William Cullen Bryant Quotes
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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.
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[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.
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Here the free spirit of mankind, at length, Throws its last fetters off; and who shall place A limit to the giant's unchained strength, Or curb his swiftness in the forward race?
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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.
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The mighty Rain Holds the vast empire of the sky alone.
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Much has seen said of the wisdom of old age. Old age is wise, I grant, for itself, but not wise for the community. It is wise in declining new enterprises, for it has not the power nor the time to execute them; wise in shrinking from difficulty, for it has not the strength to overcome it; wise in avoiding danger, for it lacks the faculty of ready and swift action, by which dangers are parried and converted into advantages. But this is not wisdom for mankind at large, by whom new enterprises must be undertaken, dangers met, and difficulties surmounted.
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Alas! to seize the moment When the heart inclines to heart, And press a suit with passion, Is not a woman's part. If man come not to gather The roses where they stand, They fade among their foliage, They cannot seek his hand.
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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.
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The fiercest agonies have shortest reign; And after dreams of horror, comes again The welcome morning with its rays of peace.
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Music is not merely a study, it is an entertainment; wherever there is music there is a throng of listeners.
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Where are the flowers, the fair young flowers, that lately sprang and stood In brighter light and softer airs, a beauteous sisterhood?
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Truth, crushed to earth, shall rise again.
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Is not thy home among the flowers?
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The summer day is closed - the sun is set: Well they have done their office, those bright hours, The latest of whose train goes softly out In the red west. The green blade of the ground Has risen, and herds have cropped it; the young twig Has spread its plaited tissues to the sun; Flowers of the garden and the waste have blown And withered; seeds have fallen upon the soil, From bursting cells, and in their graves await Their resurrection. Insects from the pools Have filled the air awhile with humming wings, That now are still for ever; painted moths Have wandered the blue sky, and died again
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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.
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Do not the bright June roses blow To meet thy kiss at morning hours?
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A silence, the brief Sabbath of an hour, Reigns o'er the fields; the laborer sits within His dwelling; he has left his steers awhile, Unyoked, to bite the herbage, and his dog Sleeps stretched beside the door-stone in the shade. Now the gray marmot, with uplifted paws, No more sits listening by his den, but steals Abroad, in safety, to the clover-field, And crops its juicy-blossoms.
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Gently - so have good men taught - Gently, and without grief, the old shall glide Into the new; the eternal flow of things, Like a bright river of the fields of heaven, Shall journey onward in perpetual peace.
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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.
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Adversity is the nurse of greatness which roughly rocks her patients back to health.
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Truth gets well if she is run over by a locomotive, while error dies of lockjaw if she scratches her finger.
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Difficulty, my brethren, is the nurse of greatness - a harsh nurse, who roughly rocks her foster children into strength and athletic proportion.
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But Winter has yet brighter scenes-he boasts Splendors beyond what gorgeous Summer knows; Or Autumn with his many fruits, and woods All flushed with many hues.
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I shall seeThe hour of death draw near to me,Hope, blossoming within my heart. . . .