William Cullen Bryant
To a Waterfowl
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,
Or where the rocking billows rise and sink
On the chafed ocean side?
There is a power whose care
Teaches thy way along that pathless coast—
The desert and illimitable air—
Lone wandering but not lost.
All day thy wings have fanned,
At that far height, the cold, thin atmosphere
Yet stoop not, weary, to the welcome land,
Though the dark night is near.
And soon, that toil shall end;
Soon, shalt thou find a summer home and rest,
And scream among thy fellows; reeds shall bend
Soon o’er thy sheltered nest.
Thou’rt gone, the abyss of heaven
Hath swallowed up thy form; yet on my heart
Deeply hath sunk the lesson thou hast given,
And shall not soon depart.
He who, from zone to zone,
Guides through the boundless sky thy certain flight,
In the long way that I must tread alone,
Will lead my steps aright.
The Death of the Flowers
The melancholy days are come,
The saddest of the year,
Of wailing winds and naked woods,
And meadows brown and sere.
Heaped in the hollows of the grove,
The autumn leaves lie dead;
They rustle to the eddying gust,
And to the rabbit’s tread.
The robin and the wren are flown,
And from the shrubs the jay,
And from the wood-top calls the crow
Through all the gloomy day.
Where are the flowers, the fair young flowers,
That lately sprang and stood
In brighter light and softer airs,
A beauteous sisterhood?
Alas! they all are in their graves;
The gentle race of flowers
Are lying in their lowly beds
With the fair and good of ours.
The rain is falling where they lie,
But the cold November rain
Calls not, from out the gloomy earth,
The lovely ones again.
The wind-flower and the violet,
They perished long ago,
And the brier-rose and the orchis died
Amid the summer glow;
But on the hill the golden-rod,
And the aster in the wood,
And the yellow sun-flower by the brook
In autumn beauty stood,
Till fell the frost from the clear cold heaven,
As falls the plague on men,
And the brightness of their smile was gone
From upland, glade, and glen.
And now when comes the calm, mild day,
As still such days will come,
To call the squirrel and the bee
From out their winter home;
When the sound of dropping nuts is heard,
Though all the trees are still,
And twinkle in the smoky light
The waters of the rill,
The south wind searches for the flowers
Whose fragrance late he bore,
And sighs to find them in the wood
And by the stream no more.
And then I think of one who in
Her youthful beauty died,
The fair meek blossom that grew up
And faded by my side;
In the cold, moist earth we laid her,
When the forest cast the leaf,
And we wept that one so lovely
Should have a life so brief.
Yet not unmeet it was that one,
Like that young friend of ours,
So gentle and so beautiful,
Should perish with the flowers.
The Universal Tomb
[From Thanatopsis.]
Yet not to thine eternal resting-place
Shalt thou retire alone, nor could’st thou wish
Couch more magnificent. Thou shalt lie down
With patriarchs of the infant world—with kings,
The powerful of the earth—the wise, the good,
Fair forms, and hoary seers of ages past,
All in one mighty sepulcher. The hills,
Rock-ribb’d and ancient as the sun,—the vales
Stretching in pensive quietness between;
The venerable woods—rivers that move
In majesty, and the complaining brooks
That make the meadows green; and, poured round all,
Old Ocean’s gray and melancholy waste,—
Are but the solemn decorations all
Of the great tomb of man. The golden sun,
The planets, all the infinite host of heaven,
Are shining on the sad abodes of death,
Through the still lapse of ages. All that tread
The globe are but a handful to the tribes
That slumber in its bosom. Take the wings
Of morning, traverse Barca’s desert sands,
Or lose thyself in the continuous woods
Where rolls the Oregon, and hears no sound
Save his own dashings—yet the dead are there:
And millions in those solitudes, since first
The flight of years began, have laid them down
In their last sleep—the dead reign there alone.
So live, that when thy summons comes to join
The innumerable caravan, which moves
To that mysterious realm, where each shall take
His chamber in the silent halls of death,
Thou go not, like the quarry-slave at night,
Scourged to his dungeon, but, sustained and soothed
By an unfaltering trust, approach thy grave,
Like one who wraps the drapery of his couch
About him, and lies down to pleasant dreams.