Chapter William Cullen Bryant of Index by Simonds History of American Literature

the lines O Fairest of the Rural Maids, in which Poe saw "the truest poem written by Bryant." Shortly after his marriage, the poet was honored with an invitation from the Phi Beta Kappa Society of Harvard College to read a poem at the coming Commencement.

The Visit to Boston.

Such was the occasion of Bryant's first visit to Boston and Cambridge, and his first presentation to the men who were at that time leaders in American scholarship, and in literary taste. The poem read was The Ages. Its theme is the progress of man through the centuries and the triumph of virtue and liberty in the New World. It is composed in the Spenserian stanza; is, on that account perhaps, somewhat artificial in its effect, and falls below the standard of Bryant's best work; yet the poem was heartily received and, in the minds of many of his hearers, The Ages placed its author "at the very head of American poets."

Publication.

One result of this visit was the beginning of a warm and intimate friendship between Bryant and Richard Henry Dana, a friendship which continued unbroken until death. A second result was the publication, through the influence of Dana and Phillips, of the first volume of Bryant's verse. This appeared in 1821. It was a small pamphlet of forty-four pages, bound in brown paper boards, and containing the following eight poems: The Ages, To a Waterfowl, Translation of a Fragment of Simonides (written apparently while Bryant was in college), the Inscription for the Entrance to a Wood, The Yellow Violet, Song "The Hunter of the West," Green River, and Thanatopsis. While not all of Bryant's compositions to that time are included, these poems were representative of his best work, and five of them were never surpassed by any subsequent composition. Thanatopsis now appeared in its completed form -- the conclusion having been added, possibly, to meet some criticism which had deplored the purely "pagan" sentiment of the poem in its earlier form. The poet continued to publish, his work appearing at intervals in the Review, and also in The Idle Man, a short-lived periodical established by Richard Henry Dana in New York. In 1823, he began regularly to send his verse to a new magazine in Boston, the United States Literary Gazette, which, under the editorship of Theophilus Parsons, had a distinguished although brief career. From this magazine the poet received and accepted an offer of $200 a year for his verse, to average a hundred lines a month. In three years, Bryant published in its columns between twenty and thirty poems, among which were The Masacre of Scio, Rizpah, The Rivulet, March, Summer Wind, Monument Mountain, Autumn Woods, To a Cloud, and A Forest Hymn.

Removal to New York.

In 1825, Bryant withdrew from the practice of law, and in response to the urgency of friends removed to New York. Here he assumed editorial charge of a new literary publication somewhat heavily weighted by the title of The New York Review and Athenoeum Magazine. To its first issue the poet contributed A Song of Pitcairn's Island; the same number contained also a poem by Dana and Halleck's now familiar poem, Marco Bozzaris. Besides Halleck and Dana, the literary men of New York -- among them Paulding, Willis, and James Fenimore Cooper -- became his friends and associates. The city atmosphere was not altogether congenial, nor were the professional ideals of some in the group so high as Bryant's; they did not take the art of verse so seriously as he who deemed the poet's exercise anything but

"The pastime of a drowsy summer day."¹

His poems during this period still breathe the love of nature; and frequently he journeyed back to his Massachusetts hills for the freshening of the old environment.

The Evening Post.

The career of the Magazine was closed in 1827. But Bryant's editorial course was only beginning. He was offered a position on the staff of the New York Evening Post, founded in 1801 by Alexander Hamilton, and at this time the best established of the metropolitan newspapers. In 1829, he became editor in chief; thereafter,