Becoming America - An Exploration of American Literature from Precolonial to Post-Revolution, 2018a

BECOMING AMERICA
REVOLUTIONARY AND EARLY NATIONAL PERIOD LITERATURE
Image 4.6 | William Cullen Bryant Memorial
Artist | Herbert Adams
Photographer | User “Daderot”
Source | Wikimedia Commons
License | Public Domain
the Atheneum, he lectured on poetry;
he supported freedom of speech and
religion and lectured on the rights of
labor unions and the great wrongs of
slavery. He eventually helped create the
Republican Party, giving his signicant
support to Abraham Lincoln. And he
continued to write poetry, with six new
poetry collections appearing between
1832 and 1864.
Besides poetry, he published
popular travelogues based on his
travels across the United States and
in Europe. By the time he died, due to
complications from a fall while giving
a speech at the unveiling of Giuseppe
Mazzini’s statue in New York, Bryant
was considered one of the most
important and inuential writers of
that era. He certainly contributed to
making the idea of American literature
viable both in America and abroad.
4.7.1 “Thanatopsis”
(1817)
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. 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 Nature’s teachings, while from all around—
Earth and her waters, and the depths of air—
Comes a still voice. Yet a few days, and thee
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