CHAPTER V
WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT
1794-1878
William Cullen Bryant was born in 1794 in a log farmhouse in the beautiful Berkshire Hills of Western Massachusetts. His father was the country doctor and the child was named after a celebrated physician. He began his school days in a log school-house beside a little brook that crept down from the hills and went singing on its way to the valley.
All around stood the great forest-covered hills, haunted by wolves, bears, deer and wild-cats, which occasionally crept down even to the settlements carrying terror to the hearts of the women and children. Wherever the slopes were cleared, the farm lands had taken possession, the forest often creeping up close to the little homes.
From the door-yard of the Bryant homestead the whole world seemed to be made up of hills and forest, and fertile fields, while in the woods grew the exquisite New England wild flowers, the laurel and azalea, the violet, the tiger lily, and the fringed gentian. Here also lived the summer birds of New England, the robins, the blue bird and the thrush, haunting the woods from early spring until late autumn.
All these sights and sounds sunk into the boy's heart and made themselves into a poem which he wrote down in words many years after, and which is as clear and fresh as the voice of the little brook itself after which it was named. This poem is called The Rivulet and it shows the poet-child standing upon the banks of the little stream listening to the song of the birds or gathering wild flowers.
It was his first lesson in that wonder-book of nature from which he translated so much that was beautiful that he became the distinctive poet of the woods and streams.
Lessons from books he learned in the little log school-house, preparing himself for ordeals when the minister came to visit the school. At these times the pupils were dressed in their best and sat in solemn anxiety while the minister asked them questions out of the catechism and made them a long speech on morals and good behavior. On one of these occasions the ten-year-old poet declaimed some of his own verses descriptive of the school.