American poems - 1879 Author:Horace Elisha Scudder Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT. BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT was born at Cum- mington, Massachusetts, November 3, 1794; he died in New York, June 12, ... more »1878. His first poem, The Embargo, was published in Boston in 1809, and was written when je was but thirteen years old; his last poem, Our Fellow Worshippers, was published in 1878. His long life thus was also a long career as a writer, and his first published poem prefigured the twofold character of his literary life, for while it was in poetic form it was more distinctly a political article. He showed very early a taste for poetry, and was encouraged to read and write verse by his father, Dr. Peter Bryant, a country physician of strong character and cultivated tastes. He was sent to Williams College in the fall of 1810, where he remained two terms, when he decided to leave and enter Yale College ; but pecuniary troubles interfered with his plans and he never completed his college course. He pursued his literary studies at home, then began the study of law and was admitted to the bar in 1815. Meantime he had been continuing to write, and during this period wrote with many corrections and changes the poem by which he is still perhaps best known, Thanatopsis. It was published in the North American Review for September, 1817, and the same periodical published a few months afterward his lines To a Waterfowl, one of the most characteristic and lovely of Bryant's poems. Literature divided his attention with law, but evidently had his heart. In 1821 he was invited to read a poem before the Phi Beta Kappa Society of Harvard College, and he read The Ages, a stately grave poem which shows his own poetic power, his familiarity with the great masters of literature, and his lofty, philosophic nature. Shortly after this he issued a ...« less