Library of the best American literature / Containing the lives of our authors in story form, their portraits, their homes, and their personal traits, how they worked and what they wrote; choice selections from eminent writers, embracing great American poets and novelists, foremost women in American letters, distinguished critics and essayists, our national humorists, noted journalists and magazine contributors, popular writers for young people, great orators and public lecturers

by Unknown

Then amid the limpid waters,

Or beneath the cooling shade,

Let me shun the scorching sunbeams

And the sickly breeze evade.

---

THE PAST.

No poet, perhaps, in the world is so exquisite in rhythm, or classically pure and accurate in language, so appropriate in diction, phrase or metaphor as Bryant.

He dips his pen in words as an inspired painter his pencil in colors. The following poem is a fair specimen of his deep vein in his chosen serious themes. Pathos is pre-eminently his endowment but the tinge of melancholy in his treatment is always pleasing.

HOU unrelenting Past!