Selections from the American poets / by William Cullen Bryant [electronic text]

WILLIAM C. BRYANT.

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Far in thy realm withdrawn Old empires sit in sullenness and gloom, And glorious ages gone Lie deep within the shadow of thy womb.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, 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 The 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 gather'd, as the waters to the sea;

Labours of good to man, Unpublish'd charity, unbroken faith: Love, that midst grief began, And grew with years, and falter'd not in death.

Full many a mighty name Lurks in thy depths, unutter'd, unrevered; With thee are silent fame, Forgotten arts, and wisdom disappear'd.

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 perish'd—no! Kind words, remember'd 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.

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.

THE PRAIRIES.

THESE are the gardens of the desert, these The unshorn fields, boundless and beautiful, For which the speech of England has no name—The Prairies. I behold them for the first,And my heart swells, while the dilated sight Takes in the encircling vastness. Lo! they stretch In airy undulations, far away, As if the ocean, in his gentlest swell, Stood still, with all his rounded billows fix'd, And motionless for ever. Motionless? No, they are all unchain'd again. The clouds Sweep over with their shadows, and, beneath, The surface rolls and fluctuates to the eye; Dark hollows seem to glide along, and chase The sunny ridges. Breezes of the South! Who toss the golden and the flame-like flowers, And pass the prairie-hawk, that, poised on high, Flaps his broad wings, yet moves not—ye have play'd Among the palms of Mexico and vines Of Texas, and have crisp'd the limpid brooks That from the fountains of Sonora glide Into the calm Pacific—have ye fann'd A nobler or a lovelier scene than this? Man hath no part in all this glorious work: The hand that built the firmament hath heaved And smooth'd these verdant swells, and sown their slopes With herbage, planted them with island groves, And hedged them round with forests. Fitting floor For this magnificent temple of the sky—

With flowers whose glory and whose multitude Rival the constellations! The great heavens Seem to stoop down upon the scene in love— A nearer vault, and of a tenderer blue, Than that which bends above the eastern hills.

As o'er the verdant waste I guide my steed, Among the high, rank grass that sweeps his sides, The hollow beating of his footstep seems A sacrilegious sound. I think of those Upon whose rest he tramples. Are they here— The dead of other days? and did the dust Of these fair solitudes once stir with life And burn with passion? Let the mighty mounds That overlook the rivers, or that rise In the dim forest, crowded with old oaks, Answer. A race, that long has pass'd away, Built them; a disciplined and populous race Heap'd, with long toil, the earth, while yet the Greek Was hewing the Pentelicus to forms Of symmetry, and rearing on its rock The glittering Parthenon. These ample fields Nourish'd their harvests, here their herds were fed, When haply by their stalls the bison low'd, And bow'd his maned shoulder to the yoke. All day this desert murmur'd with their toils, Till twilight blush'd, and lovers walk'd, and wooed In a forgotten language, and old tunes, From instruments of unremember'd form, Gave the soft winds a voice. The red man came— The roaming hunter tribes, warlike and fierce, And the mound-builders vanish'd from the earth. The solitude of centuries untold Has settled where they dwelt. The prairie-wolf Hunts in their meadows, and his fresh-dug den Yawns by my path. The gopher mines the ground Where stood their swarming cities. All is gone— All—save the piles of earth that hold their bones—The platforms where they worshipp'd unknown gods—

The barriers which they builded from the soil To keep the foe at bay—till o'er the walls The wild beleaguerers broke, and, one by one, The strongholds of the plain were forced and heap'd With corpses. The brown vultures of the wood Flock'd to those vast uncover'd sepulchres, And sat, unscared and silent, at their feast. Haply some solitary fugitive, Lurking in marsh and forest, till the sense Of desolation and of fear became Bitterer than death, yielded himself to die. Man's better nature triumph'd. Kindly words Welcomed and sooth'd him; the rude conquerors Seated the captive with their chiefs; he chose A bride among their maidens, and at length Seem'd to forget—yet ne'er forgot—the wife Of his first love, and her sweet little ones Butcher'd, amid their shrieks, with all his race.

Thus change the forms of being. Thus arise Races of living things, glorious in strength, And perish, as the quickening breath of God Fills them, or is withdrawn. The red man, too, Has left the blooming wilds he ranged so long, And, nearer to the Rocky Mountains, sought A wider hunting-ground. The beaver builds No longer by these streams, but far away, On waters whose blue surface ne'er gave back The white man's face; among Missouri's springs, And pools whose issues swell the Oregon, He rears his little Venice. In these plains The bison feeds no more. Twice twenty leagues Beyond remotest smoke of hunter's camp, Roams the majestic brute, in herds that shake The earth with thundering steps; yet here I meet His ancient footprints stamp'd beside the pool.

Still this great solitude is quick with life. Myriads of insects, gaudy as the flowers They flutter over, gentle quadrupeds, And birds that scarce have learn'd the fear of man,

Are here, and sliding reptiles of the ground, Startlingly beautiful. The graceful deer Bounds to the wood at my approach. The bee, A more adventurous colonist than man, With whom he came across the eastern deep, Fills the savannas with his murmurings, And hides his sweets, as in the golden age, Within the hollow oak. I listen long To his domestic hum, and think I hear The sound of that advancing multitude Which soon shall fill the deserts. From the ground Comes up the laugh of children, the soft voice Of maidens, and the sweet and solemn hymn Of Sabbath worshippers. The low of herds Blends with the rustling of the heavy grain Over the dark-brown furrows. All at once A freshet wind sweeps by, and breaks my dream, And I am in the wilderness alone.

THE RIVULET.

THIS little rill that, from the springs Of yonder grove, its current brings, Plays on the slope a while, and then Goes prattling into groves again, Oft to its warbling waters drew My little feet, when life was new. When woods in early green were dress'd, And from the chambers of the west The warmer breezes, travelling out, Breathed the new scent of flowers about, My truant steps from home would stray, Upon its grassy side to play, List the brown-thrasher's vernal hymn, And crop the violet on its brim, With blooming cheek and open brow, As young and gay, sweet rill, as thou.

And when the days of boyhood came, And I had grown in love with fame, Duly I sought thy banks, and tried My first rude numbers by thy side. Words cannot tell how bright and gay The scenes of life before me lay. Then glorious hopes, that now to speak.Would bring the blood into my cheek, Pass'd o'er me; and I wrote, on high, A name I deem'd should never die.

Years change thee not. Upon yon hill The tall old maples, verdant still, Yet tell, in grandeur of decay, How swill the years have pass'd away, Since first, a child, and half afraid, I wander'd in the forest shade. Thou, ever joyous rivulet, Dost dimple, leap, and prattle yet; And sporting with the sands that pave The windings of thy silver wave, And dancing to thy own wild chime, Thou laughest at the lapse of time. The same sweet sounds are in my ear My early childhood loved to hear; As pure thy limpid waters run, As bright they sparkle to the sun; As fresh and thick the bending ranks Of herbs that line thy oozy banks; The violet there, in soft May dew, Comes up, as modest and as blue; As green amid thy current's stress Floats the scarce-rooted watercress; And the brown ground-bird, in thy glen, Still chirps as merrily as then.

Thou changest not—but I am changed Since first thy pleasant banks I ranged; And the grave stranger, come to see The play-place of his infancy,

Has scarce a single trace of him Who sported once upon thy brim. The visions of my youth are past— Too bright, too beautiful to last. I've tried the world: it wears no more The colouring of romance it wore. Yet well has Nature kept the truth She promised to my earliest youth. The radiant beauty, shed abroad On all the glorious works of God, Shows freshly, to my sober'd eye, Each charm it wore in days gone by.

A few brief years shall pass away, And I, all trembling, weak, and gray, Bow'd to the earth, which waits to fold.My ashes in the embracing mould (If haply the dark will of fate Indulge my life so long a date), May come for the last time to look Upon my childhood's favourite brook. Then dimly on my eye shall gleam The sparkle of thy dancing stream;And faintly on my ear shall fall Thy prattling current's merry call; Yet shalt thou flow as glad and bright As when thou met'st my infant sight.

And I shall sleep: and on thy side, As ages after ages glide, Children their early sports shall try, And pass to hoary age and die. But thou, unchanged from year to year, Gayly shalt play and glitter here; Amid young flowers and tender grass Thy endless infancy shalt pass; And, singing down thy narrow glen, Shalt mock the fading race of men.

"EARTH'S CHILDREN CLEAVE TO EARTH."

EARTH'S children cleave to earth: her frail, Decaying children dread decay. Yon wreath of mist that leaves the vale, And lessens in the morning ray: Look, how, by mountain rivulet, It lingers, as it upward creeps, And clings to fern and copsewood set Along the green and dewy steps: Clings to the fragrant kalmia, clings To precipices fringed with grass, Dark maples where the wood-thrush sings, And bowers of fragrant sassafras. Yet all in vain: it passes still From hold to hold; it cannot stay; And in the very beams that fill The world with glory, wastes away. Till, parting from the mountain's brow, It vanishes from human eye, And that which sprung of earth is now A portion of the glorious sky.