No More Learning

Fortunately the new critic did not undertake to walk in the foot-
steps of Sainte-Beuve. In the art of presenting to the reader the
marrow of a writer's work, of making the writer himself known by
the description of his surroundings, the narrative of his life, the
study of the forces by which he was influenced, the illustrious author
of the Causeries du Lundi remains to this day without a rival or a
continuator. Ferdinand Brunetière had a different conception of the
duties of a literary critic. The one fault with which thoughtful
readers were apt to charge Sainte-Beuve was, that he failed to pass
judgment upon the works and writers; and this failure was often,
and not altogether unjustly, ascribed to a certain weakness in his
grasp of principles, a certain faint-heartedness whenever it became
necessary to take sides. Any one who studies Brunetière can easily
see that from the start his chief concern was to make it impossible
for any one to charge him with the same fault. He came in with a
set of principles which he has since upheld with remarkable stead-
fastness and courage. In an age when nearly every one was turning
to the future and advocating the doctrine and the necessity of
progress, when the chief fear of most men was that they should
appear too much afraid of change, Brunetière proclaimed time and
again that there was no safety for any nation or set of men except
in a stanch adherence to tradition. He bade his readers turn their
minds away from the current literature of the day, and take hold of
the exemplars of excellence handed down to us by the great men
of the past.
Together with tradition he upheld authority, and there-
fore preferred to all others the period in which French literature
and society had most willingly submitted to authority, that is, the
seventeenth century and the reign of Louis XIV. When compelled
to speak of the literature of the day, he did it in no uncertain
tones. His book "The Naturalistic Novel' consists of a series of


## p. 2605 (#165) ###########################################

FERDINAND BRUNETIÈRE
2605
articles in which he studies Zola and his school, upholding the old
doctrine that there are things in life which must be kept out of the
domain of art and cannot be therein introduced without lowering the
ideal of man. Between the naturalistic and the idealistic novel he
unhesitatingly declares for the latter, and places George Sand far
above the author of L'Assommoir. '
But the great success of his labors cannot be said to have been
due solely or even mainly to the principles he advocated. Other
critics have appeared since Messrs. Jules Lemaître and Anatole
France, for instance, — who antagonize almost everything that he de-
fends and defend almost everything that he antagonizes, and whose
success has hardly been inferior to his. Neither is it due to any
charm in his style. Brunetière's sentences are compact, indeed,
strongly knit together,— but decidedly heavy and at times even
clumsy. What he has to say he always says strongly, but not grace-
fully. He has a remarkable appreciation of the value of the words
of the French language, but his arrangement of them is seldom free
from mannerisms. What, then, has made him the foremost literary
critic of the present day? The answer is, knowledge and sincerity.
No writer of the present day, save perhaps Anatole France, is so
accurately informed of every fact that bears upon literary history.
Every argument he brings forward is supported by an array of
incontrovertible facts that is simply appalling. No one can argue
with him who does not first subject himself to the severest kind of
training, go through a mass of tedious reading, become familiar with
dates to the point of handling them as nimbly as a bank clerk
handles the figures of a check list. And all this comes forward in
Brunetière's articles in the most natural, we had almost said casual
way. The fact takes its place unheralded in the reasoning. It is
there because it has to be there, not because the writer wishes to
make a display of his wonderful knowledge; and thus it happens
that Ferdinand Brunetière's literary articles are perhaps the most
instructive ones ever written in the French language. They are
moreover admirably trustworthy. It would
to this
author's mind to hide a fact that goes against any of his theories.
He feels so sure of being in the right that he is always willing to
give his opponents all that they can possibly claim.
Of late years, moreover, it must be acknowledged that Brune-
tière's mind has given signs of remarkable broadening. Under the
influence of the doctrine of evolution, he has undertaken to class all
literary facts as the great naturalists of the day have classed the
facts of physiology, and to show that literary forms spring from each
other by way of transformation in the same way as do the forms of
animal or vegetable life. Already three works have been produced
never
come


## p. 2606 (#166) ###########################################

2606
FERDINAND BRUNETIÈRE
by him since he entered upon this new line of development: a his-
tory of literary criticism in France, which forms the first and
hitherto only published volume of a large work, The Evolution of
Literary Forms'; a work on the French drama, «The Periods of the
French Theatre'; and a treatise on modern French poetry, (The
Evolution of French Lyric Poetry during the Nineteenth Century
The second and last of these were first delivered by their author
from the professor's chair or the lecturer's platform, where he has
managed to display some of the greatest gifts of the public speaker.
Most of M. Brunetière's literary articles have been collected in
book form under the following titles: — Questions of Criticism'
(2 vols. ), History and Criticism? (3 vols. ), Critical Studies on the
History of French Literature (6 vols. ), 'The Naturalistic Novel
(1 vol. ).
At various times remarkable addresses have been delivered by
him on public occasions, in which he has often represented the
French Academy since his election to that illustrious body. Unfor-
tunately his productive literary activity has slackened of late. In
1895 he was called to the editorship of the Revue des Deux Mondes,
and since his assumption of this responsible editorial position he has
published only two or three articles, bearing upon moral and educa-
tional questions.
To pass final judgment upon a man whose development is far
from completed is an almost impossible task. Still it may be said
that with the exception of Sainte-Beuve's Causeries du Lundi and
Nouveaux Lundis,' nothing exists that can teach the reader so much
about the history of French literature as Brunetière's works. The
doctrinal side, to which the author himself undoubtedly attaches the
greatest importance, will strike the reader as often very questionable.
Too often Brunetière seems in his judgments to be quite unconsciously
actuated by a dislike of the accepted opinion of the present day.
His love of the past bears a look of defiance of the present, not
calculated to win the reader's assent. But even this does not go
without its good side. It gives to Brunetière's judgments a unity
which is seldom if ever found in the works of those whose chief
labors have been spent in the often ungrateful task of making a
hurried public acquainted with the uninterrupted stream of literary
production.
Adolphe are


## p. 2607 (#167) ###########################################

FERDINAND BRUNETIÈRE
2607
TAINE AND PRINCE NAPOLEON
F
OR the last five or six months, since it has been known that
a prince, nephew, cousin, and son of emperors or kings
formerly very powerful, had proposed to answer the libel,
as he calls it, written by M. Taine about Napoleon, we have
been awaiting this reply with an impatience, a curiosity which
were equally justified, -- although for very different reasons, - by
M. Taine's reputation, by the glorious name of his antagonist,
by the greatness, and finally the national interest of the subject.
The book has just appeared; and if we can say without flat-
tery that it has revealed to us in the Prince a writer whose
existence we had not suspected, it is because we must at once
add that neither in its manner nor in its matter is the book
itself what it might have been. Prince Napoleon did not wish
to write a Life of Napoleon,' and nobody expected that of
him,- for after all, and for twenty different reasons, even had he
wished it he could not have done it. But to M. Taine's
Napoleon, since he did not find in him the true Napoleon, since
he declared him to be as much against nature as against history,
he could, and we expected that he would, have opposed his own
Napoleon. By the side of the “inventions of a writer whose
judgment had been misled and whose conscience had been ob-
scured by passion,” — these are his own words, — he could have
restored, as he promised in his Introduction, “the man and his
work in their living reality. ” And in our imaginations, on which
M. Taine's harsh and morose workmanship had engraven the
features of a modern Malatesta or modern Sforza, he could at
last substitute for them, as the inheritor of the name and the
dynastic claims, the image of the founder of contemporary
France, of the god of war. Unfortunately, instead of doing so,
it is M. Taine himself, it is his analytical method, it is the
witnesses whom M. Taine chose as his authorities, that Prince
Napoleon preferred to assail, as a scholar in an Academy who
descants upon the importance of the genuineness of a text, and
moreover with a freedom of utterance and a pertness of expres-
sion which on any occasion I should venture to pronounce decid-
edly insulting.
For it is a misfortune of princes, when they do us the honor
of discussing with us, that they must observe a moderation, a


## p. 2608 (#168) ###########################################

2608
FERDINAND BRUNETIÈRE
reserve, a courtesy greater even than our own. It will therefore
be unanimously thought that it ill became Prince Napoleon to
address M. Taine in a tone which M. Taine would decline to use
in his answer, out of respect for the very name which he is
accused of slandering. It will be thought also that it ill became
him, when speaking of Miot de Melito, for instance, or of many
other servants of the imperial government, to seem to ignore that
princes also are under an obligation to those who have served
them well. Perhaps even it may be thought that it poorly
became him, when discussing or contradicting the Memoirs of
Madame de Rémusat,' to forget under what auspices the remains
of his uncle, the Emperor, were years ago carried in his city of
Paris. But what will be thought especially is, that he had some-
thing else to do than to split hairs in discussion of evidences;
that he had something far better to say, more peremptory and
to the point, and more literary besides, than to call M. Taine
names, to hurl at him the epithets of Entomologist, Material-
ist, Pessimist, Destroyer of Reputations, Iconoclast,” and to class
him as a "déboulonneur” among those who, in 1871, pulled
down the Colonne Vendôme.
Not, undoubtedly, that M. Taine — and we said so ourselves
more than once with perfect freedom -- if spending much patience
and conscientiousness in his search for documents, has always
displayed as much critical spirit and discrimination in the use he
made of them. We cannot understand why in his Napoleon
he accepted the testimony of Bourrienne, for instance, any more
than recently, in his Revolution, that of George Duval, or
again, in his Ancien Régime,' that of the notorious Soulavic.
M. Taine's documents
as a rule
not used by him as
foundation for his argument; no, he first takes his position, and
then he consults his library, or he goes to the original records,
with the hope of finding those documents that will support his rea-
soning But granting that, we must own that though different
from M. Taine's, Prince Napoleon's historical method is not
much better; that though in a different manner and in a differ-
ent direction, it is neither less partial nor less passionate: and
here is a proof of it.
Prince Napoleon blames M. Taine for quoting "eight times »
Bourrienne's Memoirs,' and then, letting his feelings loose, he
takes advantage of the occasion and cruelly besmirches Bourrienne's
Does he tell the truth or not? is he right at the bottom ?
are
a
name.


## p. 2609 (#169) ###########################################

FERDINAND BRUNETIÈRE
2609
I do not know anything about it; I do not wish to know any.
thing; I do not need it, since I know, from other sources, that
Bourrienne's Memoirs' are hardly less spurious than, say, the
'Souvenirs of the Marquise de Créqui? or the Memoirs of Mon-
sieur d'Artagnan. But if these so-called Memoirs' are really
not his, what has Bourrienne himself to do here? and suppose the
former secretary of the First Consul to have been, instead of the
shameless embezzler whom Prince Napoleon so fully and so use-
lessly describes to us, the most honest man in the world, would
the Memoirs' be any more reliable, since it is a fact that he
wrote nothing?
And now I cannot but wonder at the tone in which those who
contradict M. Taine, and especially Prince Napoleon himself,
condescend to tell him that he lacks that which would be needed
in order to speak of Napoleon or the Revolution. But who is
it, then, that has what is needed in order to judge Napoleon ?
Frederick the Great, or Catherine II. , perhaps, – as Napoleon
himself desired, “his peers ”; or in other words, those who, born
as he was for war and government, can only admire, justify, and
glorify themselves in him. And who will judge the Revolution ?
Danton, we suppose, or Robespierre,—that is, the men who were
the Revolution itself. No: the real judge will be the average
opinion of men; the force that will create, modify, correct this
average opinion, the historians will be; and among the historians
of our time, in spite of Prince Napoleon, it will be M. Taine for
a large share.
THE LITERATURES OF FRANCE, ENGLAND, AND GERMANY
TER
WICE at least in the course of their long history, it is known
that the literature and even the language of France has
exerted over the whole of Europe an influence, whose uni-
versal character other languages perhaps more harmonious, -
Italian for instance,- and other literatures more original in cer-
tain respects, like English literature, have never possessed. It
is in a purely French form that our mediæval poems, our Chan-
sons de Geste,' our Romances of the Round Table, our fabli.
aux themselves, whencesoever they came, - Germany or Tuscany,
England or Brittany, Asia or Greece,- conquered, fascinated,
charmed, from one end of Europe to the other, the imaginations
VI-164


## p. 2610 (#170) ###########################################

2610
FERDINAND BRUNETIÈRE
our
of the Middle Ages. The amorous languor and the subtlety of
courteous poetry” are breathed no less by the madrigals
of Shakespeare himself than by Petrarch's sonnets; and after
such a long lapse of time we still discover something that comes
from us even in the Wagnerian drama, for instance in ‘Parsifal’
or in "Tristan and Isolde. ) A long time later, in a Europe belong-
ing entirely to classicism, from the beginning of the seventeenth
to the end of the eighteenth century, during one hundred and
fifty years or even longer, French literature possessed a real
sovereignty in Italy, in Spain, in England, and in Germany.
Do not the names of Algarotti, Bettinelli, Beccaria, Filengieri,
almost belong to France? What shall I say of the famous Gott-
schedt ? Shall I recall the fact that in his victorious struggle
against Voltaire, Lessing had to call in Diderot's assistance ?
And who ignores that if Rivarol wrote his Discourse upon the
Universality of the French Language, it can be charged neither
to his vanity nor to our national vanity, since he was himself
half Italian, and the subject had been proposed by the Academy
of Berlin ?
All sorts of reasons have been given for this universality of
French literature: some were statistical, if I may say so, some
geographical, political, linguistic. But the true one, the good
one, is different: it must be found in the supremely sociable
character of the literature itself. If at that time our great
writers were understood and appreciated by everybody, it is
because they were addressing everybody, or better, because they
were speaking to all concerning the interests of all. They were
attracted neither by exceptions nor by peculiarities: they cared to
treat only of man in general, or as is also said, of the univer-
sal man, restrained by the ties of human society; and their very
success shows that below all that distinguishes, say, an Italian
from a German, this universal man whose reality has so often
been discussed, persists and lives, and though constantly changing
never loses his own likeness.
In comparison with the literature of France, thus defined and
characterized by its sociable spirit, the literature of England is
an individualistic literature. Let us put aside, as
should be
done, the generation of Congreve and Wycherley, perhaps also
the generation of Pope and Addison, - to which, however, we
ought not to forget that Swift also belonged; — it seems that an
Englishman never writes except in order to give to himself the


## p. 2611 (#171) ###########################################

FERDINAND BRUNETIÈRE
2611
external sensation of his own personality. Thence his humor,
which may be defined as the expression of the pleasure he feels
in thinking like nobody else. Thence, in England, the plente-
ousness, the wealth, the amplitude of the lyric vein; it being
granted that individualism is the very spring of lyric poetry, and
that an ode or an elegy is, as it were, the involuntary surging,
the outflowing of what is most intimate, most secret, most pecul-
iar in the poet's soul. Thence also the eccentricity of all the
great English writers when compared with the rest of the nation,
as though they became conscious of themselves only by distin-
guishing themselves from those who claim to differ from them
least. But is it not possible to otherwise characterize the litera-
ture of England ? It will be easily conceived that I dare not
assert such a thing; all I say here is, that I cannot better
express the differences which distinguish that literature from
our own.
That is also all I claim, in stating that the essential character
of the literature of Germany is, that it is philosophical. The
philosophers there are poets, and the poets are philosophers.
Goethe is to be found no more, or no less, in his Theory of
Colors' or in his Metamorphosis of Plants,' than in his “Divan'
or his Faust'; and lyrism, if I may use this trite expression,
is overflowing” in Schleiermacher's theology and in Schelling's
philosophy. Is this not perhaps at least one of the reasons of
the inferiority of the German drama ? It is surely the reason
of the depth and scope of Germanic poetry. Even in the mas-
terpieces of German literature it seems that there is mixed some-
thing indistinct, or rather mysterious, suggestive in the extreme,
which leads us to thought by the channel of the dream. But
who has not been struck by what, under a barbarous termi-
nology, there is of attractive, and as such of eminently poetical,
of realistic and at the same time idealistic, in the great systems
of Kant and Fichte, Hegel and Schopenhauer ? Assuredly noth-
ing is further removed from the character of our French litera-
ture. We can here understand what the Germans mean when
they charge us with a lack of depth. Let them forgive us if we
do not blame their literature for not being the same as ours.
For it is good that it be thus, and for five or six hundred
years this it is that has made the greatness not only of European
literature, but of Western civilization itself; I mean that which
all the great nations, after slowly elaborating it, as it were, in


## p. 2612 (#172) ###########################################

2612
FERDINAND BRUNETIÈRE
their national isolation, have afterwards deposited in the common
treasury of the human race. Thus, to this one we owe the sense
of mystery, and we might say the revelation of what is beautiful,
in that which remains obscure and cannot be grasped. To
another we owe the sense of art, and what may be called the
appreciation of the power of form. A third one has handed to
us what was most heroic in the conception of chivalrous honor.
And to another, finally, we owe it that we know what is both
most ferocious and noblest, most wholesome and most to be
feared, in human pride. The share that belongs to us French-
men was, in the meanwhile, to bind, to fuse together, and as it
were to unify under the idea of the general society of mankind,
the contradictory and even hostile elements that may have existed
in all that. No matter whether our inventions and ideas were,
by their origin, Latin or Romance, Celtic or Gallic, Germanic
even, if you please, the whole of Europe had borrowed them
from us in order to adapt them to the genius of its different
races. Before re-admitting them in our turn, before adopting
them after they had been thus transformed, we asked only that
they should be able to serve the progress of reason and of
humanity. What was troublous in them we clarified; what was
corrupting we corrected; what was local we generalized; what
was excessive we brought down to the proportions of mankind.
Have we not sometimes also lessened their grandeur and altered
their purity? If Corneille has undoubtedly brought nearer to us
the still somewhat barbaric heroes of Guillem de Castro, La
Fontaine, when imitating the author of the Decameron, has made
him more indecent than he is in his own language; and if the
Italians have no right to assail Molière for borrowing somewhat
from them, the English may well complain that Voltaire failed
to understand Shakespeare. But it is true none the less that in
disengaging from the particular man of the North or the South
this idea of a universal man, for which we have been so often
reviled, - if any one of the modern literatures has breathed in
its entirety the spirit of the public weal and of civilization, it is
the literature of France. And this ideal cannot possibly be as
empty as has too often been asserted; since, as I endeavored to
show, from Lisbon to Stockholm and from Archangel to Naples,
it is its manifestations that foreigners have loved to come across
in the masterpieces, or better, in the whole sequence of the his-
tory of our literature.


## p. 2613 (#173) ###########################################

2613
GIORDANO BRUNO
(1548-1600)
ILIPPO BRUNO, known as Giordano Bruno, was born at Nola,
near Naples, in 1548. This was eight years after the death
of Copernicus, whose system he eagerly espoused, and ten
years before the birth of Bacon, with whom he associated in Eng-
land. Of an ardent, poetic temperament, he entered the Dominican
order in Naples at the early age of sixteen, doubtless attracted to
conventual life by the opportunities of study it offered to an eager
intellect. Bruno had been in the monastery nearly thirteen years
when he was accused of heresy in attacking some of the dogmas
of the Church. He fled first to Rome and then to Northern Italy,
where he wandered about for three seasons froin city to city, teach-
ing and writing. In 1579 he arrived at Geneva, then the stronghold
of the Calvinists. Coming into conflict with the authorities there on
account of his religious opinions, he was thrown into prison. He
escaped and went to Toulouse, at that time the literary centre of
Southern France, where he lectured for a year on Aristotle. His
restless spirit, however, drove him on to Paris. Here he was made
professor extraordinary at the Sorbonne.
Although his teachings were almost directly opposed to the philo-
sophic tenets of the time, attacking the current dogmas, and Aris-
totle, the idol of the schoolinen, yet such was the power of Bruno's
eloquence and the charm of his anner that crowds Aocked to his
lecture-room, and he became one of the most popular foreign teach-
ers the university had known. Under pretense of expounding the
writings of Thomas Aquinas, he set forth his own philosophy. He
also spoke much on the art of memory, amplifying the writings of
Raymond Lully; and these principles, formulated by the monk of the
thirteenth century and taken up again by the free-thinkers of the
sixteenth, are the basis of all the present-day mnemonics.
But Bruno went even further. He attracted the attention of King
Henry III. of France, who in 1583 introduced him to the French am-
bassador to England, Castelnuovo di Manvissière. Going to London,
he spent three years in the family of this nobleman, more as friend
than dependent. They were the happiest, or at least the most rest-
ful years of his stormy life. England was just then entering on
the glorious epoch of her Elizabethan literature. Bruno came into
the brilliant court circles, meeting even the Queen, who cordially


## p. 2614 (#174) ###########################################

2614
GIORDANO BRUNO
welcomed all men of culture, especially the Italians. The astute
monk reciprocated her good-will by paying her the customary tribute
of flattery. He won the friendship of Sir Philip Sidney, to whom
he dedicated two of his books, and enjoyed the acquaintance of Spen-
ser, Sir Fulke Greville, Dyer, Harvey, Sir William Temple, Bacon,
and other wits and poets of the day.
At that time — somewhere about 1580- Shakespeare was still serv-
ing his apprenticeship as playwright, and had perhaps less claim on
the notice of the observant foreigner than his elder contemporaries.
London was still a small town, where the news of the day spread
rapidly, and where, no doubt, strangers were as eagerly discussed as
they are now within narrow town limits. Bruno's daring speculations
could not remain the exclusive property of his own coterie. And as
Shakespeare had the faculty of absorbing all new ideas afloat in the
air, he would hardly have escaped the influence of the teacher who
proclaimed in proud self-confidence that he was come to arouse men
out of their theological stagnation. His influence on Bacon is more
evident, because of their friendly associations. Bruno lectured at
Oxford, but the English university found less favor in his eyes than
English court life. Pedantry had indeed set its fatal mark on schol-
arship, not only on the Continent but in England. Aristotle was
still the god of the pedants of that age, and dissent from his teach-
ing was heavily punished, for the dry dust of learning blinded the
eyes of the scholastics to new truths.
Bruno, the knight-errant of these truths, devoted all his life to
scourging pedantry, and dissented in toto from the idol of the schools.
No wonder he and Oxford did not agree together. He wittily calls
her “the widow of sound learning, and again, “a constellation of
pedantic, obstinate ignorance and presumption, mixed with a clown-
ish incivility that would tax the patience of Job. ” He lashed the
shortcomings of English learning in La Cena delle Ceneri! (Ash
Wednesday Conversation). But Bruno's roving spirit, and perhaps
also his heterodox tendencies, drove him at last from England, and
for the next five years he roamed about Germany, leading the life
of the wandering scholars of the time, always involved in conflicts
and controversies with the authorities, always antagonistic to public
opinion. Flying in the face of the most cherished traditions, he
underwent the common experience of all prophets: the minds he
was bent on awakening refused to be aroused.
Finally he was invited by Zuone Mocenigo of Venice to teach him
the higher and secret learning. The Venetian supposed that Bruno,
with more than human erudition, possessed the art of conveying
knowledge into the heads of dullards. Disappointed in this expecta-
tion, he quarreled with his teacher, and in a spirit of revenge picked


## p. 2615 (#175) ###########################################

GIORDANO BRUNO
2615
out of Bruno's writings a mass of testimony sufficient to convict
him of heresy. This he turned over to the Inquisitor at Venice.
Bruno was arrested, convicted, and sent to the Inquisition in Rome.
When called upon there to recant, he replied, “I ought not to
recant, and I will not recant. ” He was accordingly confined in prison
for seven years, then sentenced to death. On hearing the warrant
he said, “It may be that you fear more to deliver this judgment than
I to bear it. ” On February 17th, 1600, he was burned at the stake in
the Campo de' Fiori at Rome. He remained steadfast to the end,
saying, "I die a martyr, and willingly. ” His ashes were cast into the
Tiber. Two hundred and fifty-nine years afterwards, his statue was
unveiled on the very spot where he suffered; and the Italian govern-
ment is bringing out (1896) the first complete edition, the National
Edition, of his works.
In their substance Bruno's writings belong to philosophy rather
than to literature, although they are still interesting both historically
and biographically as an index of the character of the man and of
the temper of the time. Many of the works have either perished or
are hidden away in inaccessible archives.
For two hundred years
they were tabooed, and as late as 1836 forbidden to be shown in the
public library of Dresden. He published twenty-five works in Latin
and Italian, and left many others incomplete, for in all his wander-
ings he was continually writing. The eccentric titles show his
desire to attract attention: as “The Work of the Great Key,' (The
Exploration of the Thirty Seals,' etc. The first extant work is “Il
Candelajo(The Taper), a comedy which in its license of language
and manner vividly reflects the time. In the dedication he discloses
his philosophy: “Time takes away everything and gives everything. ”
The (Spaccio della Bestia Trionfante) (Expulsion of the Triumphant
Beast), the most celebrated of his works, is an attack on the super-
stitions of the day, a curious medley of learning, imagination, and
buffoonery. Degl' Eroici Furori” (The Heroic Enthusiasts) is the
most interesting to modern readers, and in its majestic exaltation
and poetic imagery is a true product of Italian culture.
Bruno was evidently a man of vast intellect and of immense
erudition. His philosophic speculations comprehended not only the
ancient thought, and that current at his time, but also reached out
toward the future and the results of modern science. He perceived
some of the facts which were later formulated in the theory of
evolution. “The mind of man differs from that of lower animals and
of plants not in quality but only in quantity.
Each individ-
ual is the resultant of innumerable individuals. Each species is the
starting point for the next. . No individual is the same to-day
as yesterday. ”


## p. 2616 (#176) ###########################################

2616
GIORDANO BRUNO
Not only in this divination of coming truths is he modern, but
also in his methods of investigation. Reason was to him the guide
to truth, In a study of him Lewes says:- “Bruno was a true Nea-
politan child — as ardent as its soil as capricious as its varied
climate. There was a restless energy which fitted him to become
the preacher of a new crusade - urging him to throw a haughty
defiance in the face of every authority in every country, - an energy
which closed his wild adventurous career at the stake. He was dis-
tinguished also by a rich fancy, a varied humor, and a chivalrous
gallantry, which constantly remind us that the intellectual athlete is
an Italian, and an Italian of the sixteenth century.
A DISCOURSE OF POETS
From The Heroic Enthusiasts)
Cica
ICADA Say, what do you mean by those who vaunt them-
selves of myrtle and laurel ?
Tansillo— Those may and do boast of the myrtle who
sing of love: if they bear themselves nobly, they may wear a
crown of that plant consecrated to Venus, of which they know
the potency. Those may boast of the laurel who sing worthily
of things pertaining to heroes, substituting heroic souls for spec-
ulative and moral philosophy, praising them and setting them as
mirrors and exemplars for political and civil actions.
Cicada — There are then many species of poets and crowns ?
Tansillo-Not only as many as there are Muses, but a great
many more; for although genius is to be met with, yet certain
modes and species of human ingenuity cannot be thus classified.
Cicada — There certain schoolmen who barely allow
Homer to be a poet, and set down Virgil, Ovid, Martial, Hesiod,
Lucretius, and many others as versifiers, judging them by the
rules of poetry of Aristotle.
Tansillo— Know for certain, my brother, that such as these
are beasts. They do not consider that those rules serve princi-
pally as a frame for the Homeric poetry, and for other similar
to it; and they set up one as a great poet, high as Homer, and
disallow those of other vein and art and enthusiasm, who in
their various kinds are equal, similar, or greater.
Cicada - So that Homer was not a poet who depended upon
rules, but was the cause of the rules which serve for those who
are more apt at imitation than invention, and they have been
are


## p. 2617 (#177) ###########################################

GIORDANO BRUNO
2617
used by him who, being no poet, yet knew how to take the
rules of Homeric poetry into service, so as to become, not a
poet or a Homer, but one who apes the Muse of others ?
Tansillo — Thou dost well conclude that poetry is not born in
rules, or only slightly and accidentally so: the rules are derived
from the poetry, and there are as many kinds and sorts of true
rules as there are kinds and sorts of true poets.
Cicada — How then are the true poets to be known?
Tansillo — By the singing of their verses: in that singing they
give delight, or they edify, or they edify and delight together.
Cicada — To whom then are the rules of Aristotle useful ?
Tansillo — To him who, unlike Homer, Hesiod, Orpheus, and
others, could not sing without the rules of Aristotle, and who,
having no Muse of his own, would coquette with that of Homer.
Cicada - Then they are wrong, those stupid pedants of our
days, who exclude from the number of poets those who do not
use words and metaphors conformable to, or whose principles are
not in union with, those of Homer and Virgil; or because they
do not observe the custom of invocation, or because they weave
one history or tale with another, or because they finish the song
with an epilogue on what has been said and a prelude on what
is to be said, and many other kinds of criticism and censure;
from whence it seems they would imply that they themselves,
if the fancy took them, could be the true poets: and yet in fact
they are no other than worms, that know not how to do any.
thing well, but are born only to gnaw and befoul the studies and
labors of others; and not being able to attain celebrity by their
own virtue and ingenuity, seek to put themselves in the front, by
hook or by crook, through the defects and errors of others.
Tansillo — There are as many sorts of poets as there are senti-
ments and ideas; and to these it is possible to adapt garlands,
not only of every species of plant, but also of other kinds of
material. So the crowns of poets are made not only of myrtle
and of laurel, but of vine leaves for the white-wine verses, and
of ivy for the bacchanals; of olive for sacrifice and laws; of pop-
lar, of elm, and of corn for agriculture; of cypress for funerals,
and innumerable others for other occasions; and if it please you,
also of the material signified by a good fellow when he exclaimed:
“O Friar Leck! O Poetaster!
That in Milan didst buckle on thy wreath
Composed of salad, sausage, and the pepper-caster. ”


## p. 2618 (#178) ###########################################

2618
GIORDANO BRUNO
Cicada — Now surely he of divers moods, which he exhibits
in various ways, may cover himself with the branches of differ-
ent plants, and may hold discourse worthily with the Muses; for
they are his aura or comforter, his anchor or support, and his
harbor, to which he retires in times of labor, of agitation, and
of storm. Hence he cries: - "O Mountain of Parnassus, where
I abide; Muses, with whom I converse; Fountain of Helicon,
where I am nourished; Mountain, that affordest me a quiet
dwelling-place; Muses, that inspire me with profound doctrines;
Fountain, that cleansest me; Mountain, on whose ascent my heart
uprises; Muses, that in discourse revive my spirits; Fountain,
whose arbors cool my brows, - change my death into life, my
cypress to laurels, and my hells into heavens: that is, give me
immortality, make me a poet, render me illustrious! ”
Tansillo— Well; because to those whom Heaven favors, the
greatest evils turn to greatest good; for needs or necessities
bring forth labors and studies, and these most often bring the
glory of immortal splendor.
Cicada — For to die in one age makes us live in all the rest.
CANTICLE OF THE SHINING ONES
A Tribute to English Women, from "The Nolan)
"Nº
OTHING I envy, Jove, from this thy sky,”
Spake Neptune thus, and raised his lofty crest.
«God of the waves,” said Jove, “thy pride runs high;
What more wouldst add to own thy stern behest ? »
“Thou,” spake the god, “dost rule the fiery span,
The circling spheres, the glittering shafts of day;
Greater am I, who in the realm of man
Rule Thames, with all his Nymphs in fair array.
“In this my breast I hold the fruitful land,
The vasty reaches of the trembling sea;
And what in night's bright dome, or day's, shall stand
Before these radiant maids who dwell with me? )
“Not thine,” said Jove, "god of the watery mount,
To exceed my lot; but thou my lot shalt share:
Thy heavenly maids among my stars I'll count,
And thou shalt own the stars beyond compare! ”


## p. 2619 (#179) ###########################################

GIORDANO BRUNO
2619
THE SONG OF THE NINE SINGERS
O
[The first sings and plays the cithern. ]
CLIFFS and rocks! O thorny woods! O shore!
O hills and dales! O valleys, rivers, seas!
How do your new-discovered beauties please?
O Nymph, 'tis yours the guerdon rare,
If now the open skies shine fair;
O happy wanderings, well spent and o'er!
[The second sings and plays to his mandolin. ]
O happy wanderings, well spent and o'er!
Say then, O Circe, these heroic tears,
These griefs, endured through tedious months and years,
Were as a grace divine bestowed
If now our weary travail is no more.
[The third sings and plays to his lyre. ]
If now our weary travail is no more!
If this sweet haven be our destined rest,
Then naught remains but to be blest,
To thank our God for all his gifts,
Who from our eyes the veil uplifts,
Where shines the light upon the heavenly shore.
(The fourth sings to the viol. ]
Where shines the light upon the heavenly shore!
O blindness, dearer far than others' sight!
O sweeter grief than earth's most sweet delight!
For ye have led the erring soul
By gradual steps to this fair goal,
And through the darkness into light we soar.
[The fifth sings to a Spanish timbrel. ]
And through the darkness into light we soar!
To full fruition all high thought is brought,
With such brave patience that ev'n we
At least the only path can see,
And in his noblest work our God adore.


## p. 2620 (#180) ###########################################

2620
GIORDANO BRUNO
[The sixth sings to a lute. )
And in his noblest work our God adore!
God doth not will joy should to joy succeed,
Nor ill shall be of other ill the seed;
But in his hand the wheel of fate
Turns, now depressed and now elate,
Evolving day from night for evermore.
[The seventh sings to the Irish harp. ]
Evolving day from night for evermore!
And as yon robe of glorious nightly fire
Pales when the morning beams to noon aspire,
Thus He who rules with law eternal,
Creating order fair diurnal,
Casts down the proud and doth exalt the poor.
[The eighth plays with a viol and bow. )
Casts down the proud and doth exalt the poor!
And with an equal hand maintains
The boundless worlds which He sustains,
And scatters all our finite sense
At thought of His omnipotence,
Clouded awhile, to be revealed once more.
[The ninth plays upon the rebeck. ]
Clouded awhile, to be revealed once more!
Thus neither doubt nor fear avails;
O'er all the incomparable End prevails,
O'er fair champaign and mountain,
O'er river-brink and fountain,
And o'er the shocks of seas and perils of the shore.
Translation of Isa Blagden.


## p. 2621 (#181) ###########################################

GIORDANO BRUNO
2621
OF IMMENSITY
From Frith's Life of Giordano Bruno)
'T'S
is thou, O Spirit, dost within my soul
This weakly thought with thine own life amend;
Rejoicing, dost thy rapid pinions lend
Me, and dost wing me to that lofty goal
Where secret portals ope and fetters break,
And thou dost grant me, by thy grace complete,
Fortune to spurn, and death; ( high retreat,
Which few attain, and fewer yet forsake!
Girdled with gates of brass in every part,
Prisoned and bound in vain, 'tis mine to rise
Through sparkling fields of air to pierce the skies,
Sped and accoutred by no doubting heart,
Till, raised on clouds of contemplation vast,
Light, leader, law, Creator, I attain at last.
LIFE WELL LOST
W"
INGED by desire and thee, O dear delight!
As still the vast and succoring air I tread,
So, mounting still, on swifter pinions sped,
I scorn the world, and heaven receives my flight.
And if the end of Ikaros be nigh,
I will submit, for I shall know no pain:
And falling dead to earth, shall rise again;
What lowly life with such high death can vie ?
Then speaks my heart from out the upper air,
«Whither dost lead me ? sorrow and despair
Attend the rash:” and thus I make reply:-
« Fear thou no fall, nor lofty ruin sent;
Safely divide the clouds, and die content,
When such proud death is dealt thee from on high. ”
PARNASSUS WITHIN
O
HEART, 'tis you my chief Parnassus are,
Where for my safety I must ever climb.
My winged thoughts are Muses, who from far
Bring gifts of beauty to the court of Time;
And Helicon, that fair unwasted rill,
Springs newly in my tears upon the earth,


## p. 2622 (#182) ###########################################

262 2
GIORDANO BRUNO
And by those streams and nymphs, and by that hill,
It pleased the gods to give a poet birth.
No favoring hand that comes of lofty race,
No priestly unction, nor the grant of kings,
Can on me lay such lustre and such grace,
Nor add such heritage; for one who sings
Hath a crowned head, and by the sacred bay,
His heart, his thoughts, his tears, are consecrate alway.
COMPENSATION
THE
HE moth beholds not death as forth he flies
Into the splendor of the living flame;
The hart athirst to crystal water hies,
Nor heeds the shaft, nor fears the hunter's aim;
The timid bird, returning from above
To join his mate, deems not the net is nigh;
Unto the light, the fount, and to my love,
Seeing the flame, the shaft, the chains, I fly;
So high a torch, love-lighted in the skies,
Consumes my soul; and with this bow divine
Of piercing sweetness what terrestrial vies ?
This net of dear delight doth prison mine;
And I to life's last day have this desire -
Be mine thine arrows, love, and mine thy fire.
LIFE FOR SONG
COM
HOME Muse, O Muse, so often scorned by me,
The hope of sorrow and the balm of care,–
Give to me speech and song, that I may be
Unchid by grief; grant me such graces rare
As other ministering souls may never see
Who boast thy laurel, and thy myrtle wear.
I know no joy wherein thou hast not part,
My speeding wind, my anchor, and my goal.
Come, fair Parnassus, lift thou up my heart;
Come, Helicon, renew my thirsty soul.
A cypress crown, ( Muse, is thine to give,
And pain eternal: take this weary frame,
Touch me with fire, and this my death shall live
On all men's lips and in undying fame.


## p. 2622 (#183) ###########################################



## p. 2622 (#184) ###########################################


CONT
TELLITE
WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT.


## p. 2623 (#185) ###########################################

2623
WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT
(1794-1878)
BY GEORGE PARSONS LATHROP
D
ISTINGUISHED as he was by the lofty qualities of his verse,
William Cullen Bryant held a place almost unique in Amer-
ican literature, by the union of his activity as a poet with
his eminence as a citizen and an influential journalist, throughout
an uncommonly long career. Two traits still further define the
peculiarity of his position — his precocious development, and the
evenness and sustained vigor of all his poetic work from the begin-
ning to the end. He began writing verse at the age of eight; at
ten he made contributions in this kind to the county gazette, and
produced a finished and effective rhymed address, read at his school
examination, which became popular for recitation; and in his thir-
teenth year, during the Presidency of Thomas Jefferson, he com-
posed a political satire, The Embargo. This, being published, was
at first supposed by many to be the work of a man, attracted much
attention and praise, and passed into a second edition with other
shorter pieces.
But these, while well wrought in the formal eighteenth-century
fashion, showed no special originality. It was with Thanatopsis,'
written in 1811, when he was only seventeen, that his career as a
poet of original and assured strength began. “Thanatopsis) was an
inspiration of the primeval woods of America, of the scenes that
surrounded the writer in youth. At the same time it expressed with
striking independence and power a fresh conception of the univer-
sality of Death in the natural order. ” As has been well said, “it
takes the idea of death out of its theological aspects and restores it
to its proper place in the vast scheme of things. This in itself was
a mark of genius in a youth of his time and place. ” Another Amer-
ican poet, Stoddard, calls it the greatest poem ever written by so
young a man. The author's son-in-law and biographer, Parke God-
win, remarks upon it aptly, “For the first time on this continent
a poem was written destined to general admiration and enduring
fame;" and this indeed is a very significant point, that it began the
history of true poetry in the United States, a fact which further
secured to Bryant his exceptional place. The poem remains a classic
of the English language, and the author himself never surpassed the
high mark attained in it; although the balanced and iasting nature


## p. 2624 (#186) ###########################################

2624
WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT
of his faculty is shown in a pendant to this poem, which he created
in his old age and entitled “The Flood of Years. ' The last is equal
to the first in dignity and finish, but is less original, and has never
gained a similar fame.
Another consideration regarding Bryant is, that representing a
modern development of poetry under American inspiration, he was
also a descendant of the early Massachusetts colonists, being con-
nected with the Pilgrim Fathers through three ancestral lines. Born
at Cummington, Massachusetts, November 3d, 1794, the son of a stal-
wart but studious country physician of literary tastes, he inherited
the strong religious feeling of this ancestry, which was united in
him with a deep and sensitive love of nature. This led him to
reflect in his poems the strength and beauty of American landscape,
vividly as it had never before been mirrored; and the blending of
serious thought and innate piety with the sentiment for nature so
reflected gave a new and impressive result.
Like many other long-lived men, Bryant suffered from delicate
health in the earlier third of his life: there was a tendency to
consumption in his otherwise vigorous family stock. He read much,
and was much interested in Greek literature and somewhat influenced
by it. But he also lived a great deal in the open air, rejoiced in the
boisterous games and excursions in the woods with his brothers and
sisters, and took long rambles alone among the hills and wild
groves; being then, as always afterwards, an untiring walker. After
a stay of only seven months at Williams College, he studied law,
which he practiced for some eight years in Plainfield and Great
Barrington. In the last-named village he was elected a tithingman,
charged with the duty of keeping order in the churches and
enforcing the observance of Sunday. Chosen town clerk soon after-
wards, at a salary of five dollars a year, he kept the records of the
town with his own hand for five years, and also served as justice
of the peace with power to hear cases in a lower court. These
biographical items are of value, as showing his close relation to the
self-government of the people in its simpler forms, and his early
practical familiarity with the duties of a trusted citizen.
Meanwhile, however, he kept on writing at intervals, and in 1821
read before the Phi Beta Kappa Society at Harvard a long poem,
( The Ages,' a kind of composition more in favor at that period than
in later days, being a general review of the progress of man in
knowledge and virtue. With the passage of time it has not held
its own as against some of his other poems, although it long enjoyed
a high reputation; but its success on its original hearing was the
cause of his bringing together his first volume of poems, hardly more
than a pamphlet, in the same year. It made him famous with the


## p. 2625 (#187) ###########################################

WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT
2625
reading public of the United States, and won some recognition in
England. In this little book were contained, besides (The Ages
and Thanatopsis, several pieces which have kept their hold upon
popular taste; such as the well-known lines (To a Waterfowl' and
the Inscription for the Entrance to a Wood. '
The year of its publication also brought into the world Cooper's
(The Spy,' Irving's (Sketch Book) and Bracebridge Hall, with vari-
ous other significant volumes, including Channing's early essays
and Daniel Webster's great Plymouth Oration. It was evident that
a native literature was dawning brightly; and as Bryant's productions
now came into demand, and he had never liked the profession of
law, he quitted it and went to New York in 1825, there to seek a
living by his pen as “a literary adventurer. ” The adventure led to
ultimate triumph, but not until after a long term of dark prospects
and hard struggles.
Even in his latest years Bryant used to declare that his favorite
among his poems — although it is one of the least known - was
'Green River'; perhaps because it recalled the scenes of young man-
hood, when he was about entering the law, and contrasted the peace-
fulness of that stream with the life in which he would be
«Forced to drudge for the dregs of men,
And scrawl strange words with the barbarous pen,
And mingle among the jostling crowd,
Where the sons of strife are subtle and loud. »
This might be applied to much of his experience in New York,
where he edited the New York Review and became one of the edi-
tors, then a proprietor, and finally chief editor of the Evening Post.
A great part of his energies now for many years was given to hi
journalistic function, and to the active outspoken discussion of import-
ant political questions; often in trying crises and at the cost of harsh
unpopularity. Success, financial as well as moral, came to him within
the next quarter-century, during which laborious interval he had like-
wise maintained his interest and work in pure literature and produced
new poems from time to time in various editions.
From this point on until his death, June 12th, 1878, in his eighty-
fourth year, he was the central and commanding figure in the enlarging
literary world of New York. His newspaper had gained a potent
reputation, and it brought to bear upon public affairs a strong influ-
ence of the highest sort. Its editorial course and tone, as well as the
earnest and patriotic part taken by Bryant in popular questions and
national affairs, without political ambition or office-holding, had estab-
lished him as one of the most distinguished citizens of the metropolis,
no less than its most renowned poet. His presence and co-operation
V-165


## p. 2626 (#188) ###########################################

2626
WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT
were indispensable in all great public functions or humanitarian and
intellectual movements. In 1864 his seventieth birthday was celebrated
at the Century Club with extraordinary honors. In 1875, again, the
two houses of the State Legislature at Albany paid him the compli-
ment, unprecedented in the annals of American authorship, of inviting
him to a reception given to him in their official capacity. Another
mark of the abounding esteem in which he was held among his
fellow-citizens was the presentation to him in 1876 of a rich silver
vase, commemorative of his life and works. He was now a wealthy
man; yet his habits of life remained essentially unchanged. His
tastes were simple, his love of nature was still ardent; his literary
and editorial industry unflagging.
Besides his poems, Bryant wrote two short stories for “Tales of
the Glauber Spa'; and published Letters of a Traveler' in 1850, as
a result of three journeys to Europe and the Orient, together with
various public addresses. His style as a writer of prose is clear,
calm, dignified, and denotes exact observation and a wide range of
interests. So too his editorial articles in the Evening Post, some
of which have been preserved in his collected writings, are couched
in serene and forcible English, with nothing of the sensational or the
colloquial about them. They were a fitting medium of expression
for his firm conscientiousness and integrity as a journalist.
But it is as a poet, and especially by a few distinctive composi-
tions, that Bryant will be most widely and deeply held in remem-
brance. In the midst of the exacting business of his career as an
editor, and many public or social demands upon his time, he found
opportunity to familiarize himself with portions of German and Span-
ish poetry, which he translated, and to maintain in the quietude of
his country home in Roslyn, Long Island, his old acquaintance with
the Greek and Latin classics. From this continued study there re-
sulted naturally in 1870 his elaborate translation of Homer's Iliad,
which was followed by that of the Odyssey in 1871. These scholarly
works, cast in strong and polished blank verse, won high praise from
American critics, and even achieved a popular success, although they
were not warmly acclaimed, in England. Among literarians they are
still regarded as in a manner standards of their kind. Bryant, in his
long march of over sixty-five years across the literary field, was wit-
ness to many new developments in poetic writing, in both his own
and other countries. But while he perceived the splendor and color
and rich novelty of these, he held in his own work to the plain
theory and practice which had guided him from the start. «The best
poetry,” he still believed — “that which takes the strongest hold of
the general mind, not in one age only but in all ages — is that which
is always simple and always luminous. ” He did not embody in


## p. 2627 (#189) ###########################################

WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT
2627
impassioned forms the sufferings, emotions, or problems of the hu-
man kind, but was disposed to generalize them, as in The Journey
of Life,' the (Hymn of the City,' and 'The Song of the Sower. ' It is
characteristic that two of the longer poems, Sella' and 'The Little
People of the Snow,' which are narratives, deal with legends of an
individual human life merging itself with the inner life of nature,
under the form of imaginary beings who dwell in the snow or in
water. On the other hand, one of his eulogists observes that al-
though some of his contemporaries went much beyond him in full-
ness of insight and nearness to the great conflicts of the age, «he
has certainly not been surpassed, perhaps not been approached, by
any writer since Wordsworth, in that majestic repose and that self-
reliant simplicity which characterized the morning stars of song. ” In
(Our Country's Call, however, one hears the ring of true martial
enthusiasm; and there is a deep patriotic fervor in O Mother of
a Mighty Race. ' The noble and sympathetic homage paid to the
typical womanhood of a genuine woman of every day, in “The
Conqueror's Grave,' reveals also great underlying warmth and sensi-
tiveness of feeling. Robert of Lincoln' and (The Planting of the
Apple-Tree' are both touched with a lighter mood of joy in nature,
which supplies a contrast to his usual pensiveness.
Bryant's venerable aspect in old age — with erect form, white hair,
and flowing snowy beard - gave him a resemblance to Homer; and
there was something Homeric about his influence upon the litera-
ture of his country, in the dignity with which he invested the poetic
art and the poet's relation to the people.
Serge Persons Latterop
(All Bryant's poems were originally published by D. Appleton and Company. )
THANATOPSIS
T°
0 Him who in the love of Nature holds
Communion with her visible forms, she speaks
A various language; for his gayer hours
She has a voice of gladness, and a smile
And eloquence of beauty, and she glides
Into his darker musings, with a mild
And healing sympathy, that steals away
Their sharpness ere he is aware. When thoughts
Of the last bitter hour come like a blight
Over thy spirit, and sad images
Of the stern agony, and shroud, and pall,


## p. 2628 (#190) ###########################################

2628
WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT
And breathless darkness, and the narrow house,
Make thee to shudder, and grow sick at heart;
Go forth, under the open sky, and list
To Nature's teachings, while from all around
Earth and her waters, and the depths of air
Comes a still voice:-
Yet a few days, and thee
The all-beholding sun shall see no more
In all his course; nor yet in the cold ground,
Where thy pale form was laid, with many tears,
Nor in the embrace of ocean, shall exist
Thy image. Earth, that nourished thee, shall claim
Thy growth, to be resolved to earth again,
And, lost each human trace, surrendering up
Thine individual being, shalt thou go
To mix for ever with the elements,
To be a brother to the insensible rock
And to the sluggish clod, which the rude swain
Turns with his share, and treads upon. The oak
Shall send his roots abroad, and pierce thy mold.
Yet not to thine eternal resting-place
Shalt thou retire alone, nor couldst 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 sepulchre. The hills
Rock-ribbed 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, pierce the Barcan wilderness,
Or lose thyself in the continuous woods
Where rolls the Oregon, and hears no sound


## p. 2629 (#191) ###########################################

WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT
2629
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 shalt thou rest; and what if thou withdraw
In silence from the living, and no friend
Take note of thy departure ? All that breathe
Will share thy destiny. The gay will laugh
When thou art gone, the solemn brood of care
Plod on, and each one as before will chase
His favorite phantom; yet all these shall leave
Their mirth and their employments, and shall come
And make their bed with thee. As the long train
Of ages glides away, the sons of men,
The youth in life's fresh spring and he who goes
In the full strength of years, matron and maid,
The speechless babe and the gray-headed man
Shall one by one be gathered to thy side,
By those who in their turn shall follow them.
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.
THE CROWDED STREET
L
ET me move slowly through the street,
Filled with an ever-shifting train,
Amid the sound of steps that beat
The murmuring walks like autumn rain.
How fast the fitting figures come!
The mild, the fierce, the stony face –
Some bright with thoughtless smiles, and some
Where secret tears have lost their trace.
They pass to toil, to strife, to rest --
To halls in which the feast is spread —


## p. 2630 (#192) ###########################################

2630
WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT
To chambers where the funeral guest
In silence sits beside the dead.