! \ tX \ o m m* *LM FROM THE LIBRARY OF REV. LOUIS FITZGERALD BENSON. D. D. BEQUEATHED BY HIM TO THE LIBRARY OF PRINCETON THEOLOGICAL SEMINARY Section 37{?0 The Bryant Homestead-Book. TH]-: ('IEILD. Years change thee not. Upon yon hill The tall old maples, verdant still, Yet tell, in grandeur of decay, II<»\\ swift the years have passed away, Since iirst, a <-hil /kI^/< s «>^ ^ « <" ^ / rt^. ,A n^r 4 THE Bryant Homestead-Book THE IDLE SCHOLAR ILLUSTRATED NEW YORK G. P. PUTNAM & SON 18 70 Entered according to A.o1 of Con-Tress, in the year By JULIA HATFIELD, In the Clerk's Office cf the District Court of the United States, for the Eastern • Districl of New York. A.LVOED, I' B I N I i: U . PUBLISHERS NOTICE. In a volume intended to do honor to our Veteran Poet, and to gratify his hosts of friends and admirers with sketches of his home-life in connection with themes from his works. anv publisher might take pride in placing his imprint. For the plan, the matter, and the manner of this work, we cannot claim credit, as they belong alone to its author : our responsibility being limited to that of our own voca- tion. PREFACE. The Bryant Life-Studies are the results of careful contemplation of the noble subject, William Cullen Bryant, in his twofold phases as the poet and as the journalist. The poet exists above, the journalist upon the scene of daily routine-life ; and both constitute the Man. The Homestead- Book is but a record of the outlines, and is ne- cessarily incomplete. At the first, the studies were more philosophical. The author con- templated primal American Nature, a Nature leaving its impress on the age. Bryant is as "many-sided " as Goethe. lie is as severe a study. In our language, maintaining its purity of words and idiom, he is Avhat Goethe was to the German. In other respects he differs from Goethe ; again he resembles him. Literature owes incalculable debts to both. The purpose lias been to paint and delineate, rather than to demon- strate ; to show the great poet-editor as the Man that lie is, rather than to be his eulogist or his advocate. The task has been one of love, and therefore all the lighter. If its fidelity shall appear, and Bryant shall be found depicted as he is and has been, the author, more than any other, will be abundantly gratified. PEE F A C E The Bbtaxt Life-Studies are the results of careful contemplation of the noble subject, William Cfllex Betaxt, in his twofold phases as the poet and as the journalist. The poet exists above, the journalist upon the scene of daily routine-life ; and both constitute the Man. The Homestead- Book is but a record of the outlines, and is ne- cessarily incomplete. At the first, the studies were more philosophical. The author con- templated primal American Nature, a Nature leaving its impress on the age. Betaxt is as '"many-sided" as Goethe. lie is as severe a study. In our language, maintaining its purity of words and idiom, he is what Goethe was to the German. In other respects he differs from Goethe : again he resembles him. Literature owes incalculable debts to both. The purpose has been to paint and delineate, rather than to demon- strate ; to show the great poet-editor as the Man that he is, rather than to be his eulogist or his advocate. The task has been one of love, and therefore all the lighter. If its fidelity shall appear, and Betaxt shall be found depicted as he is and has been, the author, more than any other, will be abundantly gratified. CONTENTS Book. I. Introductory. II. Homesteads. III. Interior Life. IV. Mosaics : The Old. V. Mosaics : The New. VI. Arborescence. VII. Reunion. VIII. Clouds and Shadows. IX. City by the iSea. Poems. Entrance of a Wood. The Mountain -Wind Song. The Old Man's Counsel. The Great Tomb of Man. Winds and Wanes : The Sea. The Forest Hymn. The Prairies: The Ancient Oak. The Tides — Cedar mere Song of the Sower: Poetry and Com. ILLUSTRATIONS. Latest Life- Portrait of Bryant the Poet Photograph Sarony Life-Caricature of Bryant the Journalist Etching Nast. ON WOOD. Brawn by Hows — Engraved by Linton. Entrance of the Homestead "Wood 13 Woodland-Path, east side of the Homestead 29 General View of the Homestead 40 Still- water View on the Premises 59 Triumphal Emigration of the Doctor's old Office 7 7 The Poet's Spring 88 Site of the Old School-House — Elms — Maples 93 View of the New School-House 108 The Rivulet — as it flows by the Homestead 117 The Rivulet — as it enters the Wood 130 Hemlock Bocage U7 Blackberry Blossoms 152 The Old Orchard 161 Roots of the Ancient Oak 172 Ravine — The Joiinno Brook 189 Floral Tribute— Birth-Month Flower 195 Last Look at the Hills of Cummington — Deer Hill 20-4 The '• E. P." Pen and Inkstand 224 Dual Covers Modelled by Karl Muller. BOOK I. INTRODUCTORY THE DRUID AND THE BOOK. =2 EIRLOOMS have their value. Heir- looms are defined to be furniture in- herited with a freehold estate. This book is intended to be an heirloom which an idle posterity will inherit along with the homestead of the poet whose name is associated with the spot to which the book relates. The past teaches us that it is dangerous to write of poets' homesteads. Attention once attracted to them, they become the cynosure of speculation, and the target of pseudo-improvement. Ponder the fate of Pope and Shexstone. Each possessor for the time being, regard- ing himself a man of taste, jealous of his maniere d'etre, ambitious to add his ideal or conception to that of the 2 [N'TRODUCTO R Y . poet— finally the Bhrine becomes overburdened with countless counterfeit ornamentations of doubtful taste, or -till more doubtful meaning, till the original home- stead of the poet is nowhere to be recognized; sunken under a load of meretricious ornamentation. Now, as we ardently desire this homestead ever to remain as it is, — with the poet's hand laid upon it, — we must put it under ban ere we describe it. Both bless- ings and curses descend as heirlooms. Curses have their negative weight, or ought to have, as restraining influ- ences. Bans usually come down to us from the past, embalmed in vile doggerel. The worse the doggerel, the better the ban. In a polished age, such as ours,* it requires the rude, the brusque, the primeval, to arrest attention ! " The Poet's Homestead," and " The Poet's Tree,"+ under 1 »an a.m. 5629; a. i>. 1869. Curse on the hand that strikes The Tree! The primal curse his heirloom be : — On him a thousandfold shall fall Who dares " improve" this Homestead Hall ! Somewhat enigmatical perhaps; but it is for pos- terity to contemplate. When idlers of the present Query.— Will posterity regard us us polished or primeval? (See climax of the poem, The Planting of the Apple-Tree.) Butasthisia not the Posterity Edition, wo must, not now .stop to speculate on how we may be regarded! We might get lost in the qnagmire of the historico-philo- sophic, and lose the thread of the Homestead Book. See Bk. V I.. Arboresoenoe, INTRODUCTORY. 3 are in the Great All-Tomb, our ban will assert its potency. Heirlooms carry the clue of the antique. Our heirloom carries the clue of the primal curse ; if any- one knows what it is. Shakspeare's curse saved his hones from beins; resurrectionized ere their time, and if an idle curse can save the Bryaxt Homestead the fate of Pope and Shenstoise's, Ave will e'en " try -what virtue there is in stones.' 1 We purpose here to give some account of the home- stead of the family of William Cullex Bryant, in Cummin^ton, anions the highlands of the western part of Massachusetts, between the Connecticut and the Housatonic, and not far from the source of the north branch of the Westheld Kiver. To those to whom the situation may be a myth, we would say that Cumming- ton is a township in the county of Hampshire, about twenty miles northwest of Northampton, where the great meeting of the Academy of Sciences has recently taken place, when the " truth seekers" overhauled the California Skull, and learnedly prated "of life tens of thousands of years a^o." All of which is interesting to the present as well as to posterity. Have patience with an idle, loitering guide, for there is no necessity of haste, and we will eventually show you the spot where, November 3d, 1794, was born the now silver-haired Veteran of Cummington : ay, the very cockloft where he and his once little brothers and sisters played bo-peep among the relics and cast-off spinning 4 I XT H() DD OTOR V. wheels of revolutionary times, on rainy days when they could not go out to "build cascades "and "tiny bridges" by th< Rivulets brink. Meanwhile we will treat our- Belves and idle Posterity fco the feme of writing our name on the topmost window of the cockloft, before the ubiquitous lions, with John Smith in train, begin to arrive and appropriate every conspicuous nook. John Smith lias liis name mitten on high in the Shakspeare House, — that is glory enough for one man. Some say there is more than one John Smith in the world, but that is probably a mistake. For certain reasons that cockloft must be secured. We will explain in due time. Never was a homestead cockloft in such demand ! After the manner of the ancients : "The town and the country are now two separate worlds, each knowing but little about the other." — Atlantic Monthly. lie who can open and close this Look understands the enigma of life, lie needs not to read. The book is not for him. He lias conned his lesson. He has out- grown his Text-Buck* Let him pass it on to the next generation. Once upon a time there was a Magic Book. It could be read in fcwo ways. Artists sometimes paint pictures which Look very differently according at which INTRODUCTORY. 9 angle of vision one views them. The right side pre- sents one phase. Stand at the left you have another aspect entirely. Stand in front and you view a third ! This third is the chef d'cewore. It is made up of the combined effect of both others : yet it is nought but the meeting of the undercurrents. Nought, but demi- tones. But we were speaking of the Magic Book. Some could open the first cover, but could not shut the last ; some could open the last cover, but could not shut the first. A witch of a book, that. THE VESTIBULE OF THE FORESTS. One of the earlier poems of The Poet of the Forests, or, ScENARIUM OF AN Old FAMILIAR PoEM. Refrain of The Shadow-Boy.* "Tis pleasant in the joyous spring, the forest bowers to tread, Where the shadows of the living leaves dance lightly o'er the dead, And ever as we wander on, gleams forth some beauteous thing — The sparkle of a bubbling fount, the glancing of a wing." Forest Musings. — Anon. One of the early poems of Bryant, written a little later than his Thanatopsis, is the Inscription for the *This Shadow-Boy is a mystery. He came without invitation, and goes whistling and carolling through the forests as if he were at home. — Quaint wight. 6 INTRODUCTO R Y. Entra/na of a Wood* One of the illustrations of this volume represents the Entrance of a Wood, a passage between noble trees into the verdurous shadow of a forest. To the south of the dwelling-house lies a fine old wood, entered by a broad wood-path, which we may suppose to have suggested the verses in question. Here on entering you find yourself among tall and aged maple-, the shaggy rinds of which are pierced with every returning spring to yield sap for the "sugar- camp" as it is called; the canoe-birch, rising like a snow-white column ; the lofty ash, Btraight and slender ; the red maple, ruddy in spring with a profusion of little blossoms ; the black cherry, which here grows to a mag- nificent size, the hemlock with a greater breadth of branches than any other tree, and vieing in dimensions with the cedar of Lebanon; the bird cherry, with its slender shaft of almost sooty hue ; the red birch, its bark hanging in glossy shreds ; an occasional gigantic Linden and poplar of humbler size, and a multitude of stately 1 iceches, which ] tredominate perhaps over all the resi in number. Here in early spring the ground is strewn with yellow violets, looking like spangles of sunshine, and a little later the Erythronium (Dog's-tooth Violet, Adder-lily, Adder-tongue, the Ids cU SoleU of the French) opens its drooping bells of a golden color and emits it- delicate bui faint perfume. The foresl door is thickly carpeted with the dead leaves of the lasl season, and irregular with mossy I N T R I) D C T RY. 7 knolls, thrown up by the uprooting of trees which the wind lias levelled. Ah, idlers made a quaint mistake in childhood. We thought those mossy knolls were mimic "mounds," the graves of Indians, and could never 1 >e tempted to tread upon them. We had not then read (tale, but we had read Bryaxt, who, in his earlier poems, inculcates a deep veneration for the bone- i >f " disinterred warriors.'* We will tell our Indian story when we come to the Forest, We are now merely entering the Vestil rale. Here and there you see one of these aged trees over- thrown, the trunk of which leads " a causey rude from knoll to knoll," and the roots of which are seen, ' ; With all their earth upon them, twisting high." Two or three little rills traverse the grove, issuing from springs within its border, and '•Well softly forth, and wandering steep the root- Of half the mighty forest.'* TWO GEXERATIOX-. "Twice nnto spring has time's stern winter glowed. Twice nature blossomed from the seeds art sowed." >< II1LLEE. Bryant, like Goethe, draws two generations of read- ers. He takes us by the hand and leads us to the Entrance to the Wood : not the " Sombre Wood" of the father old of Tuscan song — tor whom we have a thought to spare ere our nine Sibylline books clos< — but our [NTROD ("I'u R V. own fresh forest of The Ni:\\ World. Not the mo- notonously redundant Equatorial plain, bul the mutative antithetical ever-varying forest of the North. Our poet is not a myth of The Old Would Plutonian shades, but a vital Antdti.s of the present hour, who gathers strength and inspiration from contact with Tin-; Great Earth-Mother. •• And till, from the earth, borne and stilled at length The earth that he touches still gilts him with strength." Verily — " One of the Ancients in the Morning of our Times," Our Druid-priest, who instils into us veneration for the forces of nature. (We could tell a long story about this, but our stingy publisher has cut down the paper rations; so we will save our story for idle posterity.) Life-worshippers ! ye, who learned Thanatopsis and Green Rive r in childhood. When, tutored first by square and rule We learned poetic feet at school, And conned the task we ne'er forget — Tm: Poet's Hand is o'eb us yet! (For shirk the drudge of learning as we will — "The Six of Homes smiles upon us still!")* A DRUIDICAL PAGE, All ye idle scholars who have mislaid your old LEMPRIERE, and forgotten what a Druid is, — listen! * See climax, Bk. IX. I X T R DUCTO R Y . 9 They look very much like our Frontispiece surrounded by forest scenarium : — but you must n't tell. Druid.e. — Ministers of religion among the ancient Gauls and Britons. They were held in the highest veneration by the people. They were intrusted with the education of youth, and all religious ceremonies, festivals, and sacrifices, were under their peculiar care. They taught the doctrine of metempsychosis, and believed in the immortality of the soul. [The doc- trine of Soul-Progression, probably \ the advancement from initial spheres to more exalted planes or vice versa, according to progressive or retrospective development during the ordeal of dual human apprenticeship ?] Their name is derived from the Greek word bpvg, an oah, because the woods and solitary retreats were the places of their residence. And Goodrich, in his Uni- versal History, says : — " The Druids appear to have been the priests among the Celts of Gaul, Spain, Ireland, and Britain. They were the instructors of the young, to whom they taught legendary and mystical lore, in the form of poetry. Some of them were professed bards." Certainly- — we know very well our Minstrel is a de- scendant of The Celtic Druids. The root name Bri (bright or shining), embraces the Scotch Bryaxts, the Irish O'Briaxs, and the French Chateaubriaxds. Celts of Gaul, Ireland, Scotland, and England. Bryant's poems, many of them at least, are sugges- tive of more than the subject-matter. We know that Id INTRODUCTORY. in reading them and musing on them— for thought engenders thought, — and he gives as "permission to think '." — thai like the great firmament, "o'erarching all," they envelop more than the local Bphere. Yet we venture to take his Homestead, consecrated by various tender associations, and regard it as a New World shrine. We have few thought-shrines as yet Our country is new. We are a New Race. Our Continental Mound is triangular. The Mound Build- eb, the Red-Man, and the Pale-Face! In speaking of the American forests, we are naturally led to think of their aboriginal inhabitants. What is Bryant's treat- ment of them? He puts them in the horizon of the vague sublime. He, like a true bard, makes of the latent poesy of the primal races the immortality of the present. He embalms the what has been with the what is. From out the two will spring the what will be. The Past, the Present, and the Future : he grasps each. But, we were speaking of the Present. Li-ten to our poet's Apostrophe to the Setting Sun. [stand upon their ashes: in thy beam, The offspring of another race, I stand Beside a Btream they Loved, this valley Btream; And where the night-fires of thequivered hand Showed the gray oak by fits, and war-song rung, I teach the quiet shades the strains of this new tongue. . I Walk at Sun* t. Room t<>r the Pioneer Bard of the Saxon (Man ! INTRODUCTORY. 1 1 He who can open the mystic Book of Nature heads the Minstrels of his line. Nature is the fount of poetry. The Pioneer Bard of the Saxon Clan opens the Book of Nature of the New World. Now, in life's evening son's decline, The Poet again takes os 1 >y the hand and leads ns to the Entrance of the Wood : the Wood of the " Wide, Wide World ;" but Ave know that the portal opens from his own beloved homestead ! Here is Duality : the real and the symbolic, Mark the Man. The Veteran now draws the generations in train. Our Druid is the chief of the Young and the Old. " Ever the Old and the New : ever the Xeav and the Old." The Old Familiar Poem. INSCRIPTION FOB THE ENTKAXCE TO A WOOD. Stranger, if thou hast learned a truth which needs No school of long experience, that the world Is full of guilt and misery, and hast seen Enough of all its sorrows, crimes, and cares, To tire thee of it, enter this wild wood And view the haunts of Nature. The calm shade Shall bring a kindred calm, and the sweet breeze That makes the green leaves dance, shall waft a balm To thy sick heart. Thou wilt find nothing here Of all that pained thee in the haunts of men And made thee loathe thy life. The primal corse Fell, it is true, upon the unsinning earth, But not in vengeance. God hath yoked to guilt Her pale tormentor, misery. Hence these shades Are still the abodes of gladness ; the thick roof [2 I N T RODUCTO R Y. Of green and Btirring branches is aliw And musical with birds, that sing and sport In wantonness of spirit; while below The squirrel, w ith raised paws and form erect, Chirps merrily. Throngs of insects in the Bhade Try their thin wings and dance in the warm beam Thai waked them into life. Even the green trees Partake the deep contentment ; as they bend To the soft winds, the sun from the blue sky Looks in and sheds a blessing on the scene. Scarce less the cleft-born wild-flower seems to enjoy Existence, than the winged plunderer That sucks it > sweets. The mossy rocks themselves, And the old and ponderous trunks of prostrate trees That lead from knoll to knoll, a causey rude, Or bridge the sunken brook, and their dark roots. With all their earth upon them, twisting high, Breathe fixed tranquillity. The rivulet Sends forth glad sounds, and tripping o'er its bed Of pebbly sands, or leaping down the rocks, Seems, with continuous laughter, to rejoice In its own being. Softly tread the marge, Lest from her midway perch thou scare the wren That dips her bill in water. The cool wind, That stirs the stream in play, shall come to thee, Like one that loves thee nor will let thee pass Ungreeted, and shall give its light embrace. Antithesis of the Equatorial Belt. — Monotony of the Tropics. — Moan prom \ Norseman in the Land of Gold. — Glory of Mutation at the North. — Our Trysting-Tree I «'! \ D \ | LAST' ! Reader, were you ever stormed witli .an arrival from China, Japan, Siam, and all the Orienl \ When the camphor-wood trunks came i<> !»<• opened, among birds 1 INTRODUCTORY. 15 tails and shark's teeth, among Japanese big shoes and Chinese little shoes, did yon ever chance npon a sailor- boy's portfolio of photographs of Oriental Arbores- cence? And did yon stndy the cosniical plane of that luscious, pulpy, parasitic vegetation, till you longed for the sturdy, scraggy trees of your native Northern region, the wrestlers with the blast ; the defiers of the tempest ? Did the arborescence of the Orient, with its wealth of munificence burden and oppress and weary you ? Some such feeling as this inspires a contributor to the over- land (evidently from the great Northern Forest-Belt plane), who laments over the constant sameness of the eternal verdure of California. Fruition cloys. Do hear him moan : — If but for a single day This vivid, incessant green Might vanish quite away, And never a leaf be seen ; And woods be brown and sere, And flowers disappear : If only I might not see Forever the fruit on the tree, The rose on its stem ! For spring is sweet, and summer Ever a blythe new-comer — But one tires even of them. My Cloth of Gold. MUTATION. Well has the ])oet sung : — "Weep not that the world changes — did it keep A stable, chaugeless state, 'twere cause indeed to weep." 1«; INTRODUCTO R Y . Mutation at the North, " Willi his grand mnrch of seasons, days, and hoars," completes the round of time's incessant change, ami variety crowns Nature, the Iris of Northern lands. These Homestead trees bear their part on the mag- nificence of autumn, when the maples put on their orange and crimson and the birch drops its golden colored spoils, and "The sweet southwest, at play Flies rustling where the painted leaves are strewn Along the winding way." The very scenarium of the Autwrnn Woods; a poem containing the never-to-be-worn-out simile, "The mountains that infold In their wide sweep the colored landscape round, Seem groups of giant kings, in purple and gold, That guard enchanted ground,"' and this stanza; one of the greatest favorites with the lovers of Bryant's earlier poems, who are now buying his later poems for their children. The magic tree is there; the veritable tree! "Beneath yon crimson tree, Lover to Listening maid might breathe his flame, Nor mark, within its roseate canopy, Her blush of maiden Bhame." How that tree will be sought for ! — Our Northern ■- " Trysting-tree." INTRODUCTORY. 17 Mosses and lichens, belonging to the great natural division of plants called Ceyptogamia. are a race of pigmy vegetation, and of the lowest and simplest organic structure. Some call Cryptogamia a conserva- tive agency, — sheltering and preserving seeds, roots, germs, and embryo plants which would otherwise perish — furnishing materials for birds to build their nests with ; affording a warm winter 1 s retreat for many quad- rupeds and numberless insects — the food of birds — which are, or should be the delight of Man " In the Woods " in Winter. Let us follow our Poet while he glances at the Pre- Vernal phase of Nature, in Mid- Winter. THE BARE GROVE. Nor was I slow to come Among them, when the clouds, from their still skirts, Had shaken down on earth the feathery snow, And all was white. The pure keen air abroad, Albeit it breathed no scent of herb, nor heard Love-call of bird nor merry hum of bee, Was not the air of death. Bright mosses crept Over the spotted trunks, and the close buds, That lay along the boughs, instinct with life, Patient, and waiting the soft breath of Spring, Feared not the piercing spirit of the Xorth. The snow-bird twittered on the beechen bough, And 'neath the hemlock, whose thick branches bent Beneath its bright cold burden, and kept dry A circle, on the earth, of withered leaves, The partridge found a shelter. Through the snow The rabbit sprang away. The lighter track 3 L8 in trodttotqry; Of fox, and the raccoon's broad path were there, Crossing each other. From his hollow tree, The squirrel was abroad, gathering the nuts Just fallen, that asked the winter eold and sway Of winter blast, to shake them from their hold. A. Winter Piece. Under the mask of Winter the Poet detects Spring. The Poet of the Forests has studied the Mosses. THE EARTH CARPET. " The hostages of Nature, left with us till she bring Back from her southern pilgrimage the fairy-footed Spring." Forest Musings. " Oh, let us always grow in the greenwood, and live in the shadows, and delight in its voices." The Mosses. " When in the grass sweet voices talk. And strains of tiny music swell From every moss-cup of the rock And every nameless blossom's bell." (" The Poet of the Forests " studying The Earth ( Jabpet, in A Summer $ Ramble.) Grasses are regarded as the universal carpet of Earth : hut next to them in importance rank the flbwerless race of ( 1 iiYPTOGAMiA ; the secret of whose vegetation and reproduction requires the closest scrutiny with the microscope to discover. Cryptogamous plants outrank grass in some latitudes, but we are now speaking of the INTRODUCTORY. 19 Carpet of the Woodland on the Southern fringe of the Northern climatic Belt. Here Cryptogamia is subordi- nate, but by no means to be overlooked as unessential to the beauty and use of the vegetable kingdom. No lover of Nature can presume to ignore Mosses. Yet, little people are usually overlooked. If, for some innate quality they are not cherished and made pets of, the world of big people is wont to ignore their very existence. If you do not feel an inclination to make a pet of a child its existence to you is nought : you never notice it. True, it exists, a tacit intrusion ; but it lives not within the sphere of your being. Mosses are ignored in the presence of Trees ; or, if noticed, regarded as mere accessories, perhaps inter- lopers ; whereas, they are symbolically Pledges of REJU VEXATION \ "The hostages of Xature, left with us till she bring Back from her southern pilgrimage the fairy-footed Spring." Mosses are Child-Pets. One can make nought else of them. Once acquainted with them we regard them with the 'like tender affection ; to be caressed, fondled, examined, and curiously studied. Both Moss and Child are Harbixgees. The Child liberated from books and winter im- prisonment within doors, seeks the haunts of Nature. Too earlv for either the vellow violet or the blue 20 I INTRODUCTORY. hepatica — yet he returns not empty-handed. AYhat has he brought i Only Mosses ! Only Mosses ? Out, vile materialist ! lie lias brought The Pledge of Spring : The promised Florescence of Summer; The Fruition of Autumn! The Child has brought A Symbol of The Ages. Has Nature, in her calm, majestic march Faltered with age at last ? does the bright sun Grow dim in heaven? or, in their far blue arch, Sparkle the crowd of stars, when day is done, Less brightly ? when the dew-lipped Spring comes on, Breathes she with airs less soft, or scents the sky With flowers less fair than when her reign begun? Does prodigal Autumn, to our age, deny The plenty that once swelled beneath his sober eye ? The Ages. " Oh, there is not lost One of earth's charms : upon her bosom yet, After the flight of untold centuries, The freshness of her far bc^innino; lies And yet shall lie." Forest Hymn. " The mossy rocks themselves, And the old and ponderous trunks of prostrate trees That lead from knoll to knoll, a causey rude, Or bridge the sunken brook, " owe (»ne half their glory to the wand of Crtptogamia. An arch fairy, she; throwing a glamour upon decay; crowning rocks with mimic forests, the haunt and home INTRODUCTORY. 21 of myriads of the insect tribes. One of the most powerful agents of the vegetable world is the invisible spirit of fern seed, entering where nought else can enter, vegetating, concreting, and depositing soil. Cryptoga- mia is the avant-courier of Arborescence; the pigmy heralds the giant ; the Moss plants the Forest. Oh, an arch Enchantress is Cryptogamia. Her throne is Dual ; the Arctic and Antarctic circles own her sway, and hers alone. In other circles her power is disputed by Florescence and Arborescence. With us, she rules, but with a third of power, but yet she is not powerless. She weaves for rocks, " blue-ribbed and ancient as the sun," their hoary mantle of ages ; she gradually buries them in the winding-sheet of Moss and plants Forests upon them for monuments. The Vegetable Kingdom dominates over the Mineral, as the Animal Kingdom over the Vegetable, and as the Men- tal dominates over the Animal. Cryptogamia unites the Earth-Carpet of the Woodlands, where Grasses scorn to grow, and lowly, subordinate, now she fills her place beneath the dead leaves, the emerald-green woof of the russet carpet of Autumn. We say the woods are carpeted with dry leaves ; but we know that beneath them is the emerald-green moss carpet ! Beneath withered hopes lurks the perennial ; the immortal. Moss sleeps beneath the winter mantle of the span- gled snow : in the moss vistas are the winter palaces of the Little People of the Snow. If you cannot com- 22 I XTRODUCTORY. pretend The Moss Would you are not likely to com- prehend The Tree World. On the Cosmical plane the whole Arboreal Family are intimately connected. Earth is their vegetable homestead. Homage to the primal Earth-Carpet, O Dusty Gothamite ! Shake off the dust of the wicked city ere you enter the vestibule of the forests. Take off your hat not only to the lofty trees, the cloud-compellers, but to the lowly Moss. O lightly tread the mossy ground, The carpet of woodland shrine, For in its mimic groves are found The Homesteads of The Fairy Line. Instead of parasites, in our latitude the World of Cryptogamia — Ferns, Mosses, Lichens, and Mushrooms {Filices, Musci, Hepaticce, Algce, Lichenes, and Fungi) contribute those inimitable demitones, those compound- tints, the magic play of light that tries the tyro in painting. Contributing their effect mostly in compound tone, while modifying the local tint, they can scarcely yet be indicated in illustration. But, like the song of birds, they must be borne in mind. The local color of old decaying a\<1 is harmoniously and sometimes al- most weirdly toned by fungi. The gnome- world — rock- work -owes half its glory t<> the infinitesimal Musti, the stone-moss, Hepaticce, or Liverworts^ cover fallen tn*<-> and even fasten upon those which are in their I XT RODUCT Q R Y . 23 prime. AJgce, or sea-weeds (in fresh- water phrase), tone the channel of the rivulet, while filices or ferns, from the towering fruit-laden frond to the delicate maiden- hair, crowd every nook of the homestead land. Save ferns, the giants of Cryptogamia,' the pygmies of vege- tation must be imagined. THE PHILOSOPHY OF CLIMBING. BOY-FEELIXG. Down to the primal carpet, O Dusty Gothamite ! Homage to Cryptogamia; the silent earth-force. Not only must lordly man, the landholder, learn to know his trees and take pride in their stately growth, with their summits touching the sweeping blasts ! but he must even stoop to recognize his lowly mosses ! Time was when they were not so far beneath thee. Has thy soul, O Heir of Earth, outgrown its remembrance of the friendly carpet of thine infancy { Once didst thou clino; to it. In it was thv world. " Moss-houses " were thy homesteads— thou wast happy ! That in infancy. In aspiring boyhood, the Earth-Carpet shielded thee from the direful effects of many a rough tumble. Xot " climb trees ~C What boy ever developed himself, his mind, his stature, his garments, that did not climb trees ? How is he to £ain a view of the world unless he mounts ? Depend upon it there is deep philosophy in boys u climbing trees. 1 ' Let them mount ; but if they fall? 24 INTRODUCTORY. The soft, protecting yielding moss ; the Earth-Carpet catches them ; it has saved many a young genius's bruised pate from direful fracture. Well for the boy- climber if he have no worse tumble in the wood of the world. Keniember the Mosses. THE BOY AND THE MAN. Refrain — Shadow-Boy. u, Tis pleasant, as a gentle boy, in the sunny morning hours, To chase that thief, the bee, about, that steals from garden flowers, To peep into the robin's nest, pondering o'er all I've heard Of those dead babes, lost in the woods, and covered by the bird." Forest 3fusings. — Ax< > n\ If " the boy is father to the man " — as Irving infers of Goldsmith — whose inimitable biography idlers are too wise to attempt imitating — Bryant the youth, climbing trees " to see what was to be seen far and wide, and to peep into birds' nests, but never to disturb the eggs " — is surely characteristic of him in later years. Hen 1 is a clue to some of the firmament studies of the Poet ; to his masterly perspective ; to his tender love for "animated nature," surpassing that of Goldsmith. Bbyant the Veteran, in his Eighth Decade is a great climber: whatever height is t<> be scaled <>n his Roslyn domain — he is sure to mount. As for his love of Birds INTRODUCTORY. 25 — during the war, when the smoke and thunder of the cannon in the South frightened the birds northward, they literally flocked to him, as if like a Vogelweide they knew the poet to be their friend. He has a pe- culiar way of encouraging them to trust in him and to feel themselves at home on his grounds. THE FIRST FLOWER. (Cryptogamia, then Florescence?) The Alpha of Florescence. — Northern Plane. — Symbolism. — Humility the harbinger of Munificence, Poem. THE YELLOW VIOLET. When beechen buds begin to swell, And woods the blue-bird's warble know, The yellow violet's modest bell Peeps from the last year's leaves below. Ere russet fields their green resume, Sweet flower, I love, in forest bare, To meet thee, when thy faint perfume Alone is in the virgin air. Of all her train, the hands of Spring First plant thee in the watery mould, And I have seen thee blossoming Beside the snow-bank's edges cold. Thy parent sun, who bade thee view Pale skies, and chilling moisture sip, Has bathed thee in his own bright hue, And streaked with jet thy glowing lip. 4 26 I X TROD D OTO R V . Yet slight thy form, and low thy scat, And earthward bent thy gentle eye Unapt the passiug view t<> meet. When Loftier flowers are Haunting nigh. Oft, in the sunless April day. Thy early smile has stayed my walk; Bnt midst the gorgeous blooms of May, I passed thee on thy humble stalk. So they, who climb to wealth, forget The friends in darker fortunes tried ; I copy them — but I regret That I should ape the ways of pride. And when again the genial hour Awakes the painted tribes of light, I'll not o'erlook the modest flower That made the Avoods of April bright. CYCLE OF THE SEASONS. • We entered the symbolic wood in leafy June ; we glanced at it in Autumn. We, witli the poet entered "the Bare Wood" in Winter, when, with poetical prevoyance the bard ante-dated Spring, and lo ! the Yellow Violet appears again — "ErerUBSel fields their green resume — " and heralds the train of Summer. She clasps the Magic Chain. Here we arc -two generations of us; in the Old HOMESTEAD Wood, in the same month in which our poet entered it; in the same month in which our artist found it. INTRODUCTORY. 27 LOST IN THE WOOD. Thus, the old white-bearded Druid, who looks very much like our Frontispiece (but you must n't tell !) has caused us to waste a whole year of valuable time, idly turning the leaves of his magic book. A book whose imprint is from the First Workman; whose pages are illustrated by the Grand Artist : whose poesy is inexhaustible, whose philosophy unfathomable, whose truth is eternal. A book conned by every nation, land, and tongue. An Antique Rebus is The white-bearded Druid with his Magic Quaternian Book. How to get out of this magic wood \ — (Bad as the magic wood Tasso sings of ! ) Refrain — Shadow-Boy. This dual self must be something like the Enibozado or Encapotado* Lord Byron was going to immortalize in a Dual Character \ Ours is a pleasanter personage. Can it be that Youth and Age are dual, and that this is Youth, the Veteran's former self \ — himself out- grown \ and wall the shadow follow him through the Life-Cycle I * A person muffled or disguised. — A negative me. 28 I XT IK) DTJ OTO KY. "Here weaves some blossomed parasite its richly blushing woof About the wild-wood's rugged shafts and through its waving DO C5 D roof, While nestling softly in the moss around its giant stems. The little Btarry flowerets lie, like vegetable gems." /•'on 8t Musings, — Anon. " PATH OF THE FLOWERY WOODLAND. Path of the flowery woodland! Oh whither dost thou lead ? Wandering by grassy orchard grounds Or "by the open mead ? (ioest thou by nestling cottage? Goest thou by stately hall, Where the broad elm droops, a leafy dome, And woodbines flaunt on the wall? A silvery brook comes stealing From the shadow of its trees. Where slender herbs of the forest lean Before the entering breeze. Along those pleasant windings I would my journey lay, Where the shade is cool ami the dew of night Is not yet dried away. I hear a solemn murmur, And, listening to the sound, I know the voice of the mighty Bea, Beating his pebbly bound. INTRODUCTORY 29 Dost thou, oh path of the woodland ! End where those waters roar, Like human life, on a trackless beach, With a "boundless Sea before ? WOODLAND VISTA, EAST SIDE OF Tilt: HOMESTEAD. BOOK II. HOMESTEADS Homesteads, their Surroundings and Associations. — The Bryant Homestead. — The Genius Loci. — Schiller's Play- Principle. — The " Mountain- Wind " Song. HAKSPEARE'Sold homestead— or, more correctly speaking, the venerable roof-tree underneath which on the 23d of April, 1564, was born the dominant genius of the Saxon clan in the Old World, the modern father of the humanities — has been the scene of thousands of pilgrimages, more especially since the charming description given by Washington Ir- ving. The ideal of that great poet as it exists in man's mind, has always craved association with the real — with something visible and tangible, and this is supplied by the dwelling which is his birthplace. Idlers, ever in search of the Inutile, have found the birthplace of the Poet of the Forests, of the Pi- 32 II Oil EST EADS. oneer Bard of the Saxon clan in the New World. Here i> a shrine in utilitarian America in the morn of our poetry, for nationally we have not yet numbered our century, consecrated to the Unnecessary, the munifi- cently aesthetic clement that Schiller recognizes with such grateful yet dignified thoughts as one of the attri- butes of der gute Freund, derYATER Konig. About thi- u play-principle n — the exuberant, the redundant — we have more to say anon. We must now pay our hom- age to the local, to the genius of the shrine — which im- personation in one phase reminds us of Bykon's Numa's Egeria\ in another, of Shakspeaee's Prospero's Ariel THE BRYANT HOMESTEAD is not yet enshrined, as some one has said of Sliak- speare's birthplace, on a "nest of potteries," but it is yet enshrined in a nest of forests, and " long may they wave !" THE GENIUS LOCI. The Mountain Wind! most spirit)"// thing of all The wide earth knows ; when, in the sultry time, //, stoops ]ii in from his vast cerulean //"ft. He seems the breath of a celestial clirra ! As if from heaven's wide-open gates li ! there is sweetness in the mountain atV, And /{/', that bloated Ease can never hope t<> share." HOMESTEADS. You don't mean to say you have found a thought upon which Bryant and Byron chime in unison? Indeed we have, and classically and mythologically speaking we will soon find another. This " Mountain Wind " is the Egeria of our venerable Numa. She whispers oracles in his ear: she whispers poetry t<> his heart: she caresses his now silver hair as she once ca- ressed the light-brown locks of the rosy-cheeked boy who found that treasure trove of the Rivulet, that del- icate waif. — " the scarce-rooted water-cress." This conceit of the child finding with evident glee that graphically described waif, "the scarce-rooted water- cress," and further on, in its proper place, the aerial con- ceit of children finding apples concealed in the grass, detecting them by their diffusive odor, are two of the most masterly of Bryant's minuter pen-strokes. But "The Mountain Wind " i< a youth, not a maiden. Winds are masculine \ Yes. The impersonation is cousin to Shakspeare's Arid. A youth most spiritual: a theme for sculpture. But we will discuss that in another place. The Genius of the Poet has consecrated his birth- place ; the power of the Journalist has retrieved it. Here is the duality of life. The shrine of the Ideal must ever be supported by the judicious props of the Real. {Morale of the Repairing of the Shakspeare House.) the spot where was born the Minstrel of the "old Pon- toosuck shades." 34 HOM EST E A DS. THE POETS BIRTHPLACE. Let us visit it. Some tour years since. Bryant purchased his youth- ful home, which is uowfitted up for a summer residence, — a bona ficU Poet's Retreat. kk Out of the world," out of the reach of travellers, out of the way of idlers, — this is a much titter place for the poet to "come awhile to wander and to dream" in, than Cedarrnere, his Roslyn country-seat (or, as we have always known it, "Roslyn Castle"). That is very beautiful and easy of access, and being a somewhat celebrated spot, owing to the poet's having laid his hand upon it, is become a sort of Mecca to modem tourists. Mde. Ida Pfieffer, though she had voyaged round the world, was not satisfied till she had seen the residence of Bryant. How much further would she have gone out of her way could she have found the poet's birthplace, \ But poets sometimes like to be alone ; they are morbid introspectionists absorbed in time-worn associ- ations and " inner life." In fine — who does not want to own the spot where he was born \ To feel that the breast of the Great Earth-Mother to which he clung in infancy, ere he could walk erect and express his wants in Bpeech, is still Ins own, the alpha and omega of his life — the great sustainer who has cherished him, the greal embalmer who will entomb him. Yes. Every- body desires to own Ins birthplace. Every heir of HOMESTEADS. 35 earth puts in his claim for the primal home-thought — the Gaia,*"*— the Great Earth-Mother of " the Starry Greek "- — thus rendered by the German : — " Where shall I grasp thee, infinite nature, where? Ye breasts, ye fountains of all life, whereon Hang heaven and earth, from which the blighted soul Yearneth to draw sweet solace, still ye roll Your sweet and fostering tides — where are ye — where? Ye gush, and must I languish in despair ?" Goethe's Faust. — Anxi Swaxwick's Translation. Moral. — Both the starry Greek and the introspec- tional German regarded Earth not as the impersonal aggregate of mineral substances which we call earth, but as the producing, fostering mother alluded to by the Hebrew as " the mother of all things." The ancient Teutons worshipped earth under the name of Esus. The Earth principle is the strongest motif in the heart of man. " Earth's children cleave to earth." — Bryant. Return we to the real, reality must give the impulse. Why did Bryant repurchase his old homestead? The venerable roof-tree had passed into alien hands ; " The Children of the House " had been dispersed ; the parents and the sister mourned in u The Melancholy * Gaea ( — ae), or Ge ( — es), called Tellus by the Romans, the per- sonification of the Earth, is described as the first being that sprang from Chaos, and gave birth to Uranus (Heaven"), and Pontus (Sea), Classic Dictionary, William Smith, LL. D. 36 II M EST EA DS. Days" (The Death <>f the Flowers), were sleeping quietly in The Old Grave-yard. Why did the poet quit his charming seat by the Music of the Waves to up-build the cottage of his Mountain Home \ ■ Everybody desires to own his birthplace. La BruyAre says : — " Le souvenir de la jeunesae est tendre dans lea viellards; ils aiment lea lieux oil ils l'ont passee; lea person nes qn'ila out com- mence de connaitre dans ce temps leur sunt cheres." Ausox, says : — "The view of the house where one was horn — of the school where one was educated, aid the gay years of infancy were passed — is indifferent to no man. They recall so many images of past happiness and past affections, they are connected with so many strong or valued emotions, that there is hardly any scene which one ever beholds with so much rapture." And Irving says, on his visit to Walter Scott, that there was a wavering allegiance in the mind of the minstrel whether to repair the old Smallholm Grange of k - Sandy Enowe Craig" — where lie was sent in infancy to his grandfather, on account of his lameness, and where he imbibed pure air and legendary lore — or to rebuild Abbotsford. CHILD PHILOSOPHY. " And old Remembrance twining round my heart, Then sing ye forth! Sweet songs that breathe of heaven, Tears come! and earth bath won her child again!" Goethe's Fausttu — Dr. Ansteb's Translation, Child-philosophy is a misnomer; but let the pro- HOMESTEADS. 37 fessor of the English language coin a word expressive of the deep philosophic strata underlying the human heart from the days of childhood, to which we again and again revert as to the original text of our being, " One touch of nature makes the whole world kin." There is a common plane of earth-strata underlying the plane of humanity, which responds with the electric vibration of the nerve-thrill of Creation universal. The latent meaning of life is individual life-response to cosmopolitan life. We are grateful to those beings or talismans that revive the pleasing memory of childhood, that renew our youth. We are grateful to the child who is amused with the toys and means of instruction that amused us in childhood. We are grateful in the brick and mortar of Gotham to the being who recalls " the long past, — those happy days of yore when we played along the brookside.' 1 Ay, every one has " played along the brookside ;" every one has been idle in his day, no matter how industrious he is now. Every one has been a child. The man carries with him the Phantom of his childhood. " The Shadow-Boy " will dog his footsteps. What though we outgrow the little shoes of the soul \ What though we only note soul-progression by the fact that we cannot put the AVhat Is back into the shoes of the What Has Been '? Must we despise these little shoes ? Memory, careful nurse, cherishes them. When thou art a great lord and oppressed with wretchedness, Memory, careful nurse, 38 HOMESTEADS. may bring out these little shoes and make thee laugh a genial, human laugh. On the banks of The Homestead ffiwdet, and in its pellucid depths, wanders and floats the impersonation of our now Venerable Poet's Childhood's Dreams ! That Brooklet is haunted. We will come to it anon. CUMMINGTOW SCENARIUM. HOMESTEAD LOCALITIES. To obtain a view of the homestead, one should ascend the hill lying west of it from the side of which the greater part can he overlooked. You will see below you the old mansion — standing beside the rivulet cele- brated in the poet's song — with an avenue of fine sugar- maples leading from it to the north and in another direction to the southeast. To the west and north of the house, on the edge of the rivulet, there stands a semicircle of evergreens, spruce, pine, and hemlock-fir, — more than a hundred of them, which, under the care of Mr. Dawes, were wrenched by the roots from the meagre soil in which they grew, and although from fifteen to thirty feet in height were planted in such a manner that only two of them died and the rest are growing finely and form a perfect screen against the Masts of winter. Out of this little wood peeps a pretty ice-house, which the trees will soon overshadow and hide from the view. Near it grows a Red Oak, the progeny of an older tree, which once spread its broad branches over HOMESTEADS. 39 the house, the glory of the Old Pontoosuck shades, and which is celebrated in a poem by John Howard Bryant, younger brother of our poet. To the north of the house is the old apple-orchard, of which Hows has given the drawing engraved for this book. The trees were planted when the house was built, and now, past bearing, and with half their sum- mits dead, they stand, the ruins of what they were, with their great, irregular, bare branches, — ghostly shapes such as Dore might draw to illustrate Dante, — a study for the painter and the lover of the pictur- esque, but an offence to the eye of the husbandman. This orchard many years since was the playground for the children of the family, when its trees were in their prime, and when every spring they were white with blossoms, and every autumn loaded with fruit. Many of them have lately been cut down : the axe is laid at the roots of the rest and they will soon disapj^ear. The avenue of trees to the north was a favorite walk of the poet, when in the morning he went out to medi- tate his verses. It leads to a pleasant little grove north of the orchard. If, without entering the grove, you follow to the north, it conducts you to a bl eak eminence swept by every wind that blows, from which your eye looks down into the narrow, woody valley where the Westfield, itself unseen, flows on its way to the Con- necticut. To the north stands Deer Hill, shaggy with woods, overlooking the Westfield, and to the north of 4(1 * HOMESTEADS. Deer Hill, twenty miles distant, you sec the blue summit of Greylock in Williamstown,* at the northwest corner of Massachusetts. Descending north from tlie eminence, the view from which over the neighboring country is one of vast extent and exceedingly fine, you pass on the left a rocky pasture-ground in which are the Two graves, — the subject of one of Bryant's poems. Tiny are no longer to be distinguished. A steep highway conducts yon to the Johnno Brook, a brawling stream, in a deep, rocky dingle, so narrow and deep that into some parts of it the sun scarce ever shines. The stream hurries down a steep descent to mingle with the more quiet waters of the Westfield. On the 1 tanks of this little brook among the evergreens are tall birches, red and white, that overshadow it; there is coolness in the hottest days of summer, and it was always a favorite resort of the present possessor of the Homestead. The road leading between the rows of sugar-maples to the southeast of the mansion, again meets and crosses the rivulet where a dam on the left hand has been tin-own across the little glen, and the waters gathered into a pretty pool which in winter supplies the ice-house. A little farther on, a road turning to the left hand leads to a school-house lately erected, after a * Williams Oollege, the Poet's ahna muter, is situated in Williams- town, one of the most beautiful parts of beautiful Berkshire. Under its presenl President, Dr. Hopkins, with its able faculty of professors, it takes a high rank among its sister institutions of learning. HOMESTEADS. 43 very pretty design, on the southeast corner of the Bry- ant farm. From the door of the building the eye ranges over an immense extent of country. The mansion itself, which is so well represented in the designs of Mr. Hows, needs no more particular de- scription. The room which visitors most inquire after is a little chamber occupied by the poet when in his boy- hood, with a window looking to the west, formerly upon the rivulet and now upon the little grove of evergreens. Here he made his first attempts in versification, and turned his boyish rhymes. Over this is the cockloft of which we have already spoken, which half a century since was a place of deposit for broken-down furniture and old hijjdi-heeled shoes of the last century, and in rainy days a play-place for the children. That Cockloft again. " A play-place for the children ?" — That is just what we want. When veteran poets retrieve their home- steads, the cockloft is sacred to their second and third generation of readers. We all of us have Tuts of china and sparkling fragments of broken glass which we call diamonds, and we want an unnecessary corner for a "play-house?" We have had the trouble of learning all the poet's classic verses as school-tasks, and he has never thanked us Young America for even reading him — much less learning him by rote, as Bryant the Journalist thanked his old subscribers for reading his old Evening Post half a century ! We subscribe to 44 HOll EST E ADS the Poems of Bryant, the Poet, He ought to be as civil as hia cousin, the Journalist, and give us the cock- loft for a play-house; if he docs not care to thank his poetical subscribers — in print, as he did his journal- istic ones. That cockloft belongs to Young America. All tin 1 play-house he can find in practical America. Let us take possession of and improve our homestead. THE PHILOSOPHY OF THE INUTILE. S< -mi. lew's "Plat Principle" moke iii.lv elaborated and BROUGHT TO BEAB UPON OIK AMERICAN POET'S HOMESTEAD, IN MANNER TO ASTONISH THE GERMAN. Sometimes the (treat Suabian calls it by one term and sometimes by another, but we always understand him. The repossession and re-habilitation of the old Bryant Homestead is an expression of the "play ele- ment" common alike to Deity and the vital master- piece of his sixth day's creation — imitative humanity. Our sublime Creator himself did not stop at the necessary. His ideal went beyond that. lie created man with capacity in a measure to comprehend this: He also placed man in a magnificent arena, surrounded 1>\ elements upon which to develop his comparatively limited thought-scope. But the dual spheres of mind and matter arc boundless— matter gives the key to mind. HOMESTEADS. 45 THE PLAY-PRINCIPLE. " It is true, nature has provided the brute animal with means beyond the necessary, and has illumined the darkness of the animal life with a ray of freedom. If the lion is not tormented by hunger, nor challenged to combat by a beast of prey, he spends his idle strength in boldly roaring through the desert, and displaying his power on aimless freaks of motion. Joyously the insect swarms in the sunbeam ; nor is it the cry of desire that we hear in the melodious warble of birds. It is un- deniable that there is freedom in these motions, not freedom from want generally, but from special sensual want. The animal works if his activity is stimulated by want, and it plays if its activity is the result of an inherent excess of power. Even in inanimate nature such a luxuriant profusion of power, and such a vague- ness of determination are observable which, if under- stood in this material sense, might very properly be termed play. The tree sends forth innumerable buds which perish without ever being developed, and puts out more roots, twigs, and leaves, for the purpose of gathering sustenance than are employed in preserving either the individual or the species." Nature gives the prototype of the aesthetic play-principle. Nature ? Ay, mind also. The redundant ex-foliation of thought ! 4«, HUM EST BADS. How many withered leaves seek mother earth. What fragile blossoms are blasted : and who <'«*m compute the premature harvest of immature fruit ! Why this redundancy of conception — this paucity of harvesl I Why must Endeavor ever exceed Fruition? A-k the God of Nature, — question the primal Artist — Genius of the play-principle. He was Creator — lmt was he Drudge? He evolved his ideal — and pronounced it "very good," and though that ideal in these degenerate day- is rarely attained, he yet evinces the supernal clemency of not forsaking the work of his hands. A Lesson for Pupil Man. Were we emanations of the Divine "play-princi- ple?" Apparently there was no necessity for the creation of man.* Man was a dual experiment : an under-current of thought, — a hybrid of seraph and earth-worm, — a zoophite of animal and spiritual, — an amphibious compound of celestial and terrestrial, Man was an experiment : is he a failure? Let the nobler samples of humanity answer. We believe this pertains to the realm of the Historico-Philosophic. Idlers only deal with the wisdom of folly. The play-principle, or the Genius of tin 1 Inutile, i- the redundant, — the unnecessary: thai which we can do without. The Creator has made (to our eyes) very * Though SoHILLBB says: — i fell itn- want, and the r ef or e irorlda were ma4e;" ami worlds, wejndge, were created the habitations of mea. HOMESTEADS. 47 many unnecessary tilings we can as yet find no use for them. We can live and die without them. " God might have made the earth bring- forth Enough for great and small, The oak-tree and the cedar-tree, Without a flower at all ; \Ve might have had enough, enough For every want of ours, For luxury, medicine, and toil. And yet have had no flowers." Mary IIowitt. But Hortexse rejoins at the busybody who ex- claims against the superfluity of the bijouterie of her boudoir : — " II nest pas un Luxe ; il est une Neces- saire !" Are there then two antagonistic Philosophemes — The Material and the Inutile \ VERITABLE BEAUTIES OF THE HOMESTEAD. One cold-blooded materialist bids us make much allowance for the poet who sings of his childhood's home and the lover who prates of his mistress! We will. Yet the Bryant homestead is not without a goodly share of intrinsic as well as ideal beauty — as our illustrations show by the draughtsman's art, and as the painting of the Bryant homestead, by the same artist, who made a journey to the poet's birthplace in the " leafy month of June " to take the sketches for our book (which is for idle posterity), and to paint for 18 H O II E s T E ADS. himself, thus securing color and atmospheric tint, just w hat view or phase his own good taste decided would -ratify the eye of the present public. How well the talented Hows, the lover of trees, — the deudrophilist. as the French might call him,-— has fulfilled his mission, his large painting testifies with regard to the "color depart- ment.' 1 While bur illustrations, through the draughts- man and cutters' combined aid, present, l>y contour and perspective, light and shade glimpses of moral beauty which serve to convince us the poet has not thrown such an atmosphere of glamour over his native -lade, but that the various scenes depicted can be recog- nizable. RETURN TO THE HOMESTEAD AFTER A CAMPAIGN IN THE world's CRUSADE, There is one among Bryant's Cummington poems — such a gem — and such an opalescent, multiphase gem- so like an opal — suitable everywhere, that like the dame who knew not with which suit she should wear her opals, and concluded to wear them with all, we will give you a glimpse of this choice tiara ckdtdaine, and tell you where each several shade agrees. It belongs t<> " arborescence '' — for in it are depicted individual trees. It is the complement to Book [L,fori1 portrays the general homestead scenarium: the swelling hills with \ alleys tw scooped between," and above all gives HOMESTEADS. 41) us ear notice of invisible brawling streams ; a peculiarity of the region. Not sight alone, but ear was educated. In many of Bryant's poems every sense has its office. To comprehend some of his poems there must be each sense unfolded, all the soul matured. But in few of his poems is the whole man so depicted. Here is ;c The Mountain Wind," the genius loci, the attraction to the Homestead. By antithesis of escaping " the city's sti- fling heat, its horrid sounds and its polluted air " — he conveys to the mind of the reader the same lively satisfaction with which his own breast is thrilled. Rarely do we find the poet so happy. But to crown all, he brings his child — the whilom " Little Fanny " — and teaches her Symbolism: wisely judging that if the latent poesy of nature is intuitively comprehended by young eyes, the romance of life will suggest itself to young hearts. So, when we are asked — as we not un- frequently have been — "How were the children of Bryant educated ?' We always reply, a By Symbolism. The poet taught them to see with his eyes. 17 And we quote a certain stanza which we leave the reader to find. Moreover — this poem gets quoted so much — the opals are so suitable, that if, like the worthy dame's jewels, they grace more than one suit they are always welcome. We will give the poem presently : on condition that the reader bear in mind this motto — the wisest thing " G. P. R. Q. U. Y. Z. James " ever wrote— 5i > 11 M E S T E A 1) S . ANTII 1 1 1 ! Ii< \l. Mol 1 0. "1 have passed much if ray time in cities, in wrestling with the world that you probably have never known; and one of the effects lias been to give the lace of nature and all the beautiful features it displays, a glory and a loveliness in my eyes, which those who have not been denied the sight for months and year- together, cannot, I believe, comprehend." ct above the level of the sea: at the Bryant Homestead it is comput- ed to be about nineteen hundred feet. To the north, this elevated region runs to the Green Mountains of Vermont; to the south, it extends into Connecticut, where its hills gradually subside as they approach the Long Island Sound. In Massachusetts, the western half of these Highlands, including the summit, lies in the count}' of Berkshire, and the eastern half in the counties of Hampden, Hampshire, and Franklin. Cum- mington lies a little easl of the summit ridge, and from its eminences may be descried the summits of the hills which form the eastern border of the beautiful valley of the ( Jonnecticut. HOMESTEADS. 53 The arborescence of tliis region is peculiar : tlie oaks and pines of the lower part of the State are scarcely found here, and in their stead are seen the sugar-maple, the birch, the red birch, and the hemlock. The rocky ledges and precipices are for the most part of mica-slate and hornblende, and the soil is a tenacious loam which does not easily yield to the rains, or else it would l>e carried off by them, and leave the rocks protruding like the ribs of a mighty skeleton. The farms, for the most j^art, lie on the broad but uneven uplands, and the streams wend seaward in hollows almost narrow enough to be called ravines, between steej) declivities. The waters are sweet and the streams clear. Xo venomous serpent is known in this region, the rattlesnake and the copperhead find no lodgment in its soil or among its rocks. The fever and a^ue is never known here, and one who comes from the region where that form of dis- ease prevails and brings his chills and chattering teeth with him, is looked upon with a sort of wonder. The summers are cool, but the winters are long, beginning earlier than in the lower regions of the State and con- tinuing longer, while it rarely happens that after the ground is well covered with snow the earth is again seen till the return of spring. These lono- winters amoiF the intellectual and Indus- trious are well impi*oved. Among creative minds, iso- lation tends to sell-concentration, and ultimately soul- evolvement. A poetical mind, with nature in the 54 HOMESTEADS. background, where there is no chronic idleness, tends to productivity. IMPERSONATION. A Genial Family Wrangle over "Egeeia" and the " Moun- tain Wind." — An ^Esthetic Quaeeel, in" which both aee Right and neithee Wbong. — Well t<> Settle these "Family Jabs " at the Theeshold. Many familiar with Bbyant's poems would be sur- prised were you to say that he dealt in Impersonation! And yet his impersonations are most frequent, and cope in truth to nature with the German and the Greek. The Teuton mind is regarded as the modern Nature-Expo- nent. The (J reek ever has been and ever will be regard- ed as the Classic or Ancient Exponent. The "Starry Greek" impersonated: behold his Mythology! The " introspectional German" impersonates: behold his Legends! But the "practical American? 71 lias lie no wand of Art? Can he not impersonate? We heard a complaint the other day from a princely landholder that lie should not attempt t<> people his for- esl lawns and vistas with sculpture and bronze, because he could find no American statues in the least appropri- ate. To introduce old-world themes into the shades of the new world, confused his reflections and disturbed lii- aerenitj . A spoiled virtuoso? a Sybarite? Perhaps. The man had the misfortune to be naturally poetic: difficult HOMESTEADS. 55 to please. His " Old Masters " lie kept in the house. Out of doors lie wanted New Masters, He is looking: for them yet. It has been affirmed that letter-press was a foe to Sculpture. That The Gtuttenberg Art (we believe we are permitted to put that in Capitals, even while abusing it!) by making a Specialite of the Subjective suppressed the advancement of the Objective — to the detriment of the Plastic Arts. Thus : it has been urged that hundreds are satisfied with letter-press descriptions of a statue. This in America in the nineteenth cen- tury. In the palmy days of Greece the populace did not read of statues — but it demanded them ! We are a New Race : we are a Young Peojue, and yet we impersonate ! Our winds are as good winds as any to be found on "The Temple of the Winds," at Athens. Egerta, again ? * " One that, like Xnma, often bore From haunted fount and voiceless glen The wisdom of a wiser lore, Than marks the babbling school of men." As far back as 1830 we note a quaint entanglement of conception with regard to the Genius Loci or Ecjeria of the Bryant Homestead. * W. P. P. To a very dear friend, with a plain copy of Bryant's Poems. New York, 1830. 56 • HOM EST E A DS. What is EgeriaS [nspiration : "the lovely Soul of Nature!" Health. Longevity in the personnel of Juvenescence. A^v in the raise of Youth. "Egeria! sweel creation of some heart, Which found no mortal resting-place so fair As thine ideal breast ; whate'er thou art, Or wert, a young Aurora of the air, The nynipholepsy of some fond despair; Or, it might be, a beauty of the earth, Who found a more than common votary there Too much adoring; whatsoe'er thy birth, Thou wert a beautiful thought, and softly bodied forth." Byron, Child Harold. But we do not feel that Byron's venerable Numa's Egeria, is exactly Bryant's Mountain Wind. Noi ex- actly. Yet 1 ><>t li conceptions arc "Airy and light — the offspring of the 80111/' Schiller, "The beings of the mind are not of clay ; Essentially immortal, they create And multiply in us a brighter ray And more beloved existence." Byron. Bryant's "Mountain Wind" is a matchless imper- sonation, but more of the Shakspearean than the Byronic type. Winds are masculine. This is a youth. 80 is Shakspeare's Arid. At firsl glance you may think this Mountain Wind as intangible as Byron's Strain of II M ESTEADS. 5 7 Music — which so many have grasped to catch and con- serve in Art. AVe rive the two to sIioav the difference. o " Oh, that I were The viewless spirit of a lovely sound, A bodiless enjoyment — born and dying With the blessed tone which made me !" Byron's Manfred, Subjective : Intangible. u JBe stoops him from his vast cerulean hall, He seems the breath of a celestial clime." Bkvaxt's Jloiuit'ihi Wind. Objective : Tangible. Sculpture. This Wend, stooping earthward, is the most spiritual of youths, whose mantle downward blown, strewn with forest-1 eaves, touches earth, forming the support of the figure which is yet in motion. From his hand he scatters Wind-Flowers. This conception is to be modelled in terra cotta for a monumental shrine for ww The Spring " — about which we will tell in the proper place. The ancients used terra cotta far more than we do, and they evinced their wisdom. But we will not now stop to discuss the subject. This " Mountain Wind," this Egeria of our vener- able Ximia, is " the lovely soul of Nature "—the " deli- cate preacher " of Song. She it was who whispered to him the meaning of poetry — soul-resurrection. Song elicits the soul self-immured in the natal cradle of man's 58 11 <» M EST EADS. breast. Son-- elicits tin* god within us. Man is leno- rant of the mysteries of his own nature till he begins to express himself. There is no apparent harmony in the lyre till it is played Upon. But the wind can awaken the lyre, and TJu Spirit of The Mountain Wind awakened the poet. With regard to the entanglement of conceit! It is but just to say, that while the Mountain Wind is a tangible, Greek impersonation, and can stand the test of the Objective — the Plastic Arts; Subjectively it impersonates Egeria — the Soul of Nature. Let us not quarrel. " W. P. P." was right, "thirty years ago," to sing of our Venerable Nuina's Egeria. But if he should see our sculptor's terra cottft statuette of the Greek phase of Bryant's "Mountain Wind" we crave of him the like aesthetic charity we extend to him. He take- the Subjective view; Ave the Objec- tive. Water-View <»\ the Premises. — A Phase ok "Still Water," the Poet's Pet Forest-Ferns i\ the Foreground. This is one of those quiet little l»its of landscape which are overlooked by the ordinary observer, and only arrest the eye of the artist or the minute observer of nature. A cleai little pool under a sloping bank, its surface irreen with the reflection of the vegetation bv which it i> overhung; no living thing near save perhaps tli-- foresl bird that descends to drink in silence, and its BOM E STEADS 59 fresh wild herbage never cropped by the herd. A place the sight of which suggests ideas of stillness and soli- tude. Kemp says the element of water is a great educator. We shall have something to say of water as well as of land in our next book, and perhaps of the very source of this limpid pool upon whose marge ferns and mossy rocks and umbrageous birches and maples overlean and regard themselves reflected in Nature's primal mirror. Our Veteran is a Druid who inculcates veneration for the Forces of Nature. In the next book we will tell how veneration for one of the Grand Elements was instilled in him. We are inclined to agree with Kemp, that the element of water is one of the Educational Forces, not to be disregarded. BOOK TIT INTERIOR LIFE Homestead Interior Life in the Olden Time. — Poet's Infancy and Youth. — A Small Book this, Entirely Devoted to the Despised Humanities. — The Rivulet. PETER B R Y A N T, father of the deeply-to-be-commiserated victim of our Kaleidoscopic Sketches, was the antithesis of Faustis father; albeit both take for coat of arms the classic Pestle and Mortar of the Greek ^Esculapius* Both finished their practice. Faust's father hilled off all his patients, while Bryant's father cured up all of his who were * Classically, the modern Pestle and Mortar should be the ancient symbolism of the Serpent. This was sacred to iEsculapins, who was represented with a large beard, holding in his hand a staff, round which was wreathed a Serpent ; his other hand was supported on the head of a Serpent — which is supposed to symbolize wisdom : wisdom being a great desideratum -in the medical as well as other arts. JEsculapius in Homer is not a divinity, but simply the " blameless physician." 62 I N TE RIOR LI F E. curable. There was nothing more to be done in either case. Othello's occupation was gone. The Medical I>r\ ant escutcheon "this side «>' the Bea" numbers three Pestles and Mortars (skull and hours). Our artist thought two pestles one too many, bul en verite the Bryant line is like the Helvetius line in Holland, which turned out three " M. D.'s," and finally ran to literature. The Helvetius line ran thus: (John Frederic, Son — John Adrian, Sou — John Claude Adrian, Son. The Medical Helvetius line now diverged into Lit- erature — CLAUDE ADRIAN. Literal nr<<. Biography stops here. THE REIGN OF KScr LA PIT S. Jean Pail says: — "Herder and Schiller in- tended in their youth to become surgeons. But fate said 'No! there are deeper wounds than those of the body.' And they both wrote." On the northeast corner of the Bryant Homestead was a long wing, in the kitchen of which our poet in his boyhood lias frolicked many an evening with his brothers and sisters, and eaten apples by the blazing fireside. Here he acquired a taste for apples INTERIOR LIFE. 63 that bids fair to be historical. But it is with the southwest corner that we have now to do. And here we trace the first dawnings of that antagonism that finally destroyed the line of the Medical Bryants. The northeast and the southwest were even at this early hour diagonally liors de combat. The youngsters with their apples around the blazing hearth-stone, their fun and their frolic counterbalanced the staid doctor in his office, his pestle and mortar — plasters and pill-box. On the southwest corner stood a low wing occupied by Dr. Bryant as The Temple of ^Esculapius. An awful spot. Here the lather initi- ated many promising young disciples into the mys- teries of the healing art. Traditionary lore. ^Esthetics of a name. Are you all named for great people \ — those who have made their mark in the world \ And were you intended by your far-seeing parents and guardians to tread in their illustrious footsteps and make a mark after their copy, as you did in your copy-books \ That is all very well. Even old Blair instructs us, that since to the virtuous and illustrious the world is never indifferent, therefore the ancients proposed that youth should be educated to con- cede to such respect and homage due to patrons or god- fathers — taking in many instances their names, in order to have their characters ever before the mind's eye. We read in Auerbach's "Tales of the Black Forest, 1 ' how Ivo Block and his student confreres speculated on 64 1 N TE R I OR L I FE. on each adopting a patron-genius and honoring his name. But these children were evidently re-named; or, it' named but once, named after their characters had begun to be developed. But sometimes parents in these latter days make a mistake and give a young poet or musician a doctor's or a lawyer's name. This creates confusion, and should l»c avoided in future. A NAME A " MEMORIAL?" Alexander's "Memorial" — A familiar Historical Anecdote, peculiarly apropos in the nineteenth century. "A proper name is, as we said before, a remem- brance. In the Bible the words 'name 1 and 'memorial ) occur as parallels and synonyms to each other. A name is a memorial. We are told that Alexander the Great, going to Avar, sent word to the Jews to erect him a monument, which he hoped to find on his return from the expedition. He came hack (we suppose from India) some years afterward, but there was no monu- ment. Angry and astonished, he summoned the High- priest to come before him. The High-priest came, having children in his suite. The king asked him ironically if lie had forgotten his order. 'Sire,' the High-priest said, *it is contrary t<> <>nr religion to make any image or statue. But, look here!' and he turned round t<> the children, and asked one boy, and then another, and then another: 'What is your INTERIOR LIFE. 65 name f 'Alexander, 1 answered each boy, one more, one less distinctly, according to his age. 'Sire/ said the High-priest, 'you see we have fulfilled your com- mand, by calling every boy who was born during your absence by your name ; and as those names will go down from generation to generation, those living monuments will be much better than a monu- ment of stone.' "The High-priest was right," Putnam s Mag., Sept, 1868. Whatever their national extraction the Bryants came of an intellectual line. Soul-Development. NAMING OF THE POET. Let us imagine Dr. Bryant sitting in his office, lost in thought. How should he name his young son ? Suddenly his eye lit upon the Medical Library : the family library which had been in the house for three generations. There were the tomes of the great Scottish Physician — Dr. William Cullex : indispu- table authority on all the ills that flesh is heir to. We may fancy the Doctor thus soliloquizing — " I will call my son William Cullex. Now, certainly, of all my sons lie will take after the pill-box, as other youngsters take after candies and apples. I shall see my young son William an illustrious ' M. D.' Perad venture, his 66 INTER I OK LI Ft:. ponderous tomes on Hygeia will cumber the shelves of posterity !" Alas for parental solicitude. Nature, the omni- present Earth-Mother, who wiU ever have her own way, said — "No! I have already kept this family in drugs for three generations! My -tore of Materia Medica is e fed: I must have more farmers and fewer doctors. Some must Soiv, and some must sing The Song of the Sower. The Americas Soil has awakened to Belf-consciousness. People must have food for the mind as well as for the body. I want a meta-\A\x- sician, who can prescribe wholesome tonics for the mind diseased, and decoy poor stifled humanity out into 'the magnificent temple of the sky." 1 So Nature willed that the young Bryant should be a poet ; and poetry, Schiller says, prepares the mind for the contemplation of God. Dr. Bryant soon found he had for once made a wrong diagnosis. The Muses had sent him a Poet instead of Hygeia sending him a Disciple. Bui the child was christened) it was too late to alter his name. This little contretemps explains how the old Caledonian iEsculapius, Doctor William Cullen, lives in fche reflection of an American poet's fame. II<' rejoices in a transatlantic "meinorial," or rather INTERIOR LIFE. 67 his publishers speculate upou it — which amounts to the same thing. This reminds us of Alexander's ''Memorial," the anecdote previously related. REGIME PHYSICAL. Wholesome Regime for Young Genius, and the Ruthless Invasion of the Xursery by the Waggish Young Students. Doctor Bryant, it will be conceded, was a rare " Country Doctor," in more senses than one. He had an eye to the education of the physique^ which in those primal days was usually ignored. But his Men- tal Regime ! It strikes the plane, in soul-development, of that of Goethe'' s father : and ancestor Bryant and ancestor Goethe both get their precious sons into a " blind alley ! " but we anticipate. Bryant's infantile education differed from that of Montaigne's. Both alike delicate in infancy. Hear the old Gascon's confession : " Even my infancy was trained up after a gentle and free manner, and exempt from any rigorous subjection. All which helped me to a connexion delicate and incapable of solicitude; even to that decree that I love to have my losses, and the disorders wherein I am concerned, concealed from me." Ah, the old Gascon could never "grasp into the thick of life." He himself concedes it. A passive, negative, introspectional, morbidly egotistical existence had he : and yet it is interesting to idly 68 INTERIOR LIFE. listen to his pratings. A Belf-opinionated voice from France in 1500.* But ours was a new country — where active, positive, disseminating life-principle was re- quired. And now Ave come to the Legend of the Spring — all in due time. Ours is an idle, leisurely, unnecessary book, and there must be no hurry in it. There is a story that Byron's old Highland nurse, who used to rock him to sleep in her brawny arms, " Tween the gloaming an' the mirk, When the kye come hame, When the kye come hame !" kept, treasured up in her " chist <:>' drawers," one of the poet's infantile, cast-off, worn-out u l>al>y socks." It is reported that when Lord Byron came to hear the story, he laughed heartily: though not without a "tear in his e'e" — the only time he was ever sup- posed to laugh heartily in his life. Whether the Veteran of Cummington will laugh heartily, should he ever hear our story, we know not. Possibly we might get our ears boxed; so you must keep this a secret as well as the secret of the Apple-Tree. It is by committing to idle posterity the legends and Lore of the past that history and philosophy are perpetuated* Birth and Death. Michael de Montaigne was bom. as he himself tolls ii-. "betwixl eleven and twelve o'clock in the forenoon, the last of February, L583." Pasquier informs us that "The Pleaaanl Egotist " ex- pired on the 18th September, 1592, in the 60th year of his age, "present- ing in Ills death a lino mirror of the interior ot his soul." INTERIOR LIFE. 69 Tradition asserts that Bryant in his infancy was of frail physique^ with an immense head. Dr. Bryant, disapproving of such precocious cerebral development, ordered him to be ducked every morning in pure spring water, — a spring as beautiful as Calypso's, bordered with tender herbs, parsley, and dewy vio- lets. (See Odyssey.) So two of the students each morning stole the delicate infant from his mothers warm couch, ran with him to the spring some forty rods from the house, and immersed him several times head foremost in the cool clear water. Tra- dition further reports that the youngster resisted manfully, not then appreciating such treatment. But, strange to relate, the oftener he was ducked the stronger he grew, until finally the morning fight with the students began to assume the phase of modern gymnastics ; and possibly this is the origin of his gym- nastic exercises. If poetic tire could be quenched, the inspiration of our infant poet should have been well cooled off 1 >y this merciless plunge-bath experiment. Time rolled on. Young Bryant had not then read Shakspeare, but he disliked to go to his matutinal bath "upon compulsion." So he concluded to volun- tarily adopt the cold-water regime and gymnastic exercise as a life tonic — though instead of fujhtinsr students, he contents himself Avith practising the dumb-bells, and advises every one to go and do like- wise. The Veteran is a great athlete. 7il INTERIOR LIFE. "Cold- Water Baths" and " Muscular CmiSTiAinTY." How Oxford Hughes, of" Tom Brown" notoriety, would like fco put his English goose-quill in just here and rive his scratch in favor of k " all out-doors Physical Exercise," and icUmg-away-the-time-generally- witb-Nature, as a relief of too much scholastic wisdom and precocious genius. How Professor — Doctor Dio Lewis (we shall never get his title right) would like a page of our book for his advertisement. He would insist that "Physical Exercise" alone made the genius of Bryant ! How " Tlte House of Schermerhorn," that great Scholastic Foundry where Education, from Patent S.-at- (of learning) to diplomas, can be had for green- backs — would like a page on Dumb-bells and Indian- Clubs and all their thousand-and-one inventions to lake the strain off of the taxed brain. Lastly — how the Water-Cure people will love to quote this ex- ample of Bryant ! Quit dusty Gotham with all its advertisements: they will not give you either strength or health, wit or learning, if the vital principle be not cherished within you. But they may be regarded as means to elicit it — if it be dormant. INTERIOR LIFE. 71 Perhaps. But we are now sjDeakiug of the times ere such things as k * Health advertisements " were heard of; when people were just beginning to awaken to the Recuperative Forces of Nature. This High- land Homestead was the stronghold of health, — the region for miles and miles a composite of vigor and longevity. " The Spring" in which the infant poet was im- mersed is the source of The Rivulet which mean- ders prettily by the rear of the house, and is thus poetically described by him. Hundreds have read the poem and admired its truth to nature without knowing that they were charmed by Nature's self. " TJie SpriTig" was to the infantile poet the Fountain of Health, and who shall say that to the youthful poet it was not the Fount of Poesy, as it is to the veteran Minstrel the Shrine of Memory \ Infancy, Youth, Manhood, and Age are charmed around that spring and its wandering Rivulet. A grateful return did the Poet make in after years to this fountain of health. The Rivulet is one among his first and choicest descriptive poems, and in con- nection with others has been admirably illustrated by a talented young artist. But all this from imagi- nation alone. Until the talented Hows went on his pious pilgrimage to the Bryant Homestead, in the " leafy June " of 1868, on the special mission to take our illustrations for idle Posterity, the veritable 72 INTERIOR LIFE. Riwlet, whose origin is the Legendary Spring, was never before sketched. Our artist's illustrations of the Rivulet commence with the Tail-Piece of this in- teresting Book III., — depicting the Legendary Spring^ the Source of the Rivulet, The Large Illustration of Book Y. is the Rivulet in its meanderings, while the Tail-Piece of Book V. is yet another phase of the storied stream. We now give the much admired poem entire. THE RIVULET. This little rill, that from the springs Of yonder grove its current brings, Plays on the slope awhile, and then Goes prattling into groves again, Oft to its warbling waters drew My tittle feet, when life was new. When woods in early green were dressed. And from the chambers of the west The warmer breezes, travelling out, Breathed the new scent of flowers about, My truant steps from home would stray, Upon its grassy side to play, List the brown thrasher's vernal hymn, And crop the violet on its brim, With blooming cheek and open brow, As young and gay, sweet rill, as thou. And when the days of boyhood came, And I had grown in love with fame, Duly I sought thy banks, and tried My first rude numbers by thy side. Words cannot tell how bright and gay The -rciics of life before me lay. INTERIOR LIFE. 7:; Then glorious hopes, that now to speak Would bring the blood into my cheek, Passed o'er me ; and I wrote, on high, A name I deemed should never die. Years change thee not. Upon yon hill The tall old maples, verdant still, Yet tell, in grandeur of decay, How swift the years have passed away, Since first, a child, and half afraid, I wandered in the forest shade. Thou, ever joyous rivulet, Dost dimple, leap, and prattle yet ; And sporting with the sands that pave The windings of thy silver wave, And dancing to thy own wild chime, Thou laughest at the lapse of time. The same sweet sounds are in my ear My early childhood loved to hear; As pure thy limpid waters run; As bright they sparkle to the sun ; As fresh and thick the bending ranks Of herbs that line thy oozy banks; The violet there, in soft May dew, Comes up, as modest and as blue ; As green amid thy current's stress, Floats the scarce-rooted watercress : And the brown ground-bird, in thy glen, Still chirps as merrily as then. Thou changest not — but I am changed, Since first thy pleasant banks I ranged; And the grave stranger, come to see The play-place of his infancy, Has scarce a single trace of him Who sported once upon thy brim. 10 74 INTERIOR LIFE. The visions of my youth are past— T bright, too beautiful to last. I've tried the world — it wears no more The coloring of romance it wore. Yet well has Nature kept the truth She promised to my earliest youth. The radiant beauty shed abroad On all the glorious works of God, Shows freshly, to my sobered eye. Each charm it wore in days gone by. A few brief years shall pass away. And I, all trembling, weak, and gray, Bowed to the earth, which waits to fold My ashes in the embracing mould, (If haply the dark will of fate Indulge my life so long a date,) May come for the last time to look Upon my childhood's favorite brook. Then dimly on my eye shall gleam The sparkle of thy dancing stream; And faintly on my ear shall fall Thy prattling current's merry call; Yet shalt thou flow as glad and bright As when thou met'st my infant sight. And I shall sleep — and on thy side, As ages after ages glide, Children their early sports shall try, And pass to hoary age and die. Bu1 thou, unchanged from year to year, Gayly shalt piny and glitter here; Amid young flowers and tender grass Thy endless infancy shall pa>s ; And, singing down thy narrow glen, Shalt mock the fading race of men. INTERIOR LIFE. 75 Now, a dam has been placed across the ravine, making a line sheet of water. Many other localities hereabouts are described in the poems of both the brothers — for instance, "The Mountain Grave-yard," by John H. Bryant; " The Two Graves," by William Cullen, etc. We will tell about this poet-brother pres- ently. TIME CARRIES AAV AY OLD STRUCTURES. Wherein Poesy stands aside for Antiquity. Our Dramatic Illustration, which turns even the storied Rivulet from its proper channel, is an extraordinary effort of genius for the Occident, not to be outdone by the " Alexander Procession " of the Orient, which somebody now turns off on his silver-cups for Young America, thus symbolically strengthening him with the wine of antiquity. It depicts the triumphal emigration of the Temple oe yEscuLAPius, Doctor Bry- ant's old office,* or symbolic exit of Allopathy, the very walls of which are supposed to be impregnated with the secrets of the Art practised by Hippoc- rates. The building is drawn by twelve yoke of oxen to its present site, a mile from the homestead. The moment our artist has dramatically seized is * The renegade! Departing from the good old faitli of Allopathy. Wm, C. Bryant has been chosen President of the New York Homoeopathic Hospital. — Moop.e's R ural Xew- Yorker, 1869. 7<; INTERIOR LIFE. when the ark lias rested upon the right spot and refuses to budge another inch. Antiquity teaches us, that when the Penates refuse to advance, on that spot the household ark must rest. It is vain tor tin 1 drivers to whip up or the hoys to lure on that Zodiacal Band of Oxen: <>ne for every month of the year: typical of Time. Time carries away old structures, removes ancient landmarks, and makes a general revolution among the homesteads of the earth. 11 lis is the symbolic exit of Allopathy. When the Medical Art gave place to the Dusky lint of the Ptolemy Race, that once famous Temple of jJSsculapius (the Medicine god of the Greeks) is now the abode of the Ethiopians. Whether they practise any of their old heirloom, traditionary rites of Obi under its charmed roof, we cannot say: hut the tenement seems to he given over to the rule and the reign of the powers of darkness, — a spot sacred to Awe and Suspicion, the parents of superstitions innumerable. Strange sounds are said to issue from the building — at midniehl strange ghosts are flitting round — neither of Indian, European, or American descent. The African reigns in one corner of the old I\in \\ PontooSOok Forest ! The Red Man, the White Man, the Black Man. — But where is the Indian the Lord of the Soil to whom the Greal Maniton erave the Western World \ INTER I OK LIFE. 79 Where are the Indians of the Pontoosook Forest, — their Homestead \ Let " The Indian Exodus " answer. CHARACTER OF THE INHABITANTS, AND WHAT EFFECT THIS HAD ON THE FUTURE POET. Not alone is man impressible by nature, but no human being was ever yet wholly independent of the influence of his fellow-man. It is said that Nature has educated Bryant. Not entirely. Nature has rather accomplished him. He drew his ac- quirements from that grand, much-abused, and ignored repertoire — Humanity. " Man is the most interesting subject of inquiry to man. Every thing that sur- rounds him is either the element in which he lives or the instruments which he uses." Bryant has, through the songs of half a century, so interested us in the elements in which he lives his nobler life, his interior existence, that the world is now interested in him. From the works of the poet we become interested in the phenomena of the man. GENERAL FEATURES OF THE HIGHLANDS OF CUMMINGTON. IN HABITANTS. THE M ASS. The people in this part of the country are in- telligent, industrious, and civil; the severity of the 80 I N T K RIOR I. I F E. climate and the somewhat exhausted soil oblige them to be laborious, but the air is pure, and the cli- mate healthy, and there arc many instances of lon- gevity. Health, Industry, and Frugality, — presided over by Contentment. A pleasing rural tableau. The " Starry Greek " who impersonated Earth as the "producing mother" would impersonate these attri- butes; would people this Highland with Genii. EPITAPH o.V ONE <»F THE INHABITANTS, His youth was innocent : his riper age Marked with some act of goodness every day ; And watched by eyes that loved him, calm, and sage, Faded liis late declining years away. Cheerful he gave liis being up, and went To share the holy rest that waits a life well spent. First clue of the " Two-fold Thread." The Real ami the Ideal. This solitude iii a highland region two miles and a half from any village or post-office, among woods and pastures of very little tilth, contains a population of simple hal>its, though not unintelligent. The more refined employ themselves in the pursuit of literature and belles-lettres. But this stronghold among the rock- was the school of a practical phi- losophy happily evolved in The Old Mini's- Counsel. The mas< of the population tells, by the pvls€ INTERIOR LIFE. 81 of philosophy, upon the young poet's heart. Human- ity points the lesson of Nature. In the following Philosophical, Humanitarian poem there are three separate beauties : the match- less May Scenarium ; the favorite grouse, partridge (or Time) Simile ; and the philosophic, humanitarian Climax — worthy of an ancient Greek. And the poem is Greek in its agricultural philosophy — its profound Humanity. We call this rustic sag^e the ancient agri- culturist, but the American farmer is the duality of the Greek herdsman and sower. THE OLD MAX's COUNSEL. Among our hills and valleys, I have known Wise and grave men, who, while their diligent hands Tended or gathered in the fruits of earth, Were reverent learners in the solemn school Of nature. Xot in vain to them were sent Seed-time and harvest, or the vernal shower That darkened the brown tilth, or snow that beat On the white winter hills. Each brought, in turn, Some truth, some lesson on the life of man, Or recognition of the Eterxal Mind IV/to veils his glory with the element*. One such I knew long since, a white-haired man, Pithy of speech, and merry when he would ; A genial optimist, who daily drew From what he saw his quaint moralities. Kindly he held communion, though so old, With me a dreaming boy, and taught me much That books tell not, and I shall ne'er forget, ll M> I X T E RIOR I, I F E MAY m KNAKIl M. — HOMESTEAD REGION. The sun of May was bright in middle heaven, And steeped thi sprouting forests, the green hills And emerald wheat-fields, in his yellow light. [Jpon the apple-tree, where rosy buds St«»««d clustered, ready to burst forth in bloom, The robin warbled forth Ids full clear note For hours, and wearied not. Within the woods, Whose young and half transparent leaves scarce casl A shade, gay circles of anemones Danced on their stalks; the shadbush, white with flowers, Brightened the glens; the new-leaved butternut And quivering poplar to the roving breeze Gave a balsamic fragrance. In the fields I saw the pulses of the gentle wind On the young grass. My heart was touched with joy At so much beauty, Hushing every hour Into a fuller beauty; but my friend, The thoughtful ancient, standing at my side, Gazed on it mildly sad. I asked him why. THE AM IKM A.GBICULTTJRIST TO THE Y()UN(I POET. u Well mays! thou join in gladness," he replied, u With the glad earth, hef springing plants ami flowers And this soft wind, the herald of the green Luxuriant summer. Thou art young like them, And well mayst thou rejoice. But while the Might Of seasons fills and knits thy spreading frame, It withers mine, and thins my hair, ami dims These eyes, whose lading light shall soon be quenched In utter darkness. Ilearcst thou that bird ?" I listened, and from midst the depth of woods Heard the love-signal of the grouse, that wears INTERIOR LIFE. 83 A sable ruff around his mottled neck ; Partridge they call him by our northern streams, And pheasant by the Delaware. lie beat His barred sides with his speckled wings, and made A sound like distant thunder; slow the strokes At first, then fast and faster, till at length They passed into a murmur and were still. " There hast thou," said my friend, " a fitting type Of human life.* 'Tis an old truth, I know, But images like these revive the power Of long familiar truths. Slow pass our days In childhood, and the hours of light are long Betwixt the morn and eve; with swifter lapse They glide in manhood, and in age they fly ; Till days and seasons flit before the mind As flit the snow-flakes in a winter storm, Seen rather than distinguished. Ah ! I seem. As if I sat within a helpless bark, By swiftly running w T aters hurried on To shoot some mighty cliff. Along the banks, Grove after grove, rock after frowning rock, Bare sands and pleasant homes, and flowery nooks. And isles and whirlpools in the stream, appear Each after each, but the devoted skiff Darts by so swiftly that their images Dwell not upon the mind, or only dwell In dim confusion ; faster yet I sweej) By other banks, and the great gulf is near. * " I remember hearing an aged man, in the country, compare the slow movement of time in early life and its swift flight as it approached old age, to the drumming of a partridge or ruffed grouse in the woods — the strokes falling slow and distinct at first, and following each other more and more rapidly, till they end at last in a whirring sound. 11 — The reader will observe in the poem there are a chain of tropes. The whirring partridge wings ; the flitting snow-flakes ; and the torrent of rushing water. Time. — Thou Chain of Glittering Tropes whose links arc intangible. Indelicacv outrivallini>" the Venetian. b4 INTERIOR LIFE " Wisely, my son, while yet thy days arc long, And this fair change of seasons passes slow, Gather and treasure up the good they yield — All that they teach of virtue, oi pure thoughts Of kind affections, reverence for thy God Ami tor thy brethren ; BO when thou shalt come Into these barren year-, thou mays! not bring A mind unfurnished and a withered heart.' 1 TIIK IK >M ESTEAD IN THE OLDEN TIME. — SOCIAL LIFE. Bryant in his younger days was surrounded by aspiring' young geniuses, some who wrote what they called poetry, some translated, while some had the g 1 taste to pay their devotions not alone to the muse, but to the pretty young ladies. Their winter amusements were sleigh-rides, and what was the greatesl pastime of all, singing-schools. Some person of mature age, skilled in psalmody and with a special zeal tor church music, was employed at a mod- erate compensation to teach psalm-singing t<> the young people, and even to any of' riper years who chose to attend. Evening after evening the sport went on in the long winter nights. The young people sang each other into a new familiar acquaintance, and their elders Symbolizing by antithesis one <»t' the best descriptions of Tin Veteran f.( adk. that can In- t'ouiul in the whole range of literature. INTERIOR LIFE. 85 always came to hear them and observe their progress. There were no lectures at that time to be attended, but there were militia trainings, which were more frequent then than now, and the annual regimental reviews drew all the population of three or four con- tiguous towns to the same spot. Whenever the frame of a building was to be raised, it was a frolic for the men ; and whenever a quilt was to be made, it was a merry time for the women. The Fourth of July was faithfully observed with the discharge of guns and an oration, and the annual thanksgiving assembled all the scattered members of the family to a feast under the roof of its head. There were sometimes balls and dances; though on these a considerable part of the older population looked with despair, but the younger ones had them notwithstanding. Sometimes a season of religious earnestness would sweep over the country ; some popular preacher would go from place to place, preaching day after day and evening after evening, listened to with great interest, and numerous converts would be gathered into the churches. Then there were political differences, and controversies. On the whole, remote as the district was, and different as many of the objects of interest were from those which attract attention at the present day, life was not allowed to stagnate then any more than now. The genius f |} ie passing hour vitalizes every day. The future is but a progressive modification of the present. 86 I NT KIM OK LIKE THE IIOMKSTKAD IN THE OLDEN TIME. ANTIQUITY OF THE BUILDING. All that the oldest inhabitant of Massachusetts knows of the mansion — the Bryant Homestead — is that it was erected by an early settler of what was then called the Pontoosook Forest. This early settler was Ebenezer Snell, Esq., the maternal grandfather of the poet ; a stern old Puritan magistrate who dealt out justice in a summary manner to the pioneer set- tlers. REIGN OF JUSTICE IN THE OLDEN TIME. Mr. Bryant points out even now the spot in the neighborhood where stood the .public whipping-post, and he speaks of having seen, just after his punishment, the last culprit who was flogged * there, for a theft, upon the sentence of his grandfather. The house came into possession of Dr. Peter Bryant, father of the poet, he having married a daughter of Squire Snell, as lie was popularly called. It was a large, low, one- story gambrel-roofed house, standing on a fork of the roads, with thesides adjusted to the points of the compass. These pioneer settlers were always famous for having the door open the right way, so that they would know Wirtemberg has just abolished the time-honored " whipping-post." The Deutckera are a little behind the Yankees, hut "better late than never." It i- -till allowed to stand in the state of Delaware, to the dis- trrace of our civilization. INTERIOR LIFE. 87 which direction to take by the sun and not get lost in the wilderness ; and famous they were also for having the family or keeping room on the sunny side, and thus securing a sunny temperament for the children of the house. Whether there was a " weathercock " on the gable-end to tell which way the wind blew we can- not say. We are rather inclined to think that a Dutch necessity which pertains legitimately to the founders of New Amsterdam. We have made searching inquiries as to whether there was a horse-shoe originally nailed over the door — that being the Puritan's safe- guard against witches. Here " the oldest inhabitant " again fails us, and, after deep pondering we conclude the structure was neither Dutch nor Puritan, and how it has stood the combined attacks of Salem witches, Dutch hobgoblins, and Indian spirits, we are at a loss to say. But this we know^ — originally an " Ancient Oak " stood close to the back of the house : a veritable forest monarch guarding the threshold. About this ancient oak more hereafter. "The Poet's Spring" — the fount of Health, in its grass-embowered arbor and by its violet-sprinkled marge. It has been proposed to ornament this spring plateau by a terra-cotta statuette of "The Mountain Wind," the genius of Health — thus the two combined make a pleasing allegory. Water and mountain air, the elemental nurses of fragile infancy, insuring longevity, a ripe old age. &8 I N T I-: RIOR LI FE. " For there i> vigor in the mountain air, And life, that bloated ease can never hope to share." We may misquote Byron's words, but that was at one time his sentiment. Our poet-infant was bathed in "The Spring," our poet-boy was rocked on the tree-top. This, after he had learned "to climb" — which, even in his Eighth Decade he lias not forgotten. Infant, Boy, Youth, Man, Veteran, he has been caressed by that genius loci — lk The Mountain Wind/ 1 \ f BOOK IT M O S A J C S-T HE OLD. THE OLD AXD THE NEW -THE OLD. Site of the Old School-house. — Boy-Feeling. — Mosaics. — Cas- ket of Thought-Talismans. — The Poet's Earlier Poems for the Poet's Earlier Readers. — Book IV., an Initi- atory Book, whose ^Esthetic Complement is Book A'. HATEVER else to the night has gone — The night that never shall know a dawn- It stands nndiramed in my memory still, The old brown school-house on the hill. I see the briers beside the door, The rocks where we played at " keeping store," And the steps we dug in the bank below, And the " bear-track" trod in the winter snow. The names on the weather-boards are part Of the sacred treasures of my heart ; Some yet a place with the earth-sounds keep, And some in the holds of silence sleep. 90 MOSAICS— THE OLD. We copy tlif above from a city paper; who wrote it we know not. A\ e preserve it — not for its faultless diction, but for its genuine boy-feeling. The same boy-feeling that made Irving recount Low in youthful day- lie and his thoughtless boy-companions had chased each other around and leaped in exuberance of animal spirits over the old decaying tombstones of the pioneer settlers. He relate-, with his accustomed simple grace, how he and his young companions were checked by the grave sexton. And when, in after years, from his pilgrimage in the world he returned to the old church- yard, apparently a stranger, he finds a new generation of thoughtless, hilarious boys chasing each other as he once chased his playmates, and Lo ! the grave sexton who reproves them with authoritative air and offended mien, [rvtng recognizes as one of his old school-fellows. Ever the Old and the New: ever the New and the Old. BRT A N r's S( ' I lOOL-HOUSE. Return we to our motto. — Bryant's first schooi-house did not stand on a hill, and the stanzas we have quoted, save for the boy-feeling before mentioned, are inappro- priate. Tin* objective 1- false, bu1 the symbolic is true. The boy-feeling secures their immortality. Veterans who keep their hearts young in their Eighth Decade think no recollections so charming ■ as those of their Infancy. They all join the old French MOSAICS — THE OLD. 91 Chanson, no matter how idly translated. One can scarce take a greater liberty with the original French song of " Forty years " than the French themselves have taken with Bryant's Rivulet* — Le Petit Ruissean, as they name it ; yet they have managed to serve up a ragout of a poem both tender and charming, though retaining so little family likeness to the old familiar Rivulet of the Homestead, that did we not see the original credited to Bryant we should have imagined it a French rill, flowing from a naturally French spring. But we wander from the Vale of Years. If the French take liberty with our Rivulet we will even stretch their song a decade or two. What inspires Forty years' poesy only needs intensifying to apply to Seventy years. All the world has learned that the French know how to grow old with grace ; and here is their original old song a decade or so older : — There are moments that make the old heart again young, Moments that make the brow gay ; And they come like the echo of songs that were sung In the dawn of our infancy's day : Singing — " Keep thy heart young Alavay, Alway ; Keep thy heart young alway ! Xo time for murmuring, no time for tears, When we shall have numbered our Sevextt years ; We've weathered life's breakers, life's cares and fears — 'Tis the dolt ever mopes in the Vale of Years, — Now, Nature bids us be gay !" * Beautes de la Poesie Anglaise : par le Chevalier de Chatelain. 92 MOSAICS — THE OLD. In our Illustration of this hook our artist gives a view from the "Site of the old School-house," where the young poei of Cummington mastered the primary elements of the immortal arts of reading and writing. Whether, like Dr. Johnson, he said his letters to an old dame who rewarded liim with sdlded-ringerbread when he was good and punished him with the terrible birch- rod when he was had, tradition is silent. We have our own private opinion that lie could not have been a very idle scholar, for the elements of good old-fashioned handwriting, when every letter was a spedalite, a dis- tinct feature, are still traceable in his chirography. It is said that his handwriting hears a marked semblance to that of his father — which was peculiarly distinct and plain. Be this as it may, his handwriting has not deteriorated, for now in his seventy-fifth year he writes a neater hand than he did ten years ago. Instead of the hurried stride of a homogeneous scrawl, where words are hieroglyphics Der Ilerr Vbrmann cannot himself make out, Bryant writes the most individually distinct hand of any man in his office. His autograph will be found beneath his portrait. A Perpetual Portrait; we make choice of the art of the photog- rapher, and shall always try to have represented the latest portrait of the veteran minstrel. We give the alpha and omega of our Illustrations. The Old and the New. The large illustration, with the leafy Maples and the graceful Elm, the site of the MOSAICS — THE OLD. 95 Old School-house, is the site also of the famous Maple- Sugar Camp, — " Sugary " as it is sometimes called. " Sugary," used as a noun, Webster says is a new word. But this homestead " Maple Sugary " is an old feature. The trees were found there by Bryant's maternal grand- father. Many of these maples were set out by Bryant when a mere youth : both father and son replanted young trees for the Maple Sugary. The trees are not now fos- tered for their luscious sap. 1 rat their luxuriant beauty. The process of extracting and conserving the " clear pure lymph/' and the gentle resurrection of Nature from her winter sleep, Bryaxt thus beautifully alludes to — the fitting climax to "A Winter Piece'/' 1 And it is pleasant, when the noisy streams Are just set free, and milder suns melt off The plashy snow, save only the firm drift In the deep glen or the close shade of pines, 'Tis pleasant to behold the wreaths of smoke Roll up among the maples of the hill, AVhere the shrill sound of youthful voices wakes The shriller echo, as the clear pure lymph, That from the wounded trees, in twinkling drops, Falls, mid the golden brightness of the morn, Is gathered in with brimming pails, and oft, Wielded by sturdy hands, the stroke of axe Makes the woods ring. Along the quiet air, Come and float calmly off the soft light clouds, Such as you see in summer, and the winds Scarce stir the branches. Lodged in sunny cleft, Where the cold breezes come not, blooms alone The little wind-flower, whose just opened eye Is blue as the spring heaven it gazes at — Startling the loiterer in the naked groves 96 MOSAICS — THE OLD. With unexpected beauty, for the time Of blossoms and green leaves Is yet afar. And ere it comes, the encountering winds shall oft Muster their wrath again, and rapid clouds Shade heaven, and bounding on the frozen earth Shall fall their volleyed Btores, rounded like hail And white like snow, and the load North again Shall buffet the vexed foresi in his rage. The tail-piece which will be found at the end of this Book-Chapter, is a view of the new school-house erected by Mr. Bryant on a portion of his domain. Whether any incipient young poets patronize the new school-house we cannot stop to investigate. AW have other matter on our hands. AXTHROPOLOOY. Emigration of ] J a« ies. — Exodus <>r [ndian a.nd On-Coming op THE Saxon. The Nations come : the Nations go : The tidal billows ebb and flow Jusl ;i> a llt<>iis ar- range them into classes, and to speculate upon their origin. * * * Humanity has :i- many phases :ts the kaleidoscope. Dr. Wilder, on Anthropology. There stood the Indian hamlet, there the lake Spread in blue sheet that flashed with many an oar. Where the In-own otter plunged him from the brake, And 1 lie <» much is it the more valuable. Connoisseurs understand the mark of the Calcutta Bouse. Inn we started to tell of poor Willis. Musk ; ob Requiem-Phase of Thanatopsis. — The late N. 1*. Willis, father of the thought. How true it is that a genuine thought can be ex- pressed by various wands of art, — can be translated into various tonus of language! Willis, the poet — the sensitive -was thrilled with the startling idea that will come home to us of the Great Axl-Tomb, on Bearing, after the poem had become of world-wide fame, that the ground-thought of Thanatopsis had been suggested by Indian remains. That the local was the key to the universal. Psychologically, Willis was in very low health when the paper containing what the writer then deemed the origin of Thanatopsis was laid before him. As if that mysterious power that inspired Mozart's Last Requiem had chosen Willis for one of its visitations, the thoughl never left him till lie joined the innumerable caravan. Willis little thought when he penned the intro- duction to our crude paper that he was describing the music-phase of Thanatopsis, and that already his sensitive ear had caught the Requiem Maboh to the Great All-Tomb. The innumerable caravan spoken of in that poem belongs to that class of con- MOSAICS — THE OLD. :»'.• captions expressed by "The Day of Judgment" of Michael Axoelo (Painting), "The Dance of Death,' 1 Holbein (Basso-Rilievo), Bridge of Basle (commemo- rating the Plague), "Dieslrae" (Poetry. 13th century, Gothic type), and Mozabt's Requiem (Music, nearing modern times). With Willis the conception took the music phase. Why does Willis think of Bryant as he listens to the Beecher organ* THE GRAM) IIOMESTEAD-POEM THANATOPSIS. The Blue Rocks of Cummington^ the key-stone of " the Gtbeat Tomb of Max!*' The hills Rock-ribbed and ancient as the bud, — the vales Stretching in pensive quietness between ; The venerable woods % * * ^ Are but the solemn decorations all Of the Great Tomb of Max. Thanatppsis. APOSTROPHE TO THE SETTING SUN, WHEREIN HE IMMORTALIZES A DECLINING RACE. I stand upon their ashes, in thy beam. The offspring of another race, I stand Beside a stream thev loved. A Walk at Sunset. A noble race ! but they are gone, With their old forests wild and deep, And we have built our homes upon Fields where their generations sleep. * Alluding to a remarkable editorial of N. P. Willis— Home Journal Aug. 8. 1866. 1 : And thou >lialt be called the repairer of the broken mound; The restorer of paths to be frequented by inhabitants. Low in"s Isaiah. The old Israelitish seer Avails over the desolation wrought by the Ire of the unpronounceable Jah, which had turned man and his habitation to dust of the earth. But he foretells that a new race shall arise and rebuild the mounds and restore the paths! Thanatopsis is Earth's Universal Requiem. It is the Funeral March of the Past, the Present, and the Future. This is the music phase. Poor Willis evolved that idea. Tiiaxatopsis was written at the Homestead: and as with this familiar and never-to-be-worn-out poem, tin- Greek — Indian — American dirge, the legitimate career of our poel commence-, we deem it reverent to give it place among Homestead associations, and to tell all we know of its origin. Bryant was in his eighteenth <>r perhaps nineteenth year when he wrote it, and it was lir>t published in the North American Review in L816. The perspective of his mind was toned 1>\ the classic Greek. He was a mature scholar though ;i youthful poet, noi yet arrived to man's estate. MOSAICS— THE OLD. lOl PHILOSOPHY OF THE OBJECTIVE AXD THE SUBJECTIVE. Genius is rarely self-conscious of his powers; is not given to analyzing liis own philosophy. Our Vet- eran himself would probably he surprised were we to suggest that the consolation of Tlianatopsis consisted in the harmonious play of two antagonistic philosophemes ! Thus : — he bids us nee morbid introspection when it becomes soul-harrowing and tends to waste the frail casket of clay. He then bids us seek and trust like a fond believing child to the Recuperative Forces of Nature. He rings the changes on the life within and life without. From Introspection he woidd have us vault to Observation. INTROSPECTION FOILED BY OBSERVATION. Wheo thoughts Of the last bitter hour come like a blight Over thy spirit, and sad images Of the stern agony, and shroud, and pall, 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. To him who in the love of Nature holds Communion with her visible forms, she speaks A A'arious 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. 1()() MOSAICS — THE OLD. Their fountains slake our thirst at noon. Upon their lieltls our harvest waves, Our lovers woo beneath their moon — Then let us spare, at least, their graves! Th< Disinterred Warrior. And they that Bp ring from thee shall build the ancient ruins; Tin' foundations of old times shall they raise up : And thou shah be called the repairer of the broken mound; The restorer of paths to be frequented by inhabitants. Lowth's Isaiah. The old Israelitish seer wails over the desolation wrought by the ire of the unpronounceable Jah, which had turned man and his habitation to dust of the earth. Bui he foretells that a new race shall arise and rebuild the mounds and restore the paths! Thanatopsis is Earth's Universal Requiem, h is the Funeral March of the Past, the Present, and the Future. This is the music phase. Poor Willis evolved that idea. Tiiaxatopsis was written at the Homestead; and a- with this familiar and ne\er-tod>e- worn-out poem, thi- Greek — Indian — American dirge, the legitimate career of our poet commences, we deem it reverent to give it place among Homestead associations, and to tell ,-dl we know of its origin. Bryant was in his eighteenth or perhaps nineteenth year when lie wrote ii. and it was lirst published in the North American Review in L816. The perspective of his mind was toned by the classic Greek. He was ;i mature scholar though a youthful poet, n«>t ye1 arrived to man's estate. MOSAICS— THE OLD. 1()1 PHILOSOPHY OF THE OBJECTIVE AXD THE SUBJECTIVE. (ienius is rarely self-conscious of his powers ; is not given to analyzing his own philosophy. Our Vet- eran himself would probably be surprised were we to suggest that the consolation of Thanatopsis consisted in the harmonious play of two antagonistic philosophemes ! Thus : — he bids us flee morbid introspection when it becomes soul-harrowing and tends to waste the frail casket of clay. He then bids us seek and trust like a fond believing child to the Recuperative Forces of Nature. He rino:s the changes on the life within and life without. From Introspection he would have us vault to Observation. INTROSPECTION FOILED BY OBSERVATION. 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, 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 Xature's teachings. To 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. L02 MOSAICS — THE OLD. It was here in Cumrnington, a\ liiU* wandering in the primeval forests over the floor of which were scattered the gigantic trunks of fallen trees, mouldering for long years and suggesting an indefinitely remote antiquity, and where Bilenl rivulets crept along through the carpet of dead Leaves, the spoil of thousands of summers; that the poem entitled llianatopsis was composed. The young poet had read the poems of Kirke White, which edited by Southet were published about that time, and a small volume of Southey's miscellaneous poems, and some lines of these authors had kindled his imagi- nation, which going forth over the face of the inhabi- tants of the globe sought to bring under one broad and comprehensive view, the destinies of the human race in the present life and the perpetual rising and passing away of generation after generation who are nourished by the fruits of its soil and find a resting-place in its bosom. As at first written it began with the half-line, " Yd a few (lays and ended with the half-line, " And make their bed with thee." In this state it was found by the poet's father a1 Cummington among some other manuscripts, after his ><>n had left the place t<> reside elsewhere, lie took it to the editors of the X<>rt1< Arm ri$an Review ', then a monthly periodical, in which it appeared. Afterwards, when in L821, and after his father's death, he published MOSAICS — THE OLD. 103 a little volume of poems at Cambridge, the poet added the sixteen lines with which the poem begins and the fifteen with which it closes. In this poem he speaks of " Old ocean's gray and melancholy waste," but he had not then seen the ocean, any more than he had seen the solitudes of Oregon through which winds seaward the river now foolishly named Columbia, on the banks of which towns and cities are beginning to arise. Where rolls the Oregan, and hears no sound, 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. CLIMAX-THOUGHTS OF THAXATOPSIS. The " sad sweet music of humanity." The whisper of the Guardian Angel. THE CARAVAN-THOUGHT. So live, that when thy summons comes to join The innumerable caravax, 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 ! Pause : we want breath to fix this scenarium in our mind. Here is nascent drama. This climax is a du- ality; an antithesis. 104 MOSAICS — THE OLD. THE DREAM THOl OH I. But, sustained :m soul- progression? When this fleshy tabernacle together with the subtle ties that unite Dual Human Nature are dissolved — when elements modified by the accident of life, which is a mere circumstance, are resolved to their primal powers — where will the soul be accommo- dated I Where is the suprasensual realm of thought and feeling I We read Bryant's Thanatopsis and we exclaim with Byron's Dante — in his own weird terza rima — "A thousand years which yet supine Lie like the ocean waves ere winds arise, Heaving in dark and sullen undulation, Float from eternity into these eyes |" And how many THOUSAND k ' thousand-years prophecy of Dante" will roll over Bryant's earth-tomb? His grand Anthropological Cairn for all of mortal clay! Who can tell? What is Dies Iim:< Do (dements need rest? Is Dies Ir;e the final examination: and will the soul, the Life-Pupil, be put hack or forward according to progression in Life- Apprenticeship \ Put back to Primal Nonentity at final Revision? MOSAICS — THE OLD. 105 How long may be that dream \ Ages, or moments ? "Who can tell? for who can hear Tidings from the spirits there ?" Dante could ! The stern of lineament, the grim, — the father old of Tuscan song — could bear revelations from the realm of the suprasensual. A type of Apocalypse St. Joiix, was Daxte Alighteri. He grappled with the Intangible. Verily — Thanatopsis is a weird poem. We never muse over it without evolv- ing some new phase of our common earth-mound. The poem stops at the Dream of the Grave ; and wisely, Reader : we have seen letters written to Bry- ant in his Eighth Decade, asking him tq finish Than- atopsis with Immortality. Why does he not? Art has its limitations. Between the Innumerable Caravan and Immortality comes the Dream of the Grave ! Then Bryant does not believe in the immortality of the soul i Reader : what would you have ? He has hope, hope — that " He that made us with such large discourse, Looking before, and after, gave us not That capability and godlike reason To fust in us unused." If used it is preserved. Like Schiller, our Bard is a soul-progressionalist. He has faith : — faith that the All- Absorber will re-create the soul anew after 14 L06 HOS-AIOS THE OLD. this toilsome life-pilgrimage and dual apprenticeship, in what phase seemeth to Him best. What would you more? From out of Hope and Faith evolve Belief The Bymbolism of our Initial cover device is the Heraldry of two nations, the Exodus of the India* and the On-Coming of the Saxon-Clan. CONCLUDING REMARKS. Severe as the climate of the region is in which Bryant passed Ids school-boy days, the summers were delightful : and even in late autumn, in his birth-month November, there were intervals of warmth and bright- aess, sunshiny days when the elements were in re. pose and when the season which Longfellow, in his Evangeline, calls the summer of All Saints, was enjoyed in its perfection. This the poet has portrayed in his Sonnet entitled November. The illustration- of this hook are all drawn from objects seen in the leafy months. We Leave to the poet himself to depict the Sabbath stillness, the universal repose, the hare, leaf- less, russet landscape sleeping in the genial sunshine just before the arrival of the frost and storms of winter. NOVEMBER. Yet one smile more, departing, diManl Mm ! One mellow smile through the Bofl vapory air, Ere, o'er the frozen earth, the 1<>u<1 winds run, Or Bnows are sifted o'er tin* meadow-- bare. M S A I C S — T II E OLD. 10? One smile on the brown hills and naked trees. And the dark rocks whose summer wreaths are east And the blue gentian flower, that, in the breeze, Xods lonely, of her beauteous race the last. Yet a few sunny days, in which the bee Shall murmur by the hedge that skirts the way, The cricket chirp upon the russet lea, And man delight to linger in thy ray. Yet one rich smile, and we will try to bear The piercing winter frost, and winds, and darkened air. This region of wild forests and solitary o-lens and rugged hill-sides, in which Bryant's early school-days were passed, but which before the settlers of the Euro, pean stock hewed down its trees and brought it under cultivation, was a vast woodland, with not a single opening, and little visited by the Indian tribes, except in the hunting season, suggests by the mere force of con- trast, those regions of the old world which were after- wards visited by the poet ; and to which, amid his wanderings and travels, we shall allude in the next book — premising that our traveller himself observed the injunction he so emphatically gave his friend Cole. Bryant's Sonnet to Cole, on his departure for Europe, one of the tinest of the few personal tributes to be found among his poems, contains four lines of concise ,w seizing upon the individual in objects," ex- pressed with a terseness and vigor rarely equalled and never excelled. We quote the sonnet for its pure Ameri- can sentiment, and we emphasize the lines alluded to, L08 M 0SA1 OS— TH E I. D that the reader may refresh his memory with the paint- ings of Cole rendered by the pen of Bryant. TO COLE, THE PAINTER, DEPARTING FOR EUROPE. Thine eyes shall sec the light of distant skies : Yet, Cole ! thy heart shall bear to Europe's strand A living image of our own bright land, Such as upon thy glorious canvas lies ; Lom lakes—savannas where the bison roves — Hock* rich with summer garlands — solemn streams — Skies, where the desert eagle wheels and screams — Spring bloom and autumn blaze ofJtoundless groves. Fair scenes shall greet thee where thou goest — fair, But different — everywhere the trace of men, 1 'at lis, homes, graves, ruins, from the lowest glen To where life shrinks from the tierce Alpine air. Gaze on them, till the tears shall dim thy sight, But keep that earlier, wilder image bright. BOOK V. MOSAIOS-THE NEW THE OLD AND THE NEW. THE NEW. Mosaics. — Elemental Gleanings. — A Casket of Thought- Talismans. — Wanderings, Travels, and Gleanings, from Many Lands. HE FIRMAMENT was ever with Bryant a loving study. " And contemplation, sweeping to the far, Speaks to the eyes commercing with the sun." Schiller. To the atmosphere of either the material or spiritual world he is keenly sensitive. The changes of the seasons — the phenomena that mark the flight of time — he lives them. This, may appear a trivial and commonplace sentence. It is ; but we will not erase it. Even the commonplace has its value. If the French teach us respect for the trivial, the Germans teach us the value of the commonplace. The German recpiires 110 MLOSAIOS — T HE N K W . earnestness, grandeur of thought, and dignity of senti- ment; and these the descendant of the old "Earth- worshipping Teuton" manages to evolve from the commonplace phenomena of daily life. Hundreds uever think of the phenomena that mark the seasons: or, if they note them, fail to read the lesson of the hour ; to note tin 4 latent poetry of the moment; to fathom the subtle symbolism that makes the moment more than fleeting; that transfixes it in its flight. Return we to the Homestead. The view from the piazza is at times wonderfully magnificent ; an amphi- theatre of mountains encircling for one half the horizon with farm and forest, glen and gorge, shaded or brought into light by flitting clouds, or in autumn emblazoned with hues so successfully rendered by the rich cha- meleon-palette of Cropsey. No wonder the youthful poel drank dee]) draughts of aerial perspective, no wonder that he looked with eyes of love upon "the magnificent temple of the sky." No wonder the mirror of Uis mind took in the Firmament.* THE FIKMAMENT. Ay ! gloriously thou Btandest there, Beautiful, boundless firmament ! That, 8 welling wide o'er earth and air, And round the horizon bent, With thy bright vault, and sapphire wall, \)o>\ overhang and circle all. Written before Bryanl had travelled; yet his attachment to hianative skv has never Buffered chance. MOSAICS— THE, NEW. 1 1 1 Far, far below thee, tall gray trees Arise, and piles built up of old, And hills, whose ancient summits freeze In the fierce light and cold. The eagle soars his utmost height, Yet far thou stretchest o'er his nio-ht. The sun, the gorgeous sun is thine, The pomp that brings and shuts the day, The clouds that round him change and shine. The airs that fan his way hence look the thoughtful The meek moon walks the silent air. Thence look the thoughtful stars, and there The sunny Italy may boast The beauteous tints that flush her skies, And lovely, round the Grecian coast, May thy blue pillars rise. I only know how fair they stand Around my own beloved land. We can now understand why that exquisite, often quoted, and never-to-Le-worn-out distich, Hung high the glorious sun and set Night's cressets in their arch of jet, sprang so spontaneously from the poet-soul. From his favorite window (eastward) you look at a vast extent of country; the land in front slopes rapidly eastward to the deep glen in which flows the north fork of the Westfield River, and rises on the other side, where you see farm after farm with their dwellings, and here and there a church, and russet 112 MOSAICS — T II E N E W . pastures, and green mowing Lands interspersed with woods. Iii tliis valley, at morning, you sometimes see .-in ocean of fog, with nearly a level surface, above which appear the eminences with their fields and trees and sometimes a dwelling, like islands in that sea of cloud. This phase of the scenarium reminds lis of a passage in Schiller's William Tell : — " Beneath him an ocean of mist, where his eye No Longer the dwellings of man can espy." This mist-cloud perspective reminds us also of the familiar lines of Milton: — "Ye mists and exhalations that now rise From hill or streaming lake, dusky or gray, Till the sun paint your fleecy skirts with gold. In honor of the world's great author, rise I" We confess that Milton was never a great favorite with idle scholars in school-days, we having to "parse" his Paradise Lost; when we devoutly wished his Paradise was indeed "lost," never to he found! We also had to "parse 1 ' something else, which we will tell - about in another place. The w * Viiim; Poet" as well as the "Veteran," w Early Rises. — Day-dawn at the Homestead. — Young: Byron A \|i Vol \<. IllIY \\T. "Still in each step that man ascends to light Fie bears the art that lir>t inspired the flight; And still the teeming nature to his gaze, The wealth he gives her with new worlds repays." S. mi LBR, M OSAICS-THE N E W . 113 One of our poet's comparatively juvenile poems : yet one with a thoughtfully antedating climax of the Veteran. Pause, reader, and scan the juvenescent rhythm. The same swimrinar, joyous, fantastic, effer- vescing cadenza as Byron, the young Highlander, seized upon when he sang, in his most wholesome strain, the praise of his native mountains ! Ah ! those were indeed good old days, when it was not deemed vulgar to he robust. Afterward, Byron the Sybarite, — Lord Byron, we mean, — the self-torturer, whom a crumpled rose-leaf could annoy, perhaps did not rise so early. WHEN I ROVED A YOUNG HIGHLANDER. " When I roved a young Highlander o'er the dark heath, And climbed thy steep summit, Morven of snow ! To gaze on the torrent that thundered beneath, Or the mist of the tempest that gathered below, I arose with the dawn : with my dog as my guide, From mountain to mountain I bounded along ; I breasted the billows of Dee's rushing tide. And heard at a distance the Highlander's song." BYRON. BAY-DA WX AT THE HOMESTEAD. YOUNG BRYAXT. "when* the firmament quivers with daylight's young BEAM." When the firmament quivers with daylight's young beam. And the woodlands awaking burst into a hymn, And the glow of the sky blazes back from the stream, How the bright ones of heaven in the brightness srrow dim. 114 KOSAICS — THE N E W . ()li ! 'tis sad, in that moment of glory and song, T<> Bee, while the hill-tops arc waiting the sun. The glittering hand thai kept watch all night long O'er Love and o'er Slumber, go out one by one : Till the circle of ether, deep, ruddy, and vast, Scarce glimmers with one of the train that were there •And their leader the day-star, the brightest and last, Twinkles faintly and fades in that desert of air. Let them fade — but we'll pray that the age, in whose flight, Of ourselves and our friends the remembrance shall die, .May rise o'er the world, with the gladness and light Of the morning that withers the stars from the sky. ILLUSTRATIONS. "The Rich varieties of Soulful Sound." Hut there is one charm of The Firmament which no art of the pencil can give us — the song of flu* bob-o'-lini in June, the holiday of the year, when he rises Binging from tin* grass, and fills the air with his joyous, almosi defiant note, and descends into the grass again when his song is ended, completing his flight and }\\< lay at the same moment. The region in which the Homestead lies is much visited by these birds, and nowhere is their song more frequently heard than here, in June, that holiday of the year when a perfeci chorus of birds rises from the meadows. Our Initial represents the bob-o'-link on the spray — "merrily s\vin<:•in