The solitude. Thou art in the soft winds That run along the summit of these trees In music; Thou art in the cooler breath 41 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, 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

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.

The generation born with them, nor seemed 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

101

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

1 These are lines of whose great rhythmical beauty it is scarcely possible to speak too highly.' (PoE)

2 Among the minor poems of Bryant, none has so much impressed me as the one which he entitles 'June.' The rhythmical flow, here, is even voluptuous - nothing could be more melodious. The poem has always affected me in a remarkable manner. The intense melancholy which seems to well up, perforce, to the surface of all the poet's cheerful sayings about his grave, we find thrilling us to the soul while there is the truest poetic elevation in the thrill. The impression left is one of a pleasurable sadness. And if, in the remaining compositions which I shall introduce to you, there be more or less of a similar tone always apparent, let me remind you that (how or why we know not) this certain taint of sadness is inseparably connected with all the higher manifestations of true Beauty. (Poɛ.)

AY, thou art welcome, heaven's delicious breath!

When woods begin to wear the crimson leaf, And suns grow meek, and the meek suns grow brief,

And the year smiles as it draws near its death.

Wind of the sunny south! oh, still delay In the gay woods and in the golden air, Like to a good old age released from care, Journeying, in long serenity, away.

In such a bright, late quiet, would that I

3 Bryant died in the month of June (1878), and was buried in the beautiful village cemetery at Roslyn, Long Island.

1 Compare with this poem Wordsworth's To the Small Celandine,' and others.

Notice that Bryant addresses his verses to a distinctively American flower; as later he chooses an American bird, the bobolink, for the subject of a poem which is to be contrasted with Wordsworth's 'To the Skylark,' 'To the Green Linnet,' etc. Bryant gives the reason for this choice in a letter to his brother John, February 19, 1832: I saw some lines by you to the skylark. Did you ever see such a bird? Let me counsel you to draw your images, in describing Nature, from what you observe around you, unless you are professedly composing a description of some foreign country, when, of course, you will learn what you can from books. The skylark is an English bird, and an American who has never visited Europe has no right to be in raptures about it.'