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The mighty Rain Holds the vast empire of the sky alone.
William Cullen Bryant -
Ere, in the northern gale, The summer tresses of the trees are gone, The woods of Autumn, all around our vale, Have put their glory on.
William Cullen Bryant
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A melancholy sound is in the air, A deep sigh in the distance, a shrill wail Around my dwelling. 'Tis the Wind of night.
William Cullen Bryant -
The groves were God's first temple. Ere man learned To hew the shaft, and lay the architrave, And spread the roof above them,--ere he framed The lofty vault, to gather and roll back The sound of anthems; in the darkling wood, Amidst the cool and silence, he knelt down And offered to the Mightiest solemn thanks And supplication.
William Cullen Bryant -
The journalist should be on his guard against publishing what is false in taste or exceptionable in morals.
William Cullen Bryant -
Pain dies quickly, and lets her weary prisoners go; the fiercest agonies have shortest reign.
William Cullen Bryant -
I gazed upon the glorious sky And the green mountains round, And thought that when I came to lie At rest within the ground, 'Twere pleasant, that in flowery June When brooks send up a cheerful tune, And groves a joyous sound, The sexton's hand, my grave to make, The rich, green mountain-turf should break.
William Cullen Bryant -
War, like all other situations of danger and of change, calls forth the exertion of admirable intellectual qualities and great virtues, and it is only by dwelling on these, and keeping out of sight the sufferings and sorrows, and all the crimes and evils that follow in its train, that it has its glory in the eyes of men.
William Cullen Bryant
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Thine eyes are springs in whose serene And silent waters heaven is seen. Their lashes are the herbs that look On their young figures in the brook.
William Cullen Bryant -
Glorious are the woods in their latest gold and crimson, Yet our full-leaved willows are in the freshest green. Such a kindly autumn, so mercifully dealing With the growths of summer, I never yet have seen.
William Cullen Bryant -
Lo! while we are gazing, in swifter haste Stream down the snows, till the air is white, As, myriads by myriads madly chased, They fling themselves from their shadowy height. The fair, frail creatures of middle sky, What speed they make, with their grave so nigh; Flake after flake, To lie in the dark and silent lake!
William Cullen Bryant -
The breath of springtime at this twilight hour Comes through the gathering glooms, And bears the stolen sweets of many a flower Into my silent rooms.
William Cullen Bryant -
Ah! never shall the land forget How gushed the life-blood of her brave -
William Cullen Bryant -
Look on this beautiful world, and read the truth in her fair page.
William Cullen Bryant
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Eloquence is the poetry of prose.
William Cullen Bryant -
[Thanatopsis] was written in 1817, when Bryant was 23. Had he died then, the world would have thought it had lost a great poet. But he lived on.
William Cullen Bryant -
The press, important as is its office, is but the servant of the human intellect, and its ministry is for good or for evil, according to the character of those who direct it. The press is a mill which grinds all that is put into its hopper. Fill the hopper with poisoned grain, and it will grind it to meal, but there is death in the bread.
William Cullen Bryant -
The rose that lives its little hour Is prized beyone the sculpted flower.
William Cullen Bryant -
The country ever has a lagging Spring, Waiting for May to call its violets forth, And June its roses-showers and sunshine bring, Slowly, the deepening verdure o'er the earth; To put their foliage out, the woods are slack, And one by one the singing-birds come back. Within the city's bounds the time of flowers Comes earlier. Let a mild and sunny day, Such as full often, for a few bright hours, Breathes through the sky of March the airs of May, Shine on our roofs and chase the wintry gloom- And lo! our borders glow with sudden bloom.
William Cullen Bryant -
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 by 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.
William Cullen Bryant
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Can anything be imagined more abhorrent to every sentiment of generosity and justice, than the law which arms the rich with the legal right to fix, by assize, the wages of the poor? If this is not slavery, we have forgotten its definition. Strike the right of associating for the sale of labor from the privileges of a freeman, and you may as well bind him to a master, or ascribe him to the soil.
William Cullen Bryant -
The birch-bark canoe of the savage seems to me one of the most beautiful and perfect things of the kind constructed by human art.
William Cullen Bryant -
The fiercest agonies have shortest reign; And after dreams of horror, comes again The welcome morning with its rays of peace.
William Cullen Bryant -
Stand here by my side and turn, I pray, On the lake below thy gentle eyes; The clouds hang over it, heavy and gray, And dark and silent the water lies; And out of that frozen mist the snow In wavering flakes begins to flow; Flake after flake, They sink in the dark and silent lake.
William Cullen Bryant