{"id":494,"date":"2021-03-25T20:13:09","date_gmt":"2021-03-25T20:13:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/courses.lumenlearning.com\/suny-empire-amliterature\/?post_type=chapter&p=494"},"modified":"2021-07-12T14:00:01","modified_gmt":"2021-07-12T14:00:01","slug":"oliver-wendell-holmes","status":"publish","type":"chapter","link":"https:\/\/courses.lumenlearning.com\/suny-empire-amliterature\/chapter\/oliver-wendell-holmes\/","title":{"raw":"William Cullen Bryant, Poems","rendered":"William Cullen Bryant, Poems"},"content":{"raw":"

Introduction: William Cullen Bryant (1794\u20131878)<\/h2>\r\n\"William\r\n\r\nWilliam Cullen Bryant lived and wrote at the cusp of the Romantic era; indeed, he\u2019s credited with giving an American slant to the English Romantic poetry heralded by William Wordsworth (1770 - 1850) and Samuel Taylor Coleridge\u2019s (1772 - 1834) Lyrical Ballads (1799). Like Wordsworth, Bryant appreciated emulated, the neoclassical poetry of Alexander Pope and Samuel Johnson (1709 - 1784). Bryant also responded to the so-called graveyard school of poetry of Thomas Gray (1716 - 1771), poetry that linked emotion with observation of the natural world. From Wordsworth and Coleridge, Bryant awoke to the power of nature itself to teach, guide, and inspire the individual\u2019s developing mind and spirit. His poetry especially reflected his life-long love of nature, especially in his use of scenic nature imagery.\r\n\r\nFrom his childhood on, he was exposed to the wonders of the American landscape; he was born in Cummington, Massachusetts. With his father, Dr. Peter Bryant (1767\u20131820), who was a naturalist, Bryant took many walking excursions into the surrounding woods and the Berkeshire foothills. His father\u2019s library also provided Bryant with ample reading material (which he read with the help of his uncle, who schooled him in the classics). His father encouraged Bryant\u2019s early literary bent, including having Bryant\u2019s pro-Federalist poem The Embargo; or, Sketches of the Times: A Satire by a Youth of Thirteen (1808) published as a pamphlet.\r\n\r\nIn 1810, Bryant entered Williams College. There, he continued to write, drafting \u201cThanatopsis,\u201d which would become his most important poem. After learning that his family could not support his college education, Bryant studied law and was admitted to the bar in 1815. From 1816 to 1825, he practiced law at Great Barrington, married Frances Fairchild, began a family, and still wrote poetry. Upon publishing a revised \u201cThanatopsis,\u201d (1817), he gained enough critical attention and admiration to turn to writing professionally. In 1821, he published his collected Poems. In 1825, he moved to New York to edit the New-York Review and Atheneum Magazine then later the New York Evening Post, an important national newspaper that he eventually served as editor-in-chief.In New York, Bryant became an important (if not the most important) man of letters, socializing with such well-known writers as James Fenimore Cooper. At the Atheneum, he lectured on poetry; he supported freedom of speech and religion and lectured on the rights of labor unions and the great wrongs of slavery. He eventually helped create the Republican Party, giving his significant support to Abraham Lincoln. And he continued to write poetry, with six new poetry collections appearing between 1832 and 1864.\r\n\r\nBesides poetry, he published popular travelogues based on his travels across the United States and in Europe. By the time he died, due to complications from a fall while giving a speech at the unveiling of Giuseppe Mazzini\u2019s statue in New York, Bryant was considered one of the most important and influential writers of that era. He certainly contributed to making the idea of American literature viable both in America and abroad.\r\n

Thanatopsis (1817)<\/h2>\r\nTo him who in the love of nature holds\r\nCommunion with her visible forms, she speaks\r\nA various language; for his gayer hours\r\nShe has a voice of gladness, and a smile\r\nAnd eloquence of beauty; and she glides\r\nInto his darker musings, with a mild\r\nAnd healing sympathy that steals away\r\nTheir sharpness ere he is aware. When thoughts\r\nOf the last bitter hour come like a blight\r\nOver thy spirit, and sad images\r\nOf the stern agony, and shroud, and pall,\r\nAnd breathless darkness, and the narrow house,\r\nMake thee to shudder, and grow sick at heart;\u2014\r\nGo forth, under the open sky, and list\r\nTo Nature\u2019s teachings, while from all around\u2014\r\nEarth and her waters, and the depths of air\u2014\r\nComes a still voice. Yet a few days, and thee\r\nThe all-beholding sun shall see no more\r\nIn all his course; nor yet in the cold ground,\r\nWhere thy pale form was laid, with many tears,\r\nNor in the embrace of ocean, shall exist\r\nThy image. Earth, that nourished thee, shall claim\r\nThy growth, to be resolved to earth again,\r\nAnd, lost each human trace, surrendering up\r\nThine individual being, shalt thou go\r\nTo mix forever with the elements,\r\nTo be a brother to the insensible rock\r\nAnd to the sluggish clod, which the rude swain\r\nTurns with his share, and treads upon. The oak\r\nShall send his roots abroad, and pierce thy mold.\r\n\r\nYet not to thine eternal resting-place\r\nShalt thou retire alone, nor couldst thou wish\r\nCouch more magnificent. Thou shalt lie down\r\nWith patriarchs of the infant world\u2014with kings,\r\nThe powerful of the earth\u2014the wise, the good,\r\nFair forms, and hoary seers of ages past,\r\nAll in one mighty sepulchre. The hills\r\nRock-ribbed and ancient as the sun,\u2014the vales\r\nStretching in pensive quietness between;\r\nThe venerable woods\u2014rivers that move\r\nIn majesty, and the complaining brooks\r\nThat make the meadows green; and, poured round all,\r\nOld Ocean\u2019s gray and melancholy waste,\u2014\r\nAre but the solemn decorations all\r\nOf the great tomb of man. The golden sun,\r\nThe planets, all the infinite host of heaven,\r\nAre shining on the sad abodes of death\r\nThrough the still lapse of ages. All that tread\r\nThe globe are but a handful to the tribes\r\nThat slumber in its bosom.\u2014Take the wings\r\nOf morning, pierce the Barcan wilderness,\r\nOr lose thyself in the continuous woods\r\nWhere rolls the Oregon, and hears no sound,\r\nSave his own dashings\u2014yet the dead are there:\r\nAnd millions in those solitudes, since first\r\nThe flight of years began, have laid them down\r\nIn their last sleep\u2014the dead reign there alone.\r\n\r\nSo shalt thou rest\u2014and what if thou withdraw\r\nIn silence from the living, and no friend\r\nTake note of thy departure? All that breathe\r\nWill share thy destiny. The gay will laugh\r\nWhen thou art gone, the solemn brood of care\r\nPlod on, and each one as before will chase\r\nHis favorite phantom; yet all these shall leave\r\nTheir mirth and their employments, and shall come\r\nAnd make their bed with thee. As the long train\r\nOf ages glides away, the sons of men\u2014\r\nThe youth in life\u2019s fresh spring, and he who goes\r\nIn the full strength of years, matron and maid,\r\nThe speechless babe, and the gray-headed man\u2014\r\nShall one by one be gathered to thy side,\r\nBy those, who in their turn, shall follow them.\r\nSo live, that when thy summons comes to join\r\nThe innumerable caravan, which moves\r\nTo that mysterious realm, where each shall take\r\nHis chamber in the silent halls of death,\r\nThou go not, like the quarry-slave at night,\r\nScourged to his dungeon, but, sustained and soothed\r\nBy an unfaltering trust, approach thy grave\r\nLike one who wraps the drapery of his couch\r\nAbout him, and lies down to pleasant dreams.\r\n\r\nThe following video presents one reading of Thanatopsis, in light of characteristics of American Romantic literature.\r\n\r\n[embed]https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=H-_HUA09pIU[\/embed]\r\n

The Prairies (1833)<\/h2>\r\nThese are the gardens of the Desert, these\r\nThe unshorn fields, boundless and beautiful,\r\nFor which the speech of England has no name\u2014\r\nThe Prairies. I behold them for the first,\r\nAnd my heart swells, while the dilated sight\r\nTakes in the encircling vastness. Lo! they stretch,\r\nIn airy undulations, far away,\r\nAs if the ocean, in his gentlest swell,\r\nStood still, with all his rounded billows fixed,\r\nAnd motionless forever.\u2014Motionless?\u2014\r\nNo\u2014they are all unchained again. The clouds\r\nSweep over with their shadows, and, beneath,\r\nThe surface rolls and fluctuates to the eye;\r\nDark hollows seem to glide along and chase\r\nThe sunny ridges. Breezes of the South!\r\n\r\nWho toss the golden and the flame-like flowers,\r\nAnd pass the prairie-hawk that, poised on high,\r\nFlaps his broad wings, yet moves not\u2014ye have played\r\nAmong the palms of Mexico and vines\r\nOf Texas, and have crisped the limpid brooks\r\nThat from the fountains of Sonora glide\r\nInto the calm Pacific\u2014have ye fanned\r\nA nobler or a lovelier scene than this?\r\nMan hath no power in all this glorious work:\r\nThe hand that built the firmament hath heaved\r\nAnd smoothed these verdant swells, and sown their slopes\r\nWith herbage, planted them with island groves,\r\nAnd hedged them round with forests. Fitting floor\r\nFor this magnificent temple of the sky\u2014\r\nWith flowers whose glory and whose multitude\r\nRival the constellations! The great heavens\r\nSeem to stoop down upon the scene in love,\u2014\r\nA nearer vault, and of a tenderer blue,\r\nThan that which bends above our eastern hills.\r\n\r\nAs o\u2019er the verdant waste I guide my steed,\r\nAmong the high rank grass that sweeps his sides\r\nThe hollow beating of his footsteps seems\r\nA sacrilegious sound. I think of those\r\nUpon whose rest he tramples. Are they here\u2014\r\nThe dead of other days?\u2014and did the dust\r\nOf these fair solitudes once stir with life\r\nAnd burn with passion? Let the mighty mounds\r\nThat overlook the rivers, or that rise\r\nIn the dim forest crowded with old oaks,\r\nAnswer. A race, that long has passed away,\r\nBuilt them;\u2014a disciplined and populous race\r\nHeaped, with long toil, the earth, while yet the Greek\r\nWas hewing the Pentelicus to forms\r\nOf symmetry, and rearing on its rock\r\nThe glittering Parthenon. These ample fields\r\nNourished their harvest, here their herds were fed,\r\nWhen haply by their stalls the bison lowed,\r\nAnd bowed his maned shoulder to the yoke.\r\nAll day this desert murmured with their toils,\r\nTill twilight blushed, and lovers walked, and wooed\r\nIn a forgotten language, and old tunes,\r\nFrom instruments of unremembered form,\r\nGave the soft winds a voice. The red man came\u2014\r\nThe roaming hunter tribes, warlike and fierce,\r\nAnd the mound-builders vanished from the earth.\r\nThe solitude of centuries untold\r\nHas settled where they dwelt. The prairie-wolf\r\nHunts in their meadows, and his fresh-dug den\r\nYawns by my path. The gopher mines the ground\r\nWhere stood their swarming cities. All is gone;\r\nAll\u2014save the piles of earth that hold their bones,\r\nThe platforms where they worshipped unknown gods,\r\nThe barriers which they builded from the soil\r\nTo keep the foe at bay\u2014till o\u2019er the walls\r\nThe wild beleaguerers broke, and, one by one,\r\nThe strongholds of the plain were forced, and heaped\r\nWith corpses. The brown vultures of the wood\r\nFlocked to those vast uncovered sepulchres,\r\nAnd sat unscared and silent at their feast.\r\nHaply some solitary fugitive,\r\nLurking in marsh and forest, till the sense\r\nOf desolation and of fear became\r\nBitterer than death, yielded himself to die.\r\nMan\u2019s better nature triumphed then. Kind words\r\nWelcomed and soothed him; the rude conquerors\r\nSeated the captive with their chiefs; he chose\r\nA bride among their maidens, and at length\r\nSeemed to forget\u2014yet ne\u2019er forgot\u2014the wife\r\nOf his first love, and her sweet little ones,\r\nButchered, amid their shrieks, with all his race.\r\n\r\nThus change the forms of being. Thus arise\r\nRaces of living things, glorious in strength,\r\nAnd perish, as the quickening breath of God\r\nFills them, or is withdrawn. The red man, too,\r\nHas left the blooming wilds he ranged so long,\r\nAnd, nearer to the Rocky Mountains, sought\r\nA wilder hunting-ground. The beaver builds\r\nNo longer by these streams, but far away,\r\nOn waters whose blue surface ne\u2019er gave back\r\nThe white man\u2019s face\u2014among Missouri\u2019s springs,\r\nAnd pools whose issues swell the Oregon\u2014\r\nHe rears his little Venice. In these plains\r\nThe bison feeds no more. Twice twenty leagues\r\nBeyond remotest smoke of hunter\u2019s camp,\r\nRoams the majestic brute, in herds that shake\r\nThe earth with thundering steps\u2014yet here I meet\r\nHis ancient footprints stamped beside the pool.\r\n\r\nStill this great solitude is quick with life.\r\nMyriads of insects, gaudy as the flowers\r\nThey flutter over, gentle quadrupeds,\r\nAnd birds, that scarce have learned the fear of man,\r\nAre here, and sliding reptiles of the ground,\r\nStartlingly beautiful. The graceful deer\r\nBounds to the wood at my approach. The bee,\r\nA more adventurous colonist than man,\r\nWith whom he came across the eastern deep,\r\nFills the savannas with his murmurings,\r\nAnd hides his sweets, as in the golden age,\r\nWithin the hollow oak. I listen long\r\nTo his domestic hum, and think I hear\r\nThe sound of that advancing multitude\r\nWhich soon shall fill these deserts. From the ground\r\nComes up the laugh of children, the soft voice\r\nOf maidens, and the sweet and solemn hymn\r\nOf Sabbath worshippers. The low of herds\r\nBlends with the rustling of the heavy grain\r\nOver the dark brown furrows. All at once\r\nA fresher winds sweeps by, and breaks my dream,\r\nAnd I am in the wilderness alone.\r\n
\r\n

questions to consider<\/h3>\r\n
    \r\n \t
  • In \u201cThanatopsis,\u201d how does Bryant use the senses to convey a conception of death?<\/li>\r\n \t
  • In \u201cThanatopsis,\u201d what concrete objects in nature convey a conception of death, and why?<\/li>\r\n \t
  • How, if at all, does Bryant present America - the land of America - as a democracy of death in \u201cThanatopsis?\u201d<\/li>\r\n \t
  • In \u201cThe Prairies,\u201d how do the Prairies represent both the promise and the destructiveness of America, the new land? Why?<\/li>\r\n<\/ul>\r\n<\/div>","rendered":"

    Introduction: William Cullen Bryant (1794\u20131878)<\/h2>\n

    \"William<\/p>\n

    William Cullen Bryant lived and wrote at the cusp of the Romantic era; indeed, he\u2019s credited with giving an American slant to the English Romantic poetry heralded by William Wordsworth (1770 – 1850) and Samuel Taylor Coleridge\u2019s (1772 – 1834) Lyrical Ballads (1799). Like Wordsworth, Bryant appreciated emulated, the neoclassical poetry of Alexander Pope and Samuel Johnson (1709 – 1784). Bryant also responded to the so-called graveyard school of poetry of Thomas Gray (1716 – 1771), poetry that linked emotion with observation of the natural world. From Wordsworth and Coleridge, Bryant awoke to the power of nature itself to teach, guide, and inspire the individual\u2019s developing mind and spirit. His poetry especially reflected his life-long love of nature, especially in his use of scenic nature imagery.<\/p>\n

    From his childhood on, he was exposed to the wonders of the American landscape; he was born in Cummington, Massachusetts. With his father, Dr. Peter Bryant (1767\u20131820), who was a naturalist, Bryant took many walking excursions into the surrounding woods and the Berkeshire foothills. His father\u2019s library also provided Bryant with ample reading material (which he read with the help of his uncle, who schooled him in the classics). His father encouraged Bryant\u2019s early literary bent, including having Bryant\u2019s pro-Federalist poem The Embargo; or, Sketches of the Times: A Satire by a Youth of Thirteen (1808) published as a pamphlet.<\/p>\n

    In 1810, Bryant entered Williams College. There, he continued to write, drafting \u201cThanatopsis,\u201d which would become his most important poem. After learning that his family could not support his college education, Bryant studied law and was admitted to the bar in 1815. From 1816 to 1825, he practiced law at Great Barrington, married Frances Fairchild, began a family, and still wrote poetry. Upon publishing a revised \u201cThanatopsis,\u201d (1817), he gained enough critical attention and admiration to turn to writing professionally. In 1821, he published his collected Poems. In 1825, he moved to New York to edit the New-York Review and Atheneum Magazine then later the New York Evening Post, an important national newspaper that he eventually served as editor-in-chief.In New York, Bryant became an important (if not the most important) man of letters, socializing with such well-known writers as James Fenimore Cooper. At the Atheneum, he lectured on poetry; he supported freedom of speech and religion and lectured on the rights of labor unions and the great wrongs of slavery. He eventually helped create the Republican Party, giving his significant support to Abraham Lincoln. And he continued to write poetry, with six new poetry collections appearing between 1832 and 1864.<\/p>\n

    Besides poetry, he published popular travelogues based on his travels across the United States and in Europe. By the time he died, due to complications from a fall while giving a speech at the unveiling of Giuseppe Mazzini\u2019s statue in New York, Bryant was considered one of the most important and influential writers of that era. He certainly contributed to making the idea of American literature viable both in America and abroad.<\/p>\n

    Thanatopsis (1817)<\/h2>\n

    To him who in the love of nature holds
    \nCommunion with her visible forms, she speaks
    \nA various language; for his gayer hours
    \nShe has a voice of gladness, and a smile
    \nAnd eloquence of beauty; and she glides
    \nInto his darker musings, with a mild
    \nAnd healing sympathy that steals away
    \nTheir sharpness ere he is aware. When thoughts
    \nOf the last bitter hour come like a blight
    \nOver thy spirit, and sad images
    \nOf the stern agony, and shroud, and pall,
    \nAnd breathless darkness, and the narrow house,
    \nMake thee to shudder, and grow sick at heart;\u2014
    \nGo forth, under the open sky, and list
    \nTo Nature\u2019s teachings, while from all around\u2014
    \nEarth and her waters, and the depths of air\u2014
    \nComes a still voice. Yet a few days, and thee
    \nThe all-beholding sun shall see no more
    \nIn all his course; nor yet in the cold ground,
    \nWhere thy pale form was laid, with many tears,
    \nNor in the embrace of ocean, shall exist
    \nThy image. Earth, that nourished thee, shall claim
    \nThy growth, to be resolved to earth again,
    \nAnd, lost each human trace, surrendering up
    \nThine individual being, shalt thou go
    \nTo mix forever with the elements,
    \nTo be a brother to the insensible rock
    \nAnd to the sluggish clod, which the rude swain
    \nTurns with his share, and treads upon. The oak
    \nShall send his roots abroad, and pierce thy mold.<\/p>\n

    Yet not to thine eternal resting-place
    \nShalt thou retire alone, nor couldst thou wish
    \nCouch more magnificent. Thou shalt lie down
    \nWith patriarchs of the infant world\u2014with kings,
    \nThe powerful of the earth\u2014the wise, the good,
    \nFair forms, and hoary seers of ages past,
    \nAll in one mighty sepulchre. The hills
    \nRock-ribbed and ancient as the sun,\u2014the vales
    \nStretching in pensive quietness between;
    \nThe venerable woods\u2014rivers that move
    \nIn majesty, and the complaining brooks
    \nThat make the meadows green; and, poured round all,
    \nOld Ocean\u2019s gray and melancholy waste,\u2014
    \nAre but the solemn decorations all
    \nOf the great tomb of man. The golden sun,
    \nThe planets, all the infinite host of heaven,
    \nAre shining on the sad abodes of death
    \nThrough the still lapse of ages. All that tread
    \nThe globe are but a handful to the tribes
    \nThat slumber in its bosom.\u2014Take the wings
    \nOf morning, pierce the Barcan wilderness,
    \nOr lose thyself in the continuous woods
    \nWhere rolls the Oregon, and hears no sound,
    \nSave his own dashings\u2014yet the dead are there:
    \nAnd millions in those solitudes, since first
    \nThe flight of years began, have laid them down
    \nIn their last sleep\u2014the dead reign there alone.<\/p>\n

    So shalt thou rest\u2014and what if thou withdraw
    \nIn silence from the living, and no friend
    \nTake note of thy departure? All that breathe
    \nWill share thy destiny. The gay will laugh
    \nWhen thou art gone, the solemn brood of care
    \nPlod on, and each one as before will chase
    \nHis favorite phantom; yet all these shall leave
    \nTheir mirth and their employments, and shall come
    \nAnd make their bed with thee. As the long train
    \nOf ages glides away, the sons of men\u2014
    \nThe youth in life\u2019s fresh spring, and he who goes
    \nIn the full strength of years, matron and maid,
    \nThe speechless babe, and the gray-headed man\u2014
    \nShall one by one be gathered to thy side,
    \nBy those, who in their turn, shall follow them.
    \nSo live, that when thy summons comes to join
    \nThe innumerable caravan, which moves
    \nTo that mysterious realm, where each shall take
    \nHis chamber in the silent halls of death,
    \nThou go not, like the quarry-slave at night,
    \nScourged to his dungeon, but, sustained and soothed
    \nBy an unfaltering trust, approach thy grave
    \nLike one who wraps the drapery of his couch
    \nAbout him, and lies down to pleasant dreams.<\/p>\n

    The following video presents one reading of Thanatopsis, in light of characteristics of American Romantic literature.<\/p>\n