And offered to the Mightiest solemn thanks
And supplication. For his simple heart
Might not resist the sacred influences

Which, from the stilly twilight of the place,

And from the gray old trunks that high in heaven
Mingled their mossy boughs, and from the sound
Of the invisible breath that swayed at once
All their green tops, stole over him, and bowed
His spirit with the thought of boundless power
And inaccessible majesty. Ah, why

Should we, in the world's riper years, neglect
God's ancient sanctuaries, and adore
Only among the crowd, and under roofs

That our frail hands have raised? Let me, at least,
Here, in the shadow of this aged wood,

Offer one hymn-thrice happy, if it find
Acceptance in His ear.

Father, thy hand

Hath reared these venerable columns, thou

Didst weave this verdant roof. Thou didst look down
Upon the naked earth, and, forthwith, rose
All these fair ranks of trees. They, in thy sun,
Budded, and shook their green leaves in thy breeze,
And shot toward heaven. The century-living crow
Whose birth was in their tops, grew old and died
Among their branches, till, at last, they stood,
As now they stand, massy, and tall, and dark,
Fit shrine for humble worshipper to hold
Communion with his Maker. These dim vaults,
These winding aisles, of human pomp or pride
Report not. No fantastic carvings show

The boast of our vain race to change the form
Of thy fair works. But thou art here—thou fill'st
The solitude. Thou art in the soft winds
That run along the summit of these trees

ΙΟ

15

20

25

30

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40

In music; thou art in the cooler breath

That from the inmost darkness of the place

Comes, scarcely felt; the barky trunks, the ground,
The fresh moist ground, are all instinct with thee.
Here is continual worship;-Nature, here,

45

In the tranquillity that thou dost love,
Enjoys thy presence. Noiselessly, around,

From perch to perch, the solitary bird

Passes; and yon clear spring, that, midst its herbs,

Wells softly forth and wandering steeps the roots
Of half the mighty forest, tells no tale

Of all the good it does. Thou hast not left
Thyself without a witness, in the shades,

Of thy perfections. Grandeur, strength, and grace
Are here to speak of thee. This mighty oak-
By whose immovable stem I stand and seem
Almost annihilated-not a prince,

In all that proud old world beyond the deep,
E'er wore his crown as loftily as he
Wears the green coronal of leaves with which
Thy hand had graced him. Nestled at his root
Is beauty, such as blooms not in the glare
Of the broad sun. That delicate forest flower,
With scented breath and look so like a smile,
Seems, as it issues from the shapeless mould,
An emanation of the indwelling Life.
A visible token of the upholding Love,
That are the soul of this great universe.

My heart is awed within me when I think
Of the great miracle that still goes on,
In silence, round me-the perpetual work
Of thy creation, finished, yet renewed
Forever. Written on thy works I read
The lesson of thy own eternity.
Lo! all grow old and die—but see again,
How on the faltering footsteps of decay
Youth presses-ever gay and beautiful youth
In all its beautiful forms. These lofty trees
Wave not less proudly that their ancestors
Moulder beneath them. Oh, there is not lost
One of earth's charms: upon her bosom yet,
After the flight of untold centuries,
The freshness of her far beginning lies
And yet shall lie. Life mocks the idle hate
Of his arch-enemy Death-yea, seats himself
Upon the tyrant's throne-the sepulchre,
And of the triumphs of his ghastly foe
Makes his own nourishment. For he came forth
From thine own bosom, and shall have no end.

There have been holy men who hid themselves
Deep in the woody wilderness, and gave
Their lives to thought and prayer, till they outlived
The generation born with them, nor seemed

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55

60

65

70

75

80

85

90

Less aged than the hoary trees and rocks

Around them; and there have been holy men
Who deemed it were not well to pass life thus.
But let me often to these solitudes
Retire, and in thy presence reassure
My feeble virtue. Here its enemies,

The passions, at thy plainer footsteps shrink
And tremble and are still. O God! when thou
Dost scare the world with tempests, set on fire
The heavens with falling thunderbolts, or fill,
With all the waters of the firmament,
The swift dark whirlwind that uproots the woods
And drowns the villages; when, at thy call,
Uprises the great deep and throws himself
Upon the continent, and overwhelms
Its cities-who forgets not, at the sight
Of these tremendous tokens of thy power,
His pride, and lays his strifes and follies by?
Oh, from these sterner aspects of thy face
Spare me and mine, nor let us need the wrath
Of the mad unchained elements to teach
Who rules them. Be it ours to meditate,
In these calm shades, thy milder majesty,
And to the beautiful order of thy works
Learn to conform the order of our lives.

The Past

Thou unrelenting Past!

Strong are the barriers round thy dark domain,
And fetters, sure and fast,

Hold all that enter thy unbreathing reign.

Far in thy realm withdrawn,

Old empires sit in sullenness and gloom,

And glorious ages gone

Lie deep within the shadow of thy womb.

Childhood, with all its mirth,

Youth, Manhood, Age that draws us to the ground,
And last, Man's Life on earth,

Glide to thy dim dominions, and are bound.

Thou hast my better years;

Thou hast my earlier friends, the good, the kind,

ΤΟ

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15

Yielded to thee with tears

The venerable form, the exalted mind.

My spirit yearns to bring

The lost ones back-yearns with desire intense,
And struggles hard to wring

Thy bolts apart, and pluck thy captives thence.

In vain; thy gates deny

All passage save to those who hence depart;

Nor to the streaming eye

Thou giv'st them back-nor to the broken heart.

In thy abysses hide

Beauty and excellence unknown; to thee

Earth's wonder and her pride

Are gathered, as the waters to the sea;

Labors of good to man,

Unpublished charity, unbroken faith,

Love, that midst grief began,

And grew with years, and faltered not in death.

Full many a mighty name

Lurks in thy depths, unuttered, unrevered;

With thee are silent fame,

Forgotten arts, and wisdom disappeared.

Thine for a space are they—

Yet shalt thou yield thy treasures up at last:

Thy gates shall yet give way,

Thy bolts shall fall, inexorable Past!

All that of good and fair

Has gone into thy womb from earliest time,

Shall then come forth to wear

The glory and the beauty of its prime.

They have not perished-no!

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40

45

Kind words, remembered voices once so sweet,
Smiles, radiant long ago,

And features, the great soul's apparent seat.

All shall come back; each tie

Of pure affection shall be knit again;

Alone shall Evil die,

And Sorrow dwell a prisoner in thy reign.

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5. Identified as his father, Dr. Peter Bryant, who died in 1820. Cf. the last stanza.

1829

And then shall I behold

Him, by whose kind paternal side I sprung,

And her, who, still and cold,

Fills the next grave-the beautiful and young.6

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1828, 1832

To Cole, the Painter, Departing for Europe'

Thine eyes shall see the light of distant skies;
Yet, ČOLE! thy heart shall bear to Europe's strand
A living image of our own bright land,

Such as upon thy glorious canvas lies;
Lone lakes-savannas where the bison roves-

Rocks rich with summer garlands-solemn streams-
Skies, where the desert eagle wheels and screams-
Spring bloom and autumn blaze of boundless groves.
Fair scenes shall greet thee where thou goest-fair,

But different-everywhere the trace of men,
Paths, homes, graves, ruins, from the lowest glen
To where life shrinks from the fierce Alpine air.
Gaze on them, till the tears shall dim thy sight,
But keep that earlier, wilder image bright.

Thou blossom bright with autumn dew,
And colored with the heaven's own blue,
That openest when the quiet light
Succeeds the keen and frosty night-

6. His favorite sister, Mrs. Sarah Bryant
Shaw, who died in 1824.

7. It was entirely appropriate that Bryant should write a poem to the Englishborn Thomas Cole (1801-1848), who painted the kind of enormous American landscapes that Bryant and Cooper described so often: the great primeval forest, the wide and billowy prairie, the breath-taking range of mountains, or a great river valley seen from aloft. It was in this position that Cole painted the familiar picture of himself and Bryant, recognizable on a promontory overlooking the immensity of a deep ravine of the Catskills. Bryant was among the first to patronize Cole when the latter, leaving the Pennsylvania Academy in Philadelphia, followed his father's family to New York. Asher Durand, already established as a landscape artist, bought one of Cole's first Hudson panoramas and the ensuing friendship fostered the informal association of New York scenic painters still known as "The Hudson

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1830, 1832

River School." That these distinguished artists, including Albert Bierstadt and Thomas Moran, and writers such as Bryant and Cooper, were all enormously approved during the same period for their elaborate landscapes suggests that the artists were justified on the grounds of contemporary taste.

The occasion of Bryant's poem was Cole's trip to England and the continent made possible by a patron's gift in 1829. Bryant published the sonnet in 1830 and included it in the collection of 1832. 8. "Draw your own images, in describing nature, from what you observe around you," Bryant wrote his brother (Godwin, Life, Vol. I, p. 281). A botanist from youth, he took the lead in opposition to stereotyped references to nature. For a discussion of his successful realism in this direction see Norman Foerster, "Bryant," in his Nature in American, Literature (1923). And cf. "Robert of Lincoln," below.