Poetical Works of William Cullen Bryant Household Edition

ENTERED, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1854, by W. C. BRYANT, in the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the United States for the Southern District of New York.

Journalism, though an exacting pursuit, leaves its skillful followers a little leisure in which to cultivate literature. It the heyday of those ephemeral trifles, Annuals, and M...

To the Apennines 159 Earth 160 The Knight's Epitaph 163 The Hunter of the Prairies 165 Seventy-six 166 The Living Lost 168 Catterskill Falls 169 The Strange Lady 172 "Earth's Ch...

Yet not to thine eternal resting-place Shalt thou retire alone, nor couldst thou wish Couch more magnificent. Thou shalt lie down With patriarchs of the infant world--with kings...

I stand upon their ashes in thy beam, The offspring of another race, I stand, Beside a stream they loved, this valley-stream; And where the night-fire of the quivered band Showe...

He goes to the chase--but evil eyes Are at watch in the thicker shades; For she was lovely that smiled on his sighs, And he bore, from a hundred lovers, his prize, The flower of...

Beautiful cloud! with folds so soft and fair, Swimming in the pure quiet air! Thy fleeces bathed in sunlight, while below Thy shadow o'er the vale moves slow; Where, midst their...

Beneath the rushes was thy cradle swung, And when at length thy gauzy wings grew strong, Abroad to gentle airs their folds were flung, Rose in the sky and bore thee soft along;...

And look at the broad-faced sun, how he smiles On the dewy earth that smiles in his ray, On the leaping waters and gay young isles; Ay, look, and he'll smile thy gloom away.

Nor I alone; a thousand bosoms round Inhale thee in the fulness of delight; And languid forms rise up, and pulses bound Livelier, at coming of the wind of night; And, languishin...

"It wearies me, mine enemy, that I must weep and bear What fills thy heart with triumph, and fills my own with care. Thou art leagued with those that hate me, and ah! thou know'...

O Earth! dost thou too sorrow for the past Like man thy offspring? Do I hear thee mourn Thy childhood's unreturning hours, thy springs Gone with their genial airs and melodies,...

How the dark wood rings with our voices shrill, That startle the sleeping bird! To-morrow eve must the voice be still, And the step must fall unheard. The Briton lies by the blu...

The summer day is closed--the sun is set: Well they have done their office, those bright hours, The latest of whose train goes softly out In the red west. The green blade of the...

Oh silvery streamlet of the fields, That flowest full and free, For thee the rains of spring return, The summer dews for thee; And when thy latest blossoms die In autumn's chill...

Robert of Lincoln's Quaker wife, Pretty and quiet, with plain brown wings, Passing at home a patient life, Broods in the grass while her husband sings: Bob-o'-link, bob-o'-link,...

Scatter the wheat for shipwrecked men, Who, hunger-worn, rejoice again In the sweet safety of the shore, And wanderers, lost in woodlands drear, Whose pulses bound with joy to h...

O Constellations of the early night, That sparkled brighter as the twilight died, And made the darkness glorious! I have seen Your rays grow dim upon the horizon's edge, And sin...

Hear now a legend of the days of old-- The days when there were goodly marvels yet, When man to man gave willing faith, and loved A tale the better that 'twas wild and strange....

Aurora, rising from her couch beside The famed Tithonus, brought the light of day To men and to immortals. Then the gods Came to their seats in council. With them came High-thun...

_Alice._--One of your old-world stories, Uncle John, Such as you tell us by the winter fire, Till we all wonder it is grown so late. _Uncle John._--The story of the witch that g...

O North, with all thy vales of green! O South, with all thy palms! From peopled towns and fields between Uplift the voice of psalms; Raise, ancient East, the anthem high, And le...

The moist gives place benignly to the dry; Heat ratifies a faithful league with cold; The nimble flame springs upward to the sky; Down sinks by its own weight the sluggish mould.

A mighty Hand, from an exhaustless Urn, Pours forth the never-ending Flood of Years, Among the nations. How the rushing waves Bear all before them! On their foremost edge, And t...

Shortly before the death of Schiller, he was seized with a strong desire to travel in foreign countries, as if his spirit had a presentiment of its approaching enlargement, and...