Poetical Works of William Cullen Bryant. Bryant William Cullen

the morn,

      Is gathered in with brimming pails, and oft,

      Wielded by sturdy hands, the stroke of axe

      Makes the woods ring. Along the quiet air,

      Come and float calmly off the soft light clouds,

      Such as you see in summer, and the winds

      Scarce stir the branches. Lodged in sunny cleft,

      Where the cold breezes come not, blooms alone

      The little wind-flower, whose just opened eye

      Is blue as the spring heaven it gazes at —

      Startling the loiterer in the naked groves

      With unexpected beauty, for the time

      Of blossoms and green leaves is yet afar.

      And ere it comes, the encountering winds shall oft

      Muster their wrath again, and rapid clouds

      Shade heaven, and bounding on the frozen earth

      Shall fall their volleyed stores, rounded like hail

      And white like snow, and the loud North again

      Shall buffet the vexed forest in his rage.

      THE WEST WIND

      Beneath the forest's skirt I rest,

      Whose branching pines rise dark and high,

      And hear the breezes of the West

      Among the thread-like foliage sigh.

      Sweet Zephyr! why that sound of woe?

      Is not thy home among the flowers?

      Do not the bright June roses blow,

      To meet thy kiss at morning hours?

      And lo! thy glorious realm outspread —

      Yon stretching valleys, green and gay,

      And yon free hill-tops, o'er whose head

      The loose white clouds are borne away.

      And there the full broad river runs,

      And many a fount wells fresh and sweet,

      To cool thee when the mid-day suns

      Have made thee faint beneath their heat.

      Thou wind of joy, and youth, and love;

      Spirit of the new-wakened year!

      The sun in his blue realm above

      Smooths a bright path when thou art here.

      In lawns the murmuring bee is heard,

      The wooing ring-dove in the shade;

      On thy soft breath, the new-fledged bird

      Takes wing, half happy, half afraid.

      Ah! thou art like our wayward race; —

      When not a shade of pain or ill

      Dims the bright smile of Nature's face,

      Thou lov'st to sigh and murmur still.

      THE BURIAL-PLACE.2

A FRAGMENT

      Erewhile, on England's pleasant shores, our sires

      Left not their churchyards unadorned with shades

      Or blossoms, but indulgent to the strong

      And natural dread of man's last home, the grave,

      Its frost and silence – they disposed around,

      To soothe the melancholy spirit that dwelt

      Too sadly on life's close, the forms and hues

      Of vegetable beauty. There the yew,

      Green ever amid the snows of winter, told

      Of immortality, and gracefully

      The willow, a perpetual mourner, drooped;

      And there the gadding woodbine crept about,

      And there the ancient ivy. From the spot

      Where the sweet maiden, in her blossoming years

      Cut off, was laid with streaming eyes, and hands

      That trembled as they placed her there, the rose

      Sprung modest, on bowed stalk, and better spoke

      Her graces, than the proudest monument.

      There children set about their playmate's grave

      The pansy. On the infant's little bed,

      Wet at its planting with maternal tears,

      Emblem of early sweetness, early death,

      Nestled the lowly primrose. Childless dames,

      And maids that would not raise the reddened eye —

      Orphans, from whose young lids the light of joy

      Fled early – silent lovers, who had given

      All that they lived for to the arms of earth,

      Came often, o'er the recent graves to strew

      Their offerings, rue, and rosemary, and flowers.

      The pilgrim bands who passed the sea to keep

      Their Sabbaths in the eye of God alone,

      In his wide temple of the wilderness,

      Brought not these simple customs of the heart

      With them. It might be, while they laid their dead

      By the vast solemn skirts of the old groves,

      And the fresh virgin soil poured forth strange flowers

      About their graves; and the familiar shades

      Of their own native isle, and wonted blooms,

      And herbs were wanting, which the pious hand

      Might plant or scatter there, these gentle rites

      Passed out of use. Now they are scarcely known,

      And rarely in our borders may you meet

      The tall larch, sighing in the burial-place,

      Or willow, trailing low its boughs to hide

      The gleaming marble. Naked rows of graves

      And melancholy ranks of monuments

      Are seen instead, where the coarse grass, between,

      Shoots up its dull green spikes, and in the wind

      Hisses, and the neglected bramble nigh,

      Offers its berries to the schoolboy's hand,

      In vain – they grow too near the dead. Yet here,

      Nature, rebuking the neglect of man,

      Plants often, by the ancient mossy stone,

      The brier-rose, and upon the broken turf

      That clothes the fresher grave, the strawberry plant

      Sprinkles its swell with blossoms, and lays forth

      Her ruddy, pouting fruit…

      "BLESSED ARE THEY THAT MOURN."

      Oh, deem not they are blest alone

      Whose lives a peaceful tenor keep;

      The Power who pities man, hath shown

      A blessing for the eyes that weep.

      The light of smiles shall fill again

      The lids that overflow with tears;

      And weary hours of woe and pain

      Are promises of happier years.

      There

2

The first half of this fragment may seem to the reader borrowed from the essay on Rural Funerals in the fourth number of "The Sketch-book." The lines were, however, written more than a year before that number appeared. The poem, unfinished as it is, would hardly have been admitted into this collection, had not the author been unwilling to lose what had the honor of resembling so beautiful a composition.