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

suggestions of Wordsworth's Tintern Abbey, the atmosphere is unmistakably that of the Massachusetts woods in winter. The snow-bird twitters on the beechen bough, the partridge nestles beneath the hemlock, the rabbit, fox, and raccoon have left their tracks in the snow; smoke wreaths rise among the maples where the sap is being gathered in brimming pails, the woods ring with the stroke of the axe; and with the first breath of spring --

"Lodged in sunny cleft,
Where the cold breezes come not, blooms alone
The little wind-flower, whose just opened eye
Is blue as the spring heaven it gazes at."²

The poet is wont to feel the serious and chastening aspect of these scenes, and the spirit of his brooding is often tinged with melancholy. He sings: --

"The melancholy days are come, the saddest of the year,
Of wailing winds and naked woods and meadows brown and sere."¹

But this tender poem was intensely personal, and was inspired by the death of a dear sister. There are other poems in which an entirely different spirit is manifested, as The Planting of the Apple Tree and that rollicking bird-song, Robert of Lincoln. Nor could anything be cheerier than the musical lines of that beautiful descriptive poem, Green River.

The Descriptive Quality.

This descriptive quality in Bryant's compositions must not be overlooked; it is an important feature of his verse. We get exquisite illustration of it in the two flower-poems, The Yellow Violet and To the Fringed Gentian. Both these poems are like many of Wordsworth's in their simplicity and in the little moral lessons which they convey -- a characteristic resented by some critics as an intrusion or a defect, although the imaginative insight of each descriptive touch is disputed by nobody.

The Reflective Poems.

It is, of course, the reflective poems which have given to Bryant his lasting fame. For various reasons the early composition, Thanatopsis, overshadows all the others. The universality of its theme, its passionless exaltation of spirit, its rugged and lofty eloquence, its diction so calm, so austere, and elemental, place it yet among the great poetical expressions of the race. The Hymn to Death is an amplification of the same theme in less impressive setting, although the utterance of a personal grief gives pathos to its close. In A Forest Hymn, which completes this remarkable trilogy of poems on the mortality of man, the poet's idea shapes itself more clearly: Death is indeed universal -- Lo! all grow old and die; -- but Life is ever reappearing. There is not lost one of earth's charms. After the flight of centuries --

"The freshness of her far beginning lies
And yet shall lie. Life mocks the idle hate
Of his arch-enemy Death."

Technique.

The Saxon element predominates in Bryant's verse. His style is simple -- sometimes severe; yet always fitting. What crispness of diction do we find, for instance, in the oft-quoted stanza: --

"Truth, crushed to earth, shall rise again;
   Th' eternal years of God are hers;
But Error, wounded, writhes in pain,
   And dies among his worshippers."¹

Bryant commonly used the so-called iambic ten-syllabled line. When he employed the stanza, it was usually the four lines of alternating rhymes, known as the quatrain; but Bryant was at his best in blank verse, which he used with a facility and power of expression unsurpassed by any other American poet.

The volume of Bryant's poetry is comparatively small, and its range of subjects is somewhat narrow. he is called stern and cold by many of the critics; and it is true, as they point out, that the poet lacked