Poem by William Cullen Bryant

* * *

I cannot forget with what fervid devotion
    I worshipped the vision of verse and of fame.
Each gaze at the glories of earth, sky, and ocean,
    To my kindled emotions, was wind over flame.

And deep were my musings in life's early blossom,
    Mid the twilight of mountain groves wandering long;
How thrilled my young veins, and how throbbed my full bosom,
    When o'er me descended the spirit of song.

'Mong the deep-cloven fells that for ages had listened
    To the rush of the pebble-paved river between,
Where the kingfisher screamed and gray precipice glistened,
    All breathless with awe have I gazed on the scene;

Till I felt the dark power o'er my reveries stealing,
    From his throne in the depth of that stern solitude,
And he breathed through my lips, in that tempest of feeling,
    Strains lofty or tender, though artless and rude.

Bright visions! I mixed with the world, and ye faded;
    No longer your pure rural worshipper now;
In the haunts your continual presence pervaded,
    Ye shrink from the signet of care on my brow.

In the old mossy groves on the breast of the mountain,
    In deep lonely glens where the waters complain,
By the shade of the rock, by the gush of the fountain,
    I seek your loved footsteps, but seek them in vain.

Oh, leave not, forlorn and for ever forsaken,
    Your pupil and victim to life and its tears!
But sometimes return, and in mercy awaken
    The glories ye showed to his earlier years.

1. “Blessed Are They That Mourn”
2. Rizpah
3. The Hunter of the Prairies
4. A Scene on the Banks of the Hudson
5. The Old Man's Funeral

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