Poetical Works of William Cullen Bryant

Ah me! what armèd nations – Asian horde,
And Libyan host, the Scythian and the Gaul
Have swept your base and through your passes poured,
Like ocean-tides uprising at the call
Of tyrant winds – against your rocky side
The bloody billows dashed, and howled, and died!

How crashed the towers before beleaguering foes,
Sacked cities smoked and realms were rent in twain;
And commonwealths against their rivals rose,
Trode out their lives and earned the curse of Cain!
While, in the noiseless air and light that flowed
Round your fair brows, eternal Peace abode.

Here pealed the impious hymn, and altar-flames
Rose to false gods, a dream-begotten throng,
Jove, Bacchus, Pan, and earlier, fouler names;
While, as the unheeding ages passed along,
Ye, from your station in the middle skies,
Proclaimed the essential Goodness, strong and wise.

In you the heart that sighs for freedom seeks
Her image; there the winds no barrier know,
Clouds come and rest and leave your fairy peaks;
While even the immaterial Mind, below,
And Thought, her wingèd offspring, chained by power,
Pine silently for the redeeming hour.

EARTH.[25 - The author began this poem in rhyme. The following is the first draught of it as far as he proceeded, in a stanza which he found it convenient to abandon:A midnight black with clouds is on the sky;A shadow like the first original nightFolds in, and seems to press me as I lie;No image meets the vainly wandering sight,And shot through rolling mists no starlight gleamGlances on glassy pool or rippling stream.No ruddy blaze, from dwellings bright within,Tinges the flowering summits of the grass;No sound of life is heard, no village din,Wings rustling overhead or steps that pass,While, on the breast of Earth at random thrown,I listen to her mighty voice alone.A voice of many tones: deep murmurs sentFrom waters that in darkness glide away,From woods unseen by sweeping breezes bent,From rocky chasms where darkness dwells all day,And hollows of the invisible hills around,Blent in one ceaseless, melancholy sound.O Earth! dost thou, too, sorrow for the past?Mourn'st thou thy childhood's unreturning hours,Thy springs, that briefly bloomed and faded fast,The gentle generations of thy flowers,Thy forests of the elder time, decayedAnd gone with all the tribes that loved their shade?Mourn'st thou that first fair time so early lost,The golden age that lives in poets' strains,Ere hail or lightning, whirlwind, flood, or frostScathed thy green breast, or earthquakes whelmed thy plains,Ere blood upon the shuddering ground was spilt,Or night was haunted by disease and guilt?Or haply dost thou grieve for those who die?For living things that trod a while thy face,The love of thee and heaven, and now they lieMixed with the shapeless dust the wild winds chase?I, too, must grieve, for never on thy sphereShall those bright forms and faces reappear.Ha! with a deeper and more thrilling tone,Rises that voice around me: 'tis the cryOf Earth for guilt and wrong, the eternal moanSent to the listening and long-suffering sky,I hear and tremble, and my heart grows faint,As midst the night goes up that great complaint.]

A midnight black with clouds is in the sky;
I seem to feel, upon my limbs, the weight
Of its vast brooding shadow. All in vain
Turns the tired eye in search of form; no star
Pierces the pitchy veil; no ruddy blaze,
From dwellings lighted by the cheerful hearth,
Tinges the flowering summits of the grass.
No sound of life is heard, no village hum,
Nor measured tramp of footstep in the path,
Nor rush of wind, while, on the breast of Earth,
I lie and listen to her mighty voice:
A voice of many tones – sent up from streams
That wander through the gloom, from woods unseen
Swayed by the sweeping of the tides of air,
From rocky chasms where darkness dwells all day,
And hollows of the great invisible hills,
And sands that edge the ocean, stretching far
Into the night – a melancholy sound!

O Earth! dost thou too sorrow for the past
Like man thy offspring? Do I hear thee mourn
Thy childhood's unreturning hours, thy springs
Gone with their genial airs and melodies,
The gentle generations of thy flowers,
And thy majestic groves of olden time,
Perished with all their dwellers? Dost thou wail
For that fair age of which the poets tell,
Ere yet the winds grew keen with frost, or fire
Fell with the rains or spouted from the hills,
To blast thy greenness, while the virgin night
Was guiltless and salubrious as the day?
Or haply dost thou grieve for those that die —
For living things that trod thy paths awhile,
The love of thee and heaven – and now they sleep
Mixed with the shapeless dust on which thy herds
Trample and graze? I too must grieve with thee,
O'er loved ones lost. Their graves are far away
Upon thy mountains; yet, while I recline
Alone, in darkness, on thy naked soil,
The mighty nourisher and burial-place
Of man, I feel that I embrace their dust.

Ha! how the murmur deepens! I perceive
And tremble at its dreadful import. Earth
Uplifts a general cry for guilt and wrong,
And heaven is listening. The forgotten graves
Of the heart-broken utter forth their plaint.
The dust of her who loved and was betrayed,
And him who died neglected in his age;
The sepulchres of those who for mankind
Labored, and earned the recompense of scorn;
Ashes of martyrs for the truth, and bones
Of those who, in the strife for liberty,
Were beaten down, their corses given to dogs,
Their names to infamy, all find a voice.
The nook in which the captive, overtoiled,
Lay down to rest at last, and that which holds
Childhood's sweet blossoms, crushed by cruel hands,
Send up a plaintive sound. From battle-fields,
Where heroes madly drave and dashed their hosts
Against each other, rises up a noise,
As if the armèd multitudes of dead
Stirred in their heavy slumber. Mournful tones
Come from the green abysses of the sea —
A story of the crimes the guilty sought
To hide beneath its waves. The glens, the groves,
Paths in the thicket, pools of running brook,
And banks and depths of lake, and streets and lanes
Of cities, now that living sounds are hushed,