"
Another striking fact is that the prayers which he heard from the Puritan
clergy and from his father and grandfather in family worship gave him a
turn toward noble poetic expression. He said that these prayers were often
"poems from beginning to end," and he cited such expressions from them as,
"Let not our feet stumble on the dark mountains of eternal death." From the
Puritan point of view, the boy made in his own prayers one daring variation
from the petitions based on scriptural sanction. He prayed that he "might
receive the gift of poetic genius, and write verses that might endure." His
early religious training was responsible for investing his poetry with the
dignity, gravity, and simplicity of the Hebraic _Scriptures_.
[Illustration: BRYANT AS A YOUNG MAN]
In the second place, he passed his youth in the fine scenery of western
Massachusetts, which is in considerable measure the counterpart of the Lake
Country which bred Wordsworth. The glory of this region reappears in his
verse; the rock-ribbed hills, the vales stretching in pensive quietness
between them, the venerable woods of ash, beech, birch, hemlock, and maple,
the complaining brooks that make the valleys green, the rare May days:--
"When beechen buds begin to swell,
And woods the blue bird's warble know.
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