Poems

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Title: Poems
Author: William Cullen Bryant
Release Date: July 21, 2005 [EBook #16341]
Language: English
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POEMS
BY
WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT.
AUTHORIZED EDITION.
DESSAU:
KATZ BROTHERS.
1854.
TO THE READER.
I have been asked to consent that an edition of my poems should be
published at Dessau in Germany, solely for circulation on the continent

of Europe. To this request I have the more readily yielded, inasmuch as
the reputation enjoyed by the gentleman under whose inspection the
volume will pass through the press, assures me that the edition will be
faithfully and minutely accurate.
New York, November 2, 1853.
WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT.
CONTENTS.
POEMS
The Ages°
Thanatopsis
The Yellow Violet
Inscription for the
Entrance to a Wood
Song.--"Soon as the glazed and gleaming snow"

To a Waterfowl
Green River
A Winter Piece
The West Wind

The Burial-place.° A Fragment
Blessed are they that Mourn
No
Man knoweth his Sepulchre
A Walk at Sunset
Hymn to Death

The Massacre at Scio°
The Indian Girl's Lament°
Ode for an
Agricultural Celebration
Rizpah
The Old Man's Funeral
The
Rivulet
March
Sonnet.--To--
An Indian Story
Summer Wind

An Indian at the Burial-place of his Fathers
Song--"Dost thou idly ask
to hear"
Hymn of the Waldenses
Monument Mountain°
After a
Tempest
Autumn Woods
Sonnet.--Mutation
Sonnet.--November

Song of the Greek Amazon
To a Cloud
The Murdered Traveller°

Hymn to the North Star
The Lapse of Time
Song of the Stars
A
Forest Hymn
"Oh fairest of the rural maids"
"I broke the spell that
held me long"

June
A Song of Pitcairn's Island
The Skies
"I
cannot forget with what fervid devotion"
To a Musquito
Lines on
Revisiting the Country
The Death of the Flowers
Romero
A
Meditation on Rhode Island Coal
The New Moon
Sonnet.--October

The Damsel of Peru
The African Chief°
Spring in Town
The
Gladness of Nature
The Disinterred Warrior
Sonnet.--Midsummer

The Greek Partisan
The Two Graves
The Conjunction of Jupiter
and Venus°
A Summer Ramble
Scene on the Banks of the Hudson


The Hurricane°
Sonnet.--William Tell°
The Hunter's Serenade°

The Greek Boy
The Past
"Upon the mountain's distant head"

The Evening Wind
"When the firmament quivers with daylight's
young beam"
"Innocent child and snow-white flower"
To the River
Arve
Sonnet.--To Cole, the Painter, departing for Europe
To the
fringed Gentian
The Twenty-second of December
Hymn of the City

The Prairie°
Song of Marion's Men°
The Arctic Lover
The
Journey of Life
TRANSLATIONS.
Version of a Fragment of Simonides
From the
Spanish of Villegas
Mary Magdalen.° (From the Spanish of
Bartolome Leonardo
de Argensola)
The Life of the Blessed. (From
the Spanish of Luis Ponce
de Leon)
Fatima and Raduan.° (From the
Spanish)
Love and Folly.° (From la Fontaine)
The Siesta. (From the
Spanish)
The Alcayde of Molina.° (From the Spanish)
The Death of
Aliatar.° (From the Spanish)
Love in the Age of Chivalry.° (From
Peyre Vidal, the
Troubadour)
The Love of God.° (From the
Provençal of Bernard Rascas)
From The Spanish of Pedro de Castro y
Añaya°
Sonnet. (From the Portuguese of Semedo)
Song. (From the
Spanish of Iglesias)
The Count of Greiers. (From the German of
Uhland)
The Serenade. (From the Spanish)
A Northern Legend.
(From the German of Uhland)
LATER POEMS.
To the Apennines
Earth
The Knight's Epitaph


The Hunter of the Prairies
Seventy-Six
The Living Lost

Catterskill Falls
The Strange Lady
Life°
"Earth's children cleave
to earth"
The Hunter's Vision
The Green Mountain Boys°
A
Presentiment
The Child's Funeral°
The Battlefield
The Future
Life
The Death of Schiller°
The Fountain°
The Winds
The Old
Man's Counsel°
Lines in Memory of William Leggett
An Evening
Revery°
The Painted Cup°
A Dream
The Antiquity of Freedom

The Maiden's Sorrow
The Return of Youth
A Hymn of the Sea

Noon.° (From an unfinished Poem)
The Crowded Street
The

White-footed Deer°
The Waning Moon
The Stream of Life
NOTES (°)

POEMS.
THE AGES.°
I.
When to the common rest that crowns our days,
Called in the noon of
life, the good man goes,
Or full of years, and ripe in wisdom, lays

His silver temples in their last repose;
When, o'er the buds of youth,
the death-wind blows,
And blights the fairest; when our bitter tears

Stream, as the eyes of those that love us close,
We think on what they
were, with many fears
Lest goodness die with them, and leave the
coming years:
II.
And therefore, to our hearts, the days gone by,--
When lived the
honoured sage whose death we wept,
And the soft virtues beamed
from many an eye,
And beat in many a heart that long has slept,--

Like spots of earth where angel-feet have stepped--
Are holy; and
high-dreaming bards have told
Of times when worth was crowned,
and faith was kept,
Ere friendship grew a snare, or love waxed cold--

Those pure and happy times--the golden days of old.
III.
Peace to the just man's memory,--let it grow
Greener with years, and
blossom through the flight
Of ages; let the mimic canvas show
His
calm benevolent features; let the light
Stream on his deeds of love,
that shunned the sight
Of all but heaven, and in the book of fame,


The glorious record of his virtues write,
And hold it up to men, and
bid them claim
A palm like his, and catch from him