WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT 151 American Review, though not precisely as we have it now ; as was also the " In- scription for the Entrance to a Wood" a study from nature, at" Cummington, and the well-known lines " To a Water-fowl," which were written while he was studying his profession at Bridgewater. The next four or five years of Mr. Bryant's life were comparatively unpro- ductive ; at least, we hear of nothing from his pen until 182 1, when he delivered " The Ages " before the Phi Beta Kappa Society at Cambridge. It was published there during the same year, at the suggestion of some of his friends, in a little volume which contained, in addition to the three poems already mentioned, the pleasant pastoral, " Green River," previously contributed to Dana's " Idle Man." That law had by this time become distasteful to him, we gather from its conclud- ing stanza : " Though forced to drudge for the dregs of men, And scrawl strange words with the barbarous pen." In 1824 we find him writing for the Literary Gazette, a favorite weekly pub- lished at Boston, and edited by Theophilus Parsons. His contributions to this journal were "The Murdered Traveller," "The Old Mans' Funeral," "The For- est Hymn," and the spirited lyric " March." The next year he removed to New York, and became one of the editors of the New York Review and At henceum Magazine. It was the wisest step that he could have taken, although New York, at that time, was of less importance in the literary world than Boston or Phila- delphia. The Review was not a success, so it was merged, in 1826, in a work of similar character, The United States Review and Literary Gazette, which closed with the second volume in September, 1827. Mr. Bryant's brief residence in New York had enlarged his circle of friends, among whom were Robert C. Sands, who was associated with him in the New York Review, Fitz-Greene Halleck, Gulian C. Verplanck, and others ; and it had added to his popularity as a writer, the excellence and variety of his poems embracing a wider range of subjects than he had hitherto chosen. The most noticeable of these were "The African Chief," "The Disinterred Warrior," "The Indian Girl's Lament," and "The Death of the Flowers." It is not too much to say of the last that it is the most exquisite poem of the kind in the language as perfect, in its way, as Keats' " Ode to Au- tumn," which it resembles in grace and delicacy of conception, and surpasses in fidelity and picturesqueness of description. It is interesting, also, from the light which it sheds upon a painful incident in the life of the poet the early death of a beloved and beautiful sister : " In the cojd, moist earth we laid her, when the forests cast the leaf, And we wept that one so lovely should have a life so brief : Yet not unmeet it was that one, like that young friend of ours, So gentle and so beautiful, should perish with the flowers." There are other allusions to this " fair, meek blossom " in Mr. Bryant's poems. The sonnet, "Consumption," was addressed to her; and she mingled with his solemn musings in " The Past."
