Poetical Works of William Cullen Bryant. Bryant William Cullen

meekly through the kindling air,

      And eve, that round the earth

      Chases the day, beholds thee watching there;

      There noontide finds thee, and the hour that calls

      The shapes of polar flame to scale heaven's azure walls.

      Alike, beneath thine eye,

      The deeds of darkness and of light are gone;

      High toward the starlit sky

      Towns blaze, the smoke of battle blots the sun,

      The night storm on a thousand hills is loud,

      And the strong wind of day doth mingle sea and cloud.

      On thy unaltering blaze

      The half-wrecked mariner, his compass lost,

      Fixes his steady gaze,

      And steers, undoubting, to the friendly coast;

      And they who stray in perilous wastes, by night,

      Are glad when thou dost shine to guide their footsteps right.

      And, therefore, bards of old,

      Sages and hermits of the solemn wood,

      Did in thy beams behold

      A beauteous type of that unchanging good,

      That bright eternal beacon, by whose ray

      The voyager of time should shape his heedful way.

      THE LAPSE OF TIME

      Lament who will, in fruitless tears,

      The speed with which our moments fly;

      I sigh not over vanished years,

      But watch the years that hasten by.

      Look, how they come – a mingled crowd

      Of bright and dark, but rapid days;

      Beneath them, like a summer cloud,

      The wide world changes as I gaze.

      What! grieve that time has brought so soon

      The sober age of manhood on!

      As idly might I weep, at noon,

      To see the blush of morning gone.

      Could I give up the hopes that glow

      In prospect like Elysian isles;

      And let the cheerful future go,

      With all her promises and smiles?

      The future! – cruel were the power

      Whose doom would tear thee from my heart,

      Thou sweetener of the present hour!

      We cannot – no – we will not part.

      Oh, leave me, still, the rapid flight

      That makes the changing seasons gay,

      The grateful speed that brings the night,

      The swift and glad return of day;

      The months that touch, with added grace,

      This little prattler at my knee,

      In whose arch eye and speaking face

      New meaning every hour I see;

      The years, that o'er each sister land

      Shall lift the country of my birth,

      And nurse her strength, till she shall stand

      The pride and pattern of the earth:

      Till younger commonwealths, for aid,

      Shall cling about her ample robe,

      And from her frown shall shrink afraid

      The crowned oppressors of the globe.

      True – time will seam and blanch my brow —

      Well – I shall sit with aged men,

      And my good glass will tell me how

      A grizzly beard becomes me then.

      And then, should no dishonor lie

      Upon my head, when I am gray,

      Love yet shall watch my fading eye,

      And smooth the path of my decay.

      Then haste thee, Time – 'tis kindness all

      That speeds thy wingèd feet so fast:

      Thy pleasures stay not till they pall,

      And all thy pains are quickly past.

      Thou fliest and bear'st away our woes,

      And as thy shadowy train depart,

      The memory of sorrow grows

      A lighter burden on the heart.

      THE SONG OF THE STARS

      When the radiant morn of creation broke,

      And the world in the smile of God awoke,

      And the empty realms of darkness and death

      Were moved through their depths by his mighty breath,

      And orbs of beauty and spheres of flame

      From the void abyss by myriads came —

      In the joy of youth as they darted away,

      Through the widening wastes of space to play,

      Their silver voices in chorus rang,

      And this was the song the bright ones sang:

      "Away, away, through the wide, wide sky,

      The fair blue fields that before us lie —

      Each sun with the worlds that round him roll,

      Each planet, poised on her turning pole;

      With her isles of green, and her clouds of white,

      And her waters that lie like fluid light.

      "For the source of glory uncovers his face,

      And the brightness o'erflows unbounded space,

      And we drink as we go to the luminous tides

      In our ruddy air and our blooming sides:

      Lo, yonder the living splendors play;

      Away, on our joyous path, away!

      "Look, look, through our glittering ranks afar,

      In the infinite azure, star after star,

      How they brighten and bloom as they swiftly pass!

      How the verdure runs o'er each rolling mass!

      And the path of the gentle winds is seen,

      Where the small waves dance, and the young woods lean.

      "And see, where the brighter day-beams pour,

      How the rainbows hang in the sunny shower;

      And the morn and eve, with their pomp of hues,

      Shift o'er the bright planets and shed their dews;

      And 'twixt them both, o'er the teeming ground,

      With her shadowy cone the night goes round!

      "Away, away! in our blossoming bowers,

      In the soft airs wrapping these spheres of ours,

      In the seas and fountains that shine with morn,

      See, Love is brooding, and Life is born,

      And breathing myriads are breaking from night,

      To rejoice, like us, in motion and light.

      "Glide