Had it not been for Bryant's early Puritan training and his
association with a peculiar type of nature, he might have ended his days as
a lawyer.
Bryant was born in Cummington, among the hills of western Massachusetts. In
her diary, his mother thus records his birth:--
"Nov. 3, 1794. Stormy, wind N. E. Churned. Seven in the evening a son
born."
His poetry will be better understood, if we emphasize two main facts in his
early development. In the first place, he was descended from John and
Priscilla Alden of Mayflower stock and reared in strict Puritan fashion.
Bryant's religious training determined the general attitude of all his
poetry toward nature. His parents expected their children to know the
_Bible_ in a way that can scarcely be comprehended in the twentieth
century. Before completing his fourth year, his older brother "had read the
_Scriptures_ through from beginning to end." At the age of nine, the future
poet turned the first chapter of _Job_ into classical couplets,
beginning:--
"Job, good and just, in Uz had sojourned long,
He feared his God and shunned the way of wrong.
Three were his daughters and his sons were seven,
And large the wealth bestowed on him by heaven.
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