Children's Stories in American Literature, 1660-1860

by Henrietta Christian Wright

In 1821 he published his first volume of poems under the title, Poems by William Cullen Bryant. It was a little book of forty pages, containing Thanatopsis, Green River, To a Waterfowl, and other pieces, among which was the charming, The Yellow Violet, a very breath of the spring. This little book was given to the world in the same year in which Cooper published The Spy and Irving completed The Sketch Book.

In 1825 Bryant removed to New York to assume the editorship of a monthly review, to which he gave many of his best-known poems. A year later he joined the staff of the Evening Post, with which he was connected until his death.

From this time his life was that of a literary man. He made of the Evening Post a progressive, public-spirited newspaper, whose field embraced every phase of American life. When he became its editor five days were required for the reports of the Legislature at Albany to reach New York, these being carried by mail coach. The extracts printed from English newspapers were a month old, and even this was considered enterprising journalism. All the despatches from different cities of the United States bore dates a fortnight old, while it was often impossible to obtain news at all. The paper contained advertisements of the stage lines to Boston, Philadelphia, and the West; accounts of projects to explore the centre of the earth by means of sunken wells; reports of the possibility of a railroad being built in the United States; advertisements of lottery tickets; a list of the unclaimed letters at the post-office, and usually a chapter of fiction. Such was the newspaper of 1831.

During the fifty-two years of his editorship the United States were developed from a few struggling colonies bound together by common interests into one of the greatest of modern nations. And through all the changes incident to this career Bryant stood always firm to the principles which he recognized as the true foundations of a country's greatness.

When he was born the United States consisted of a strip of land lying between the Atlantic and the Alleghany Mountains, of which more than half was unbroken wilderness. At his death the Republic extended from the Atlantic to the Pacific and from the Gulf to Canada. His life-time corresponded with the growth of his country, and his own work was a noble contribution to the nation's prosperity. In all times of national trouble the Evening Post championed the cause of justice, and Bryant was everywhere respected as a man devoted above all to the "cause of America and of human nature."

The conduct of the Evening Post did not, however, interfere with his work as a poet, and in 1832 he published in one volume all the poems which he had written, most of which had previously appeared in magazines. A few months later an edition appeared in London with an introduction by Irving. It was this volume which gave Bryant an English reputation as great as that he enjoyed in America. Like Cooper, he revealed an unfamiliar nature as seen in American forests, hills, and streams, taking his readers with him into those solitary and quiet places where dwelt the wild birds and wild flowers. The very titles of his poems show how closely he lived to the life of the world around him. The Walk at Sunset, The West Wind, The Forest Hymn, Autumn Woods, The Death of the Flowers, The Fringed Gentian, The Wind and Stream, The Little People of the Snow, and many others disclose how Bryant gathered from every source the beauty which he translated into his verses.

Among the poems which touch upon the Indian traditions are The Indian Girl's Lament, Monument Mountain, and An Indian at the Burial-place of his Father. In these he lingers upon the pathetic fate of the red man driven from the home of his race and forced into exile by the usurping whites. They are full of sadness, seeming to wake once again the memories of other times when the forest was alive with the night-fires of savage man and the days brought only the gladness of freedom.

Besides his original work Bryant performed a noble task in the translation of the Iliad and Odyssey of Homer. He was over seventy when he began this work, and was five years in completing it. The poems are put into blank verse, of which Bryant was a master, and they have caught the very spirit of the old Greek bard; so faithfully did the modern poet understand that shadowy past that he might have watched with Helen the burning of Troy, or journeyed with Ulysses throughout his wanderings in the perilous seas.

The light of Bryant's imagination burned steadily to the end. In his eighty-second year he wrote his last important poem, The Flood of Years. It is a beautiful confession of faith in the nobility of life and the immortality of the soul, and a fitting crown for an existence so beneficent and exalted.

His last public work was to participate in unveiling a monument to the Italian statesman Mazzini in Central Park, when he was the orator of the day. On the same evening he was seized with his last illness. He died on June 12, 1878, and was buried at Roslyn, Long Island, one of his favorite country homes.