dwelling of the Genevieve of his chilly little “Song,” his Genevieve being Miss Frances Fairchild of that beautiful town, whom he married in his twenty-seventh year, and who was the light of his household for nearly half a century. It was to her, the reader may like to know, that he addressed the ideal poem beginning “O fairest of the rural maids” (circa 1825), “The Future Life” (1837), and “The Life that Is” (1858); and her memory and her loss are tenderly embalmed in one of the most touching of his later poems, “October, 1866.”
“Thanatopsis” was sent to the “North American Review” (whether by its author or his father is uncertain), and with such a modest, not to say enigmatical, note of introduction, that its authorship was left in doubt. The “Review” was managed by a club of young literary gentlemen, who styled themselves “The North American Club,” two of whose members, Richard Henry Dana and Edward Tyrrel Channing, were considered its editors. Mr. Dana read the poem carefully, and was so surprised at its excellence that he doubted whether it was the production of an American, an opinion in which his associates are understood to have concurred. While they were hesitating about its acceptance, he was told that the writer was a member of the Massachusetts senate; and, the senate being then in session, he started immediately from Cambridge for Boston. He reached the statehouse, and inquired for Senator Bryant. A tall, middle-aged man, with a business-like look, was pointed out to him. He was satisfied that he could not be the poet he sought, so he posted back to Cambridge without an introduction. The story ends here, and rather tamely; for the original narrator forgot, or perhaps never knew, that Dr. Bryant was a member of the senate, and that it was among the possibilities that he was the senator with a similar name. American poetry may be said to have begun in 1817 with the September number of the “North American Review,” which contained “Thanatopsis” and the “Inscription for the Entrance of a Wood,” the last being printed as a “Fragment.” In March, 1818, the impression that “Thanatopsis” created was strengthened by the appearance of the lines “To a Waterfowl,” and the “Version of a Fragment of Simonides.”
Mr. Bryant's literary life may now be said to have begun, though he depended upon his profession for his daily bread. He continued his contributions to the “North American Review” in prose papers on literary topics, and maintained the most friendly relations with its conductors; notably so with Mr. Dana, who was seven years his elder, and who possessed, like himself, the accomplishment of verse. At the suggestion of this poetical and critical brother, he was invited to deliver a poem before the Phi Beta Kappa society at Harvard college an honor which is offered only to those who have already made a reputation, and are likely to reflect credit on the society as well as on themselves. He accepted, and in 1821 wrote his first poem of any length, “The Ages,” which still remains the best poem of the kind that was ever recited before a college society either in this country or in England; grave, stately, thoughtful, presenting in animated picturesque stanzas a compact summary of the history of mankind. A young Englishman of twenty-one, Thomas Babington Macaulay, delivered in the same year a poem on “Evening,” before the students of Trinity college, Cambridge; and it is instructive to compare his conventional heroics with the spirited Spenserian stanzas of Bryant. The lines “To a Waterfowl,” written at Bridgewater in 1815, were followed by “Green River.” “A Winter Piece,” “The West Wind,” “The Burial-Place,” “Blessed are they that mourn,” “No man knoweth his Sepulchre,” “A Walk at Sunset,” and the “Hymn to Death.” These poems, which cover a period of six busy years, are interesting to the poetic student as examples of the different styles of their writer, and of the changing elements of his thoughts and feelings. “Green River,” for example, is a momentary revealment of his shy temperament and his daily pursuits. Its glimpses of nature are charming, and his wish to be beside its waters is the most natural one in the world. The young lawyer is not complimentary to his clients, whom he styles “the dregs of men,” while his pen, which does its best to serve them, becomes “a barbarous pen.” He is dejected, but a visit to the river will restore his spirits; for, as he gazes upon its lonely and lovely stream,
| “ | An image of that calm life appears |
| That won my heart in my greener years.” |
“A Winter Piece” is a gallery of woodland pictures, which surpasses anything of the kind in the language. “A Walk at Sunset” is notable in that it is the first poem in which we see (faintly, it must be confessed) the aboriginal element, which was soon to become prominent in Bryant's poetry. It was inseparable from the primeval forests of the New World, but he was the first to perceive its poetic value. The “Hymn to Death” — stately, majestic, consolatory — concludes with a touching tribute to the worth of his good father, who died while he was writing it, at the age of fifty-four. The year 1821 was important to Bryant, for it witnessed the publication of his first collection of verse, his marriage, and the death of his father.
The next four years of his life were more productive than any that had preceded them, for he wrote more than thirty poems during that time. The aboriginal element was creative in “The Indian Girl's Lament,” “An Indian Story,” “An Indian at the Burial-Place of his Fathers,” and, noblest of all, “Monument Mountain”; the Hellenic element predominated in “The Massacre at Scio” and “The Song of the Greek Amazon”; the Hebraic element touched him lightly in “Rizpah” and the “Song of the Stars”; and the pure poetic element was manifest in “March,” “The Rivulet” (which, by the way, ran through the grounds of the old homestead at Cummington), “After a Tempest,” “The Murdered Traveller,” “Hymn to the North Star,” “A Forest Hymn,” “Fairest of the Rural Maids,” and the exquisite and now most pathetic poem, “June.” These poems and others not specified here, if read continuously and in the order in which they were composed, show a wide range of sympathies, a perfect acquaintance with many measures, and a clear, capacious, ever-growing intellect. They are all distinctive of the genius of
