Bryant's range was narrow for a great poet, and his later verse usually
repeated his earlier successes. As a rule, he presented the sky, forest,
flower, stream, animal, and the composite landscape, only as they served to
illumine the eternal verities, and the one verity toward which nature most
frequently pointed was death. His heart, unlike Wordsworth's, did not dance
with the daffodils waving in the breeze, for the mere pleasure of the
dancing.
The blank verse of his _Thanatopsis_ has not been surpassed since Milton.
In everything that he did, Bryant was a careful workman. Painters have
noticed his skill in the use of his poetic canvas and his power to suggest
subjects to them, such as:--
"... croft and garden and orchard,
That bask in the mellow light."
Three vistas from _To a Waterfowl_,--"the plashy brink of weedy lake,"
"marge of river wide," and "the chafed ocean side,"--long ago furnished the
suggestion for three paintings.
Bryant's Puritan ancestry and training laid a heavy hand upon him. Thoughts
of "the last bitter hour" are constantly recurring in his verse. The third
line of even his poem _June_ brings us to the grave.
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