Shall grow with living waters green,
And lift to heaven the voice of praise.
William Cullen Bryant, 1840.
AMERICA’S FIRST POET AND HIS HYMNS
William Cullen Bryant, America’s first great poet, was also a hymn-writer. Although he did not devote much of his thought and genius to sacred lyrics, he wrote at least two splendid hymns that merit a place in every hymn collection. The one, “Thou, whose unmeasured temple stands,” is a church dedication hymn of rare beauty; the other, “Look from Thy sphere of endless day,” is unquestionably one of the finest home mission hymns ever written.
Born at Cummington, Mass., November 3, 1794, he was educated at Williams College to be a lawyer. It was his writing of “Thanatopsis” as a boy of seventeen years that gave the first notice to the world that America had produced a great poet.
It is said that when the lines of “Thanatopsis” were submitted to Richard H. Dana, editor of the “North American Review,” he was skeptical.
“No one on this side of the Atlantic,” he declared, “is capable of writing such verses.”
Bryant was brought up in a typical New England Puritan home. Family worship and strict attendance at public worship was the rule in the Bryant household. Every little while the children of the community would also gather in the district schoolhouse, where they would be examined in the Catechism by the parish minister, a venerable man who was loved by old and young alike.
While yet a little child Bryant began to pray that he might receive the gift of writing poetry. No doubt he had been influenced to a large degree in this desire by the fact that his father was a lover of verse and possessed a splendid library of the great English poets. The youthful Bryant was taught to memorize the noble hymns of Isaac Watts, and when he was only five years old he would stand on a chair and recite them to imaginary audiences.