Bryants trip bears comparison to Walt Whitmans pivotal journey to Louisiana and the Midwest in 1848: for both men, the experience of an America spreading boundlessly beyond their lives in the East affected their sense of voice as American poets. Dr. Bryants notion that his dream of becoming a poet might find fulfillment in his son furnished a second, and psychologically more powerful, motive. When the elder Bryants legislative duties took him to Boston, he became acquainted with the writings of William Ellery Channing and other early Unitarians and found them persuasive; although he continued to attend the Congregational church in Cummington, he refused to give public assent to Trinitarian liturgy, and a few years later he joined the Unitarian church. But the approbation of the Boston literati would matter far more in the long run than a quickening of popular appeal. As Peter Bryants closest intellectual companion, his son was profoundly affected by this departure from conventional tenets. A great walker, he insisted on climbing 10 flights of stairs to his office instead of taking the elevator, and he made daily use of the barbells he had had crafted for him. But once they left England, their jollity expired in a Europe everywhere menaced by a swelling militarism. Financial stability made more active pursuit of his diverse interests possible. When a rift over succession to the editorship at the, In the spring, Bryants boosters from the, The 20th century judged The Ages harshly; even the poets major adherents omitted it from their collections of Bryants works. Upon the whole I have every cause to be satisfied with my situation. Only 31 when he presented his lectures, Bryant seemed the best candidate to realize the future he described, but a job he believed temporary and supplementary when he began it in July ordained a different course. The sun beat on his head during the long speeches, rendering the old man slightly dizzy, yet, characteristically, he insisted on walking from the ceremony instead of riding in a carriage. For on thy cheeks the glow is spread Alexander Hamilton had founded the New-York Evening Post in 1801 as an organ for his Federalist party, but as the party weakened, William Coleman, the original editor, slipped from Federalist principles. When he returned, he was forced to depend on his father-in-laws generosity to restore his place in the community. More important, for all his protestations about having to drudge for the Evening Post, politics fascinated him. The fame he won as a poet while in his youth remained with him as he entered his 80s; only Henry Wadsworth Longfellow and Ralph Waldo Emerson were. The law is a hag, Charles wrote to his friend; besides, there are tricks in practice which would perpetually provoke disgust. Two Sedgwick brothers lived in New York City and sought to convince Bryant to relocate where any description of talent may find not only occupation but diversity of application. Meanwhile, Dana was growing concerned that Bryant, enmeshed in his practice and local political life, would let his talent sleep.. After the election, however, Bryant criticized Lincoln for not immediately emancipating all slaves, and then for not prosecuting the war vigorously enough. M. Evrard insisted that he attend mass for his souls salvation and tried to convert him to Catholicism, yet Bryant, respecting the mans ebullient nature and good heart, took it all in good stride, and when Fanny and their daughter moved to the city, they joined the crowded Evrard household for about a month. As an erudite American, he had immersed himself in the ancients, a classical nurture reflected in his admiration for. In comparison, his original work was meager. Ebenezer Snell, a deacon in the Congregationalist church, studied theological writers and was as intractable in his interpretation of scripture as in his rulings as a local magistrate. Peter Bryants associations with the citys intellectuals had spurred an enthusiasm for an ambitious two-year-old publication, the North American Review, which, he wrote his son in June of 1817, should nicely serve as the means of introducing you to notice in the capital. When the son ignored this prodding, Dr. Bryant seized the initiative. But from that point on, it prospered, steadily increasing the value of his sixty per cent ownership, and its reputation grew as Bryant etched the faults of his political opponents with his acid editorials. By spring, they were lending assistance to complex negotiations that would make him the editor of a merged journal, the New-York Review and Atheneum Magazine. Here the speaker is introducing us to a certain kind of guy who loves nature. An American Creed by Everard Jack Appleton. His experience of the nations great rivers, and then of the awesome sweep of prairie stirred him profoundly. By now The Talisman had run its course, but a different publisher, Harper and Brother, thought enough of Bryants collaborative approach to request another, similar collection in 1832 consisting exclusively of tales. Just as the literati associated with the North American Review had, however briefly, helped make Boston the nations intellectual center, Bryant, as much as any other single figure, shifted that focus to New York. The shaping of Bryants mind and personality owed much to his family circumstances in Cummington, Massachusetts, a small village in the Berkshire hills carved from the forest scantly a generation before his birth. Indeed, excepting only one or two pieces by Washington Irving, no previous American short story is its equal. The prodigy who had written The Embargo and imitated the Classical writers was a skillful mimic of a mechanical concept of verse. In addition, his wifes health was giving him concern, and he thought the sun of Southern Europe might be beneficial. She has a voice of gladness, and a smile. But little of comparable appeal was submitted for later numbers, and Bryant found it necessary to draw down his meager file of poems and then to try his hand at writing a tale, A Pennsylvania Legend, in order to fill the magazine. Several friends were stricken, but the suffering and death of a particular young woman plunged him into melancholy. In Plainfield, he wrote to a friend, I found the people rather bigoted in their notions, and almost wholly governed by the influence of a few individuals who looked upon my coming among them, with a great deal of jealousy. By June of 1816, having despaired of ever greatly enlarging the sphere of my business, he began investigating the prospect of joining an established practice in Great Barrington, and in October he moved to the Housatonic Valley town. To the end, Bryant believed in physical fitness as well as mental exercise. Poet and editor William Cullen Bryant stood among the most celebrated figures in the frieze of 19th-century America. Then, in mid 1814, he left the Berkshires for Bridgewater, the area of his familys origins, to join the law office of a congressman whose absences while in Washington required hiring someone to run his practice. In this poem, Bryant praises America as the "mother of a mighty race," claiming that free Americans are now going to create major impact on the world with their new independence. The pace and range of his studies were not exclusively a function of his aptitude: Dr. Bryant, ever mindful of educations cost, trusted that his sons diligence, coupled with sufficient private study, would enable him to enroll at nearby Williams College in October 1810 as a sophomore, thereby saving a years tuition. James Fenimore Cooper invited him to join his Bread and Cheese Lunch Club, beginning an intimate relationship that would last until Coopers death at mid-century. Young Cullen, a captive of both his fathers politics and his enthusiasm for Augustan poetry, fused the two in scathing verse. Preoccupation with the conduct of his law office may not have been the only impediment. One critic summed up his career by comparing him disadvantageously to the great poets of the ageWilliam Wordsworth, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, John Keats, and Alfred, Lord Tennysonyet he took care to comment that though the American could not match their idiosyncratic strengths, he was the one among all our contemporaries who has written the fewest things carelessly, and the most things well.. His father, Peter Bryant, a physician and surgeon, had evidently chosen to settle in Cummington to pursue the affections of Sarah Snell, whose family had migrated from the same town in eastern Massachusetts; boarding at the Snell house, he won his bride. Analysis of America William Cullen Bryant 1794 (Cummington) - 1878 (New York City) Childhood Family Life Love Nature Religion OH mother of a mighty race, A Yet lovely in thy youthful grace! Read all poems about america from aroun the world. Sales were disappointinga year later, it had yet to cover its printing costsbut reviews were good, not only in Boston and New York but also in England, where Bryant in little time became the only known American poet. Da Ponte published several works in Bryants journal, including observations on Dante, and he subsequently translated some of Bryants poetry into his native tongue. Robert Sandss sudden death in December 1832 deprived him of a dear friend, and the effects of political attacks on the conduct of the, Only months earlier, he had been considering sale of his share of the newspaper and enjoying some ease, but Leggett so mismanaged its finances and drove off so many advertisers with his radical political stances that the returning editor had no choice but to immerse himself once again in its daily operation. At the end of May 1878, he spoke at the dedication of a bust of the great European and Italian liberal revolutionary Giuseppe Mazzini in New Yorks Central Park. A second essay, On the Use of Trisyllabic Feet in Iambic Verse, published in September 1819, reworked material possibly first drafted when he was 16 or 17 and trying to shake free of Popes Neoclassical cadence; even so, it did much to bolster his credentials as a scholar of metrics. The young Bryant had ardently declared for protectionism in The Embargo, but in his duties as, in effect, a Congressional aide while in Bridgewater, and then, more systematically, in Great Barrington, he had studied political economy and come firmly to the side of free trade. 1821, however, was its ideal moment. To palliate his loss, Bryant made a last trip to Europe, taking Julia along. He had discovered in early adolescence a strong attraction to sketching; now, in the presence of artists determined to create a new age of American painting, this interest revived. The following spring, the man who had once worried about speaking in public was delivering four lectures on poetry at the New York Athenum. William Blake (1 poem) Walt Whitman (3 poem) John Keats (1 poem) Edgar Albert Guest (2 poem) Phillis Wheatley (4 poem) Percy Bysshe Shelley (1 poem) James Weldon Johnson (1 poem) In the eruption of colleges across the young republic he saw an unmistakable sign that society would be drawing its leaders from the new elite being formally trained; nagging concerns about his financial resources and his precept that all his children should receive even-handed treatment would have to be pushed to the side so that Cullens intellect might be properly nurtured. Free shipping for many products! Peter Bryants letters to his own father indicate correct yet chafed relations with the patriarchal Squire Snell, despite the reestablished physicians financial infusions into the homestead as his fortunes improved. American literature was showing its first signs of maturity, but it still missed a poet whose work could stand comparison with British rivals; The Ages nominated Bryant as that poet. As a boy he became devoted to the New England countryside and was a keen observer of nature. His most conspicuous achievement as a student, In fact, such poetic glories as he feared would smother under the workaday routine were in gestation. Years later, Bryant underscored that he was not among those who look back upon childhood as a happy period. I. Ironically, an immediate fame beyond his imaginings awaited. The boys grandfather pressed a contrasting worldview on him. M. Evrard insisted that he attend mass for his souls salvation and tried to convert him to Catholicism, yet Bryant, respecting the mans ebullient nature and good heart, took it all in good stride, and when Fanny and their daughter moved to the city, they joined the crowded Evrard household for about a month. But these explanations are misleading. Worship stressed death and the power of the devil, and perhaps because of the boys vulnerability to illness and chronic severe headaches, he pondered mortality, even at his tender age, and saw Gods image as cast in a mold of fear and gloom. In fact, such poetic glories as he feared would smother under the workaday routine were in gestation. Then, in September 1824, an appellate court reversed a judgment he had won for his client; outraged that a piece of pure chicane should triumph over the merits of the case, he decided to quit the law. An injury to Coleman in mid June of 1826, following a previous stroke that had cost him the use of his legs, forced him to rely on a substitute to help run the paper. Resuming the European journey that had been interrupted by Leggetts debacle in 1836, Bryant returned to Europe in 1845. This reemerging poet, however, had little in common with the former prodigy schooled in the Ancients and in Popes crystalline verse. 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