In 1825, after his marriage to a Miss Fairchild of Great Barrington, he removed from that town to New York. There he became editor of the New York Review and Athenæum Magazine; and a year later he accepted the position of assistant editor of the Evening Post, a newspaper with which he remained for the rest of his life, assuming in 1829 the office of editor-in-chief. Though his contributions to this paper were not a poet’s work, they enabled him to unite his literary power with his deep interest in the political concerns of the country, and for many years to help direct public opinion during the most critical periods in the history of the new nation. More than this, while steadily provided with a good income he could spend his leisure hours among the quiet country scenes where he found inspiration for his greatest works, his simple nature poems.
The busy years of his life as a journalist were several times interrupted by travel. Besides visiting Mexico, Cuba and various parts of the United States, he made six voyages to Europe, and on the fourth extended the journey to Egypt and the Holy Land. His Letters of a Traveller and Letters from the East tell of the impressions he received in these countries.
Besides translating the Iliad and the Odyssey and writing the two fairy stories in verse, Sella and The Little People of the Snow, Bryant undertook no poetic work of any length. The poems for which his name is most honored are the little lyrics in which the calm and beauty of nature tell us of truths that never change. Among these, some that are best liked by readers both young and old are The Yellow Violet, The Fringed Gentian, A Forest Hymn, The Planting of the Apple Tree, Robert of Lincoln, The Gladness of Nature, March and To a Waterfowl.
These poems, when studied, are sure to reveal the simplicity and sincerity not only of Bryant’s love for nature, but of his character as a man. They show the freedom from affectation that marks alike his writings and his everyday life. He followed almost sternly his high ideals both of moral right and literary correctness, and this has made him seem somewhat cold and formal. But probably all who can read most clearly the meaning of his life and works feel that so true-hearted a man could not have been lacking in warm and generous kindliness.
TO A WATERFOWL
By William Cullen Bryant
Note.—“He says in a letter that he felt, as he walked up the hills, very forlorn and desolate indeed, not knowing what was to become of him in the big world, which grew bigger as he ascended, and yet darker with the coming on of night. The sun had already set, leaving behind it one of those brilliant seas of chrysolite and opal which often flood the New England skies; and, while he was looking upon the rosy splendor with rapt admiration, a solitary bird made wing along the illuminated horizon. He watched the lone wanderer until it was lost in the distance, asking himself whence it had come and to what far home it was flying. When he went to the house where he was to stop for the night, his mind was still full of what he had seen and felt, and he wrote these lines, as imperishable as our language, To a Waterfowl.”—Parke Godwin, in Biography of Bryant.