R. -rea% 10% JOHN H. BRYANT. [Born, 1807.] JOHN HOWARD BRYANT was born in Cummington, Massachusetts, on the twenty-second day of July, 1807. His youth was passed principally in rural occupations, and in attending the district and other schools, until he was nineteen years of age, when he began to study the Latin language, with a view of entering one of the colleges. In 1826, he wrote the first poem of which he retained any ere copy. This was entitled "My Native Village," and first appeared in the "United States Review and Literary Gazette," a periodical published simultaneously at New York and Boston, of which his brother, WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT, was one of the editors. It is included in the present collection. After this he gave up the idea of a university education, and placed himself for a while at the Rensselaer School at Troy, under the superintendance of Professor EATON. He subsequently applied himself to the study of the mathematical and natural sciences, under different instructors, and in his intervals of leisure produced several poems, which were published in the gazettes. In April, 1831, he went to Jacksonville, in Illinois; and in September of the next year went to Princeton, in the same state, where he sat himself down as a squatter, or inhabitant of the public lands not yet ordered to be sold by the government. When the lands came into the market, he purchased a farm, bordering on one of the fine groves of that country. He was married in 1833. He accepted soon afterward two or three public offices, one of which was that of Recorder of Bureau county; but afterward resigned them, and devoted himself to agricultural pursuits. Of his poems, part were written in Massachusetts, and part in Illinois. They have the same general characteristics as those of his brother. He is a lover of nature, and describes minutely and effectively. To him the wind and the streams are ever musical, and the forests and the prairies clothed in beauty. His versification is easy and correct, and his writings show him to be a man of refined taste and kindly feelings, and to have a mind stored with the best learning. THE NEW ENGLAND PILGRIM'S FUNERAL. Ir was a wintry scene, The hills were whiten'd o'er, And the chill north winds were blowing keen Gone was the wood-bird's lay, And the voice of the stream has pass'd away And the low sun coldly smiled They raised it gently up, And grief was in each eye, When they laid his cold corpse low Weeping, they pass'd away, With no mark to tell where their dead friend lay, But the mossy forest-stone. When the winter storms were gone And o'er him giant trees When these were overspread These woods are perish'd now, And the yeoman sings, as he drives his plough Two centuries are flown Since they laid his cold corpse low, And his bones are moulder'd to dust, and strown And they who laid him there, Their memory remains, More lasting than the aged fanes A RECOLLECTION. HERE tread aside, where the descending brook A mother and her daughter. She, the dame, I knew that history once, from youth to age:- Had wrong'd her love, and thick the darts of death In lone and desolate places, where the foot Fit place is this for so much loveliness MY NATIVE VILLAGE. THERE lies a village in a peaceful vale, With sloping hills and waving woods around. Fenced from the blasts. There never ruder gale Bows the tall grass that covers all the ground ; And planted shrubs are there, and cherish'd flowers, And a bright verdure, born of gentler showers. 'Twas there my young existence was begun, My earliest sports were on its flowery green, And often, when my schoolboy task was done, I climb'd its hills to view the pleasant scene, There, when that hour of mellow light was come, In the lone path that winds across the plain, •And when the woods put on their autunin glow, And the bright sun came in among the trees, Ah! happy days, too happy to return, Fled on the wings of youth's departed years, The truth of life, its labours, pains, and fears; My thoughts steal back to that sweet village still, FROM A POEM ENTITLED "A DAY IN AUTUMN." ONE ramble through the woods with me, And still the cheerful song of bird, Through all the quiet groves are heard. His rest is in this deep repose. ON FINDING A FOUNTAIN IN A SECLUDED PART OF A FOREST. THREE hundred years are scarcely gone They there who drank should never know Is not this fount so pure and sweet The same those pilgrims sought of yore? How brightly leap mid glittering sands The living waters from below; And feel through every shrunken vein Youth's brightest hopes, youth's wildest glee 'Tis vain, for still the life-blood plays With sluggish course through all my frame; The mirror of the pool betrays My wrinkled visage still the same. And the sad spirit questions still Must this warm frame, these limbs that yield To each light motion of the will, Lie with the dull clods of the field? Has nature no renewing power To drive the frost of age away? Has earth no fount, or herb, or flower, Which man may taste and live for aye? Alas! for that unchanging state Of youth and strength in vain we yearn; And only after death's dark gate Is reached and passed, can youth return. THE TRAVELLER'S RETURN. Ir was the glorious summer-time, And on the golden air, I saw where, in my early years, Whose glossy leaves were swayed and turned The clover, with its heavy bloom Was tossing in the gale, Tall woodlands on the height, To my delighted sight. The wild vine in the woody glen, Swung o'er the sounding brook; The clear-voiced wood-thrush sang all unseen Within his leafy nook: And as the evening sunlight fell, Where beechen forests lie; I watched the clouds on crimson wings, All these are what they were when first But the faces that I knew before, By time and toil are changed: I only meet the marks of care, JOHN H. BRYANT. THE INDIAN SUMMER. THAT Soft autumnal time Is come, that sheds, upon the naked scene, Charms only known in this our northern climeBright seasons, far between. The woodland foliage now Is gather'd by the wild November blast; The mighty vines, that round The forest trunks their slender branches bind, Some living green remains By the clear brook that shines along the lawn; But the sear grass stands white o'er all the plains, And the bright flowers are gone. But these, these are thy charms-Mild airs and temper'd light upon the lea; And the year holds no time within its arms That doth resemble thee. And he saw the city's walls, And the flash of mountain rills, He saw on heights and plains But a mighty thrill ran through his veins And his virgin sight beheld And the thousand shining orbs that fill'd And woman's voice before Had cheer'd his gloomy night, But to see the angel form she wore Made deeper the delight. And his heart, at daylight's close, For the bright world where he trod, And when the yellow morning rose, Gave speechless thanks to God. SONNET. THERE is a magic in the moon's mild ray, And worship Him whose power, pervading space, I've left my youthful sports to gaze, and now, When time with graver lines has mark'd my Sweetly she shines upon my sober'd eye. [brow, O, may the light of truth, my steps to guide, Shine on my eve of life-shine soft, and long abide. SONNET. "Tis Autumn, and my steps have led me far To a wild hill, that overlooks a land e of the s N. P. WILLIS. [Born, 1807.] NATHANIEL P. WILLIS was born at Portland, in Maine, on the twentieth day of January, 1807. During his childhood his parents removed to Boston; and at the Latin school in that city, and at the Philips Academy in Andover, he pursued his studies until he entered Yale College, in 1823. While he resided at New Haven, as a student, he won a high reputation, for so young an author, by a series of "Scripture Sketches," and a few other brief poems; and it is supposed that the warm and too indiscriminate praises bestowed upon these productions, influenced unfavourably his subsequent progress in the poetic art. He was graduated in 1827, and in the following year he published a "Poem delivered before the Society of United Brothers of Brown University," which, as well as his "Sketches," issued soon after he left college, was very favourably noticed in the best periodicals of the time. He also edited "The Token," a wellknown annuary, for 1828; and about the same period published, in several volumes, "The Legendary," and established "The American Monthly Magazine." To this periodical several young writers, who afterward became distinguished, were contributors; but the articles by its editor, constituting a large portion of each number, gave to the work its character, and were of all its contents the most popular. In 1830 it was united to the "New York Mirror," of which Mr. WILLIS became one of the conductors; and he soon after sailed for Europe, to be absent several years. He travelled over Great Britain, and the most interesting portions of the continent, mixing largely in society, and visiting every thing worthy of his regard as a man of taste, or as an American; and his "First Impressions" were given in his letters to the "Mirror," in which he described, with remarkable spirit and fidelity, and in a style peculiarly graceful and elegant, scenery and incidents, and social life among the polite classes in Europe. His letters were collected and republished in London, under the title of "Pencillings by the Way," and violently attacked in several of the leading periodicals, ostensibly on account of their too great freedom of personal detail. Captain MARRYAT, who was at the time editing a monthly magazine, wrote an article, characteristically gross and malignant, which led to a hostile meeting at Chatham, and Mr. LOCKHART, in the "Quarterly Review," published a "criticism" alike illiberal and unfair. WILLIS perhaps erred in giving to the public dinner-table conversations, and some of his descriptions of manners; but Captain MARRYAT himself is not undeserving of censure on account of the "personalities" in his writings; and for other reasons he could not have been the most suitable person in England to avenge the wrong it was alleged Mr. WILLIS had offered to society. That the author of Peter's Letters to Mr. his Kinsfolk," a work which is filled with far more reprehensible personal allusions than are to be found in the "Pencillings," should have ventured to attack the work on this ground, may excite surprise among those who have not observed that the "Quarterly Review" is spoken of with little reverence in the letters of the American traveller. In 1835 Mr. WILLIS was married in England. He soon after published his "Inklings of Adventure," a collection of tales and sketches originally written for a London magazine, under the signature of Philip Slingsby;" and in 1837 he returned to the United States, and retired to his beautiful estate on the Susquehanna, named "Gleninary," in compliment to one of the most admirable wives that ever gladdened a poet's solitude. In the early part of 1839, he became one of the editors of "The Corsair," a literary gazette, and in the autumn of that year went again to London, where, in the following winter, he published his "Loiterings of Travel," in three volumes, and "Two Ways of Dying for a Husband," comprising the plays "Bianca Visconti," and "Tortesa the Usurer." In 1840 appeared the illustrated edition of his poems, and his "Letters from Under a Bridge," and he retired a second time to his seat in western New York. The death of Mrs. WILLIS, in 1843, caused him to revisit England, where he published a collection of his magazine papers, under the title of "Dashes at Life, with a Free Pencil." In October, 1846, he married a daughter of Mr. GRINNELL, a distinguished citizen of Massachusetts, and has since resided at Idlewild, near Newburgh, on the Hudson, a romantic place, which he has cultivated and embellished until it is one of the most charming homes which illustrate the rural life of our country. Here, except during a "Health Trip to the Tropics," in the winter of 1851 and 1852, he has passed his time, in the preparation of new editions of his earlier works, and in writing every week more or less for the "Home Journal," in which he is again successfully engaged with his old friend General MORRIS as an editor. Although Mr. WILLIS is one of the most popular of our poets, the fame he has acquired in other works has so eclipsed that won by his poems that the most appropriate place for a consideration of his genius seemed to be in The Prose Writers of America," and in that volume I have therefore attempted his proper characterization. A man of wit, kindly temper, and elegant tastes-somewhat arti ficial in their more striking displays-with a vocabulary of unusual richness in all the elements which are most essential for the picturesque and dramatic treatment of a peculiar vein of sentiment, and a corresponding observation of society and nature, it must be admitted that he is a word-painter of extraordinary skill and marked individuality. |