pass,

And where the o'ershadowing branches sweep the grass.

The faint old man shall lean his silver head To feel thee; thou shalt kiss the child asleep,

And dry the moistened curls that overspread

His temples, while his breathing grows more deep;

And they who stand about the sick man's bed,

Shall joy to listen to thy distant sweep, 30 And softly part his curtains to allow Thy visit, grateful to his burning brow.

Go-but the circle of eternal change, Which is the life of Nature, shall restore,

With sounds and scents from all thy mighty range,

1 Compare with this poem Wordsworth's To the Small Celandine,' and others.

Notice that Bryant addresses his verses to a distinctively American flower; as later he chooses an American bird, the bobolink, for the subject of a poem which is to be contrasted with Wordsworth's To the Skylark,' To the Green Linnet,' ete. Bryant gives the reason for this choice in a letter to his brother John, February 19, 1832: I saw some lines by you to the skylark. Did you ever see such a bird? Let me counsel you to draw your images, in describing Nature, from what you observe around you, unless you are professedly composing a description of some foreign country, when, of course, you will learn what you can from books. The skylark is an English bird, and an American who has never visited Europe has no right to be in raptures about it.'

and successful warfare which he kept up at the head of a few daring followers, that they sent an officer to remonstrate with him for not coming into the open field and fighting 'like a gentleman and a Christian.' (BRYANT.)

On the occasion of a reception given to Bryant in Charleston, South Carolina, in 1873, one of the speakers said that the Song of Marion's Men' had been sung in many a Southern bivouac, and warmed the soldier's heart at many a Confederate camp-fire.' See Godwin's Life of Bryant, vol. ii, pp. 330, 331.

2 In the edition of Bryant's poems published in England in 1832, and edited by Washington Irving, this line was changed to

The foeman trembles in his camp. Considerable discussion over this change arose later in America, of which a full account can be found in Bigelow's Life of Bryant, pp. 129-139.

'Tis life to guide the fiery barb
Across the moonlight plain;
"Tis life to feel the night-wind
That lifts the tossing mane.
A moment in the British camp -
A moment and away
Back to the pathless forest,
Before the peep of day.

Grave men there are by broad Santee,
Grave men with hoary hairs;
Their hearts are all with Marion,

For Marion are their prayers.
And lovely ladies greet our band
With kindliest welcoming,
With smiles like those of summer,
And tears like those of spring.
For them we wear these trusty arms,
And lay them down no more
Till we have driven the Briton,
Forever, from our shore.

1831.

THE PRAIRIES 1

50

60

1831.

The Prairies. I behold them for the first, And my heart swells, while the dilated sight

Takes in the encircling vastness. Lo! they stretch,

In airy undulations, far away,

As if the ocean, in his gentlest swell, Stood still, with all his rounded billows fixed,

1 See the account of Bryant's first visit to the West, in Godwin's Life, vol. i, pp. 282-286. Especially significant is a passage from Bryant's letter to Richard H. Dana: 'I have seen the great West, where I ate corn and hominy, slept in log houses, with twenty men, women, and children in the same room. . . . At Jacksonville, where my two brothers live, I got on a horse, and travelled about a hundred miles to the northward over the immense prairies, with scattered settlements, on the edges of the groves. These prairies, of a soft, fertile garden soil, and a smooth undulating surface, on which you may put a horse to full speed, covered with high, thinly growing grass, full of weeds and gaudy flowers, and destitute of bushes or trees, perpetually brought to my mind the idea of their having been once cultivated. They looked to me like the fields of a race which had passed away, whose enclosures and habitations had decayed, but on whose vast and rich plains, smoothed and levelled by tillage, the forest had not yet encroached.'

mounds

Of desolation and of fear became
Bitterer than death, yielded himself to

THE ANTIQUITY OF FREEDOM

HERE are old trees, tall oaks, and gnarlèd pines,

That stream with gray-green mosses; here the ground

Was never trenched by spade, and flowers spring up

Unsown, and die ungathered. It is sweet To linger here, among the flitting birds And leaping squirrels, wandering brooks, and winds

That shake the leaves, and scatter, as they pass,

A fragrance from the cedars, thickly set With pale-blue berries. In these peaceful shades

Peaceful, unpruned, immeasurably old— 10 My thoughts go up the long dim path of years,

Back to the earliest days of liberty.

O FREEDOM! thou art not, as poets dream,

A fair young girl, with light and delicate

limbs,

And wavy tresses gushing from the cap