Go forth, under the open sky, and list

1 This, the first great poem written in America, was published in the North American Review for September, 1817, vol. v, pp. 338-340. Bryant's father had found it, together with the Fragment,' later known as 'Inscription for the Entrance to a Wood,' among other papers in a desk; and had immediately taken it to Boston and shown it to his friend Willard Phillips, one of the editors of the North American Review. When Phillips read the poem to his fellow editors, one of them, Richard H. Dana, exclaimed, Ah, Phillips, you have been imposed upon; no one on this side of the Atlantic is capable of writing such verses;' and though soon persuaded that the verses really were by an American, the editors still believed that Thanatopsis ' must have been written by the young poet's father. Phillips says in a letter to Bryant, December, 1817: "Your"Fragment" was exceedingly liked here... All the best judges say that it and your father's "Thanatopsis" are the very best poetry that has been published in this country.'

As originally printed in the North American Review, the poem began with what is now line 17, -Yet a few days,

and ended with lines 65 and 66,

shall come,

And make their bed with thee.

It was preceded by four stanzas of four lines each, which did not properly belong to the poem, but had been found with it. The beginning and ending of the poem as it now stands were first given in the volume of poems published by Bryant in 1821.

See Mr. Godwin's account of the origin of the poem, in his Life of Bryant, vol. i, pp. 97-101; and of its first publication, pp. 148-155.

Oft, in the sunless April day,

Thy early smile has stayed my walk; But midst the gorgeous blooms of May, I passed thee on thy humble stalk.

1 Figures at the left, in italics, give the date of writing; those at the right, in roman, the date of publication. For Bryant's poems the dates are taken from Godwin's standard edition of the Poetical Works.

Mr. Godwin states in his note to Thanatopsis' that the poem was written in the summer of 1811, which would make Bryant only sixteen years old at the time. not seventeen, as Mr. Godwin himself elsewhere say Bryant's own account of the matter is given in a lette of 1855, which Mr. Godwin quotes: I cannot give you any information of the occasion which suggested to my mind the idea of my poem "Thanatopsis." It was written when I was seventeen or eighteen years old - I have not now at hand the memorandums [sic] which would enable me to be precise and I believe it was composed in my solitary rambles in the woods.'

TO A WATERFOWL 2 WHITHER, midst falling dew, While glow the heavens with the last steps of day,

Far, through their rosy depths, dost thou

pursue

Thy solitary way?

Vainly the fowler's eye

Might mark thy distant flight to do thee

wrong,

As, darkly seen against the crimson sky,
Thy figure floats along.

Seek'st thou the plashy brink

Of weedy lake, or marge of river wide, 10

1 The poem, as first published in the North American Review for September, 1817, under the title 'A Fragment,' ended at this point. The last lines were added in the first edition of the Poems, in 1821.

On the origin of this poem, see Godwin's Life of Bryant, vol. i, pp. 143, 144. Hartley Coleridge once called it the best short poem in the English language; and Matthew Arnold was inclined to agree with his judgment. See an account of the incident in Bigelow's Life of Bryant, note to pp. 42, 43.

Yet, fair as thou art, thou shunnest to

glide,
Beautiful stream! by the village side;
But windest away from haunts of men,
To quiet valley and shaded glen;

And forest, and meadow, and slope of hill,
Around thee, are lonely, lovely, and still; 30
Lonely save when, by thy rippling tides,
From thicket to thicket the angler glides,
Or the simpler comes, with basket and
book,

For herbs of power on thy banks to look;
Or haply, some idle dreamer, like me,
To wander, and muse, and gaze on thee,
Still- save the chirp of birds that feed
On the river cherry and seedy reed,
And thy own wild music gushing out
With mellow murmur of fairy shout,
From dawn to the blush of another day,
Like traveller singing along his way.

That fairy music I never hear,

40

Nor gaze on those waters so green and clear,

And mark them winding away from sight, Darkened with shade or flashing with light, While o'er them the vine to its thicket

clings,

And the zephyr stoops to freshen his wings,
But I wish that fate had left me free
To wander these quiet haunts with thee, 50
Till the eating cares of earth should de-
part,

And the peace of the scene pass into my heart;