The literary life of Bryant begins with the publication of "Thanatopsis" in the "North American Review," in 1816; for we need take no account of those earlier blossoms, plucked untimely from the tree, as they had been prematurely expanded by the heat of party politics. The strain of that song was of a higher mood. In those days, when American literature spoke with faint and feeble voice, like the chirp of half-awakened birds in the morning twilight, we need not say what cordial welcome was extended to a poem which embodied in blank verse worthy of anybody since Milton thoughts of the highest reach and noblest power, or what wonder was mingled with the praise when it was announced that this grand and majestic moral teaching and this rich and sustained music were the work of a boy of eighteen. Not that Bryant was no more than eighteen when "Thanatopsis" was printed, for he must pay one of the tributes of eminence in having all the world know that he was born in 1794; but he was no more than eighteen when it was written, and surely never was there riper fruit plucked from so young a tree. And now we have before us, with the imprint of 1864, his latest volume, entitled "Thirty Poems." Between this date and that of the publication of "Thanatopsis" there sweeps an arch of forty-eight years. With Bryant these have been years of manly toil, of resolute sacrifice, of faithful discharge of all the duties of life. The cultivation of the poetical faculty is not always favorable to the growth of the character, but Bryant is no less estimable as a man than admirable as a poet. It has been his lot to earn his bread by the exercise of the prose part of his mind,—by those qualities which he has in common with other men,—and his poetry has been written in the intervals and breathing-spaces of a life of regular industry. This necessity for ungenial toil may have added something to the shyness and gravity of the poet's manners; but it has doubtless given earnestness, concentration, depth, and a strong flavor of life to his verse. Had he been a man of leisure, he might have written more, but he could hardly have written better. And nothing tends more to prolong to old age the freshness of feeling and the sensibility to impressions which are characteristic of the poetical temperament than the dedication of a portion of every day to some kind of task-work. The sweetest flowers are those which grow upon the rocks of renunciation. Byron at thirty-seven was a burnt-out volcano: Bryant at threescore and ten is as sensitive to the touch of beauty as at twenty.
The poetry of Bryant is not great in amount, but it represents a great deal of work, as few men are more finished artists than he, or more patient in shaping and polishing their productions. No piece of verse ever leaves his hands till it has received the last touch demanded by the most correct judgment and the most fastidious taste. Thus the style of his poetry is always admirable. Nowhere can one find in what he has written a careless or slovenly expression, an awkward phrase, or an ill-chosen word. He never puts in an epithet to fill out a line, and never uses one which could be improved by substituting another. The range within which he moves is not wide. He has not written narrative or dramatic poems: he has not painted poetical portraits: he has not aspired to the honors of satire, of wit, or of humor: he has made no contributions to the poetry of passion. His poems may be divided into two great classes,—those which express the moral aspects of humanity, and those which interpret the language of Nature; though it may be added that in not a few of his productions these two elements are combined. Those of the former class are not so remarkable for originality of treatment as for the beauty and truth with which they express the reflections of the general mind and the emotions of the general heart. In these poems we see our own experience returned to us, touched with the lights and colored with the hues of the most exquisite poetry. Their tone is grave and high, but not gloomy or morbid: the edges of the cloud of life are turned to gold by faith and hope. Of the poems of this class, "Thanatopsis," of which we have already spoken, is one of the best known. Others are the "Hymn to Death," "The Old Man's Funeral," "A Forest Hymn," "The Lapse of Time," "An Evening Reverie," "The Old Man's Counsel," and "The Past." This last is one of the noblest of his productions, full of solemn beauty and melancholy music, and we cannot deny ourselves the pleasure of quoting a few of its stanzas.
"Thou unrelenting Past!
Strong are the barriers round thy dark domain,
And fetters, sure and fast,
Hold all that enter thy unbreathing reign.
"Far in thy realm withdrawn,
Old empires sit in sullenness and gloom,
And glorious ages gone
Lie deep within the shadow of thy womb.
"Childhood, with all its mirth,
Youth, Manhood, Age, that draws us to the ground,
And last, Man's Life on earth,
Glide to thy dim dominions, and are bound.
* * * * *
"In thy abysses hide
Beauty and excellence unknown,—to thee
Earth's wonder and her pride
Are gathered, as the waters to the sea;
"Labors of good to man,
Unpublished charity, unbroken faith,—
Love, that 'midst grief began,
And grew with years, and faltered not in death.
"Full many a mighty name
Lurks in thy depths, unuttered, unrevered;
With thee are silent fame.
Forgotten arts, and wisdom disappeared.
"Thine for a space are they,—
Yet shalt thou yield thy treasures up at last;
Thy gates shall yet give way,
Thy bolts shall fall, inexorable Past!
"All that of good and fair
Has gone into thy womb from earliest time
Shall then come forth to wear
The glory and the beauty of its prime."
Here is nothing new. It is the old, sad strain, of coeval birth with poetry itself. It may be read in the Hebrew of the Book of Job and in the Greek of Homer: but with what dignity of sentiment, what majestic music, what beauty of language, the oft-repeated lesson of humanity is enforced! Every word is chosen with unerring judgment, and no needless dilution of language weakens the force of the conceptions and pictures. Bryant is one of the few poets who will bear the test of the well-nigh obsolete art of verbal criticism: observe the expressions, "silent fame," "forgotten arts," "wisdom disappeared": how exactly these epithets satisfy the ear and the mind! how impossible to change any one of them for the better!
In Bryant's descriptive poems there is the same finished execution and the same beauty of style as in his reflective and didactic poems, with more originality of treatment. It was his fortune to be born and reared in the western part of Massachusetts, and to become familiar with some of the most beautiful inland scenery of New England in youth and early manhood, when the mind takes impressions which the attrition of life never wears out. In his study of Nature he combines the faculty and the vision, the eye of the naturalist and the imagination of the poet. No man observes the outward shows of earth and sky more accurately; no man feels them more vividly; no man describes them more beautifully. He was the first of our poets who, deserting the conventional paths in which imitators move, studied and delineated Nature as it exists in New England, modified by the elements of a comparatively low latitude, a brilliant sky, uncertain springs, short and hot summers, richly colored autumns, and winters of pure and crystal cold. The merit and the popularity of Bryant's descriptive poetry prove how intimate is the relation between imagination and truth, and how the poet who is faithful to the highest requisitions of his art must obey laws as rigid as those of science itself. Here, at the risk of making our readers read again what they may have read before, we transcribe a passage from a memorandum of Mr. Morritt's, containing an account of Scott's proceedings while studying the localities of "Rokeby":—
"I observed him noting down even the peculiar little wild flowers and herbs that accidentally grew round and on the side of a bold crag near his intended Cave of Grey Denzil, and could not help saying, that, as he was not to be upon oath in his work, daisies, violets, and primroses would be as poetical as any of the humble plants he was examining. I laughed, in short, at his scrupulousness; but I understood him when he replied, 'that in Nature no two scenes were exactly alike, and that whoever copied truly what was before his eyes would possess the same variety in his descriptions, and exhibit apparently an imagination as boundless as the range of Nature in the scenes he recorded; whereas, whoever trusted to his imagination would soon find his own mind circumscribed and contracted to a few images, and the repetition of these would sooner or later produce that very monotony and barrenness which had always haunted descriptive poetry in the hands of any but the patient worshippers of truth.'"
This is excellent good sense, and the descriptive poetry of Bryant shows how carefully he has observed the rules which Scott has laid down. He never has a conventional image, and never resorts to the second-hand frippery of a poetical commonplace-book to tag his verses with. Every season of our American year has been delineated by him, and the drawing and coloring of his pictures are always correct. Our American springs, for instance, are not at all the ideal or poetical springs, and Bryant does not pretend that they are; and yet he can find a poetical side to them, as witness his poem entitled "March":—
"The stormy March is come at last,
With wind, and cloud, and changing skies:
I hear the rushing of the blast
That through the snowy valley flies.
"Ah, passing few are they who speak,
Wild, stormy month! in praise of thee;
Yet, though thy winds are loud and bleak,
Thou art a welcome month to me.
"For thou to northern lands again
The glad and glorious sun dost bring;
And them hast joined the gentle train,
And wear'st the gentle name of Spring.
"And in thy reign of blast and storm
Smiles many a long, bright, sunny day,
When the changed winds are soft and warm,
And heaven puts on the blue of May."
This is all as strictly true as if it were drawn up for an affidavit. March, as we all know, is the eldest daughter of Winter, and bitterly like her grim sire. The snow which has melted from the uplands lingers in the valleys; the storms, and the cloudy skies, and the rushing blasts mark the sullen retreat of winter; but the days are growing longer, the sun mounts higher, and sometimes a soft and vernal air flows from the blue sky, like Burns's daisy "glinting forth" amid the storm.
March and April come and go, and May succeeds. Hers is not quite the "blue, voluptuous eye" she wears in the portraits which poets paint of her, and those who court her smiles are sometimes chilled by decidedly wintry glances. Bryant gives us her best aspect:—