset, and as the young man gazed at the rosy splendor of the clouds, a solitary bird appeared winging its flight along the horizon. Bryant watched it out of sight; and that evening in his new abiding-place he wrote his imperishable lines To a Waterfowl, with its tender close:--

   "He who from zone to zone,
Guides through the boundless sky thy certain flight,
In the long way that I must tread alone,
Will lead my steps aright."

Three months later, Bryant removed to Great Barrington, settled down to his profession, and definitely abandoned all idea of being a poet.

A Discovery.

Meanwhile there occurred an event which makes a very notable record in the history of American literature. Among his Boston acquaintance, Dr. Bryant numbered Mr. Phillips, one of the editors of the new North American Review;¹ and by that gentleman he was asked to invite his son, William Cullen Bryant, to contribute to the magazine. To this invitation there came no immediate response from the law office in Great Barrington; but Dr. Bryant, looking through a drawer in an old desk at Cummington, came upon some of the verse which his son had left there at his departure. Among the manuscripts, he found the poems Thanatopsis and the Inscription for the Entrance to a Wood. It was a dramatic discovery. It