Poem by William Cullen Bryant

* * *

Earth's children cleave to Earth—her frail
    Decaying children dread decay.
Yon wreath of mist that leaves the vale,
    And lessens in the morning ray:
Look, how, by mountain rivulet,
    It lingers as it upward creeps,
And clings to fern and copsewood set
    Along the green and dewy steeps:
Clings to the fragrant kalmia, clings
    To precipices fringed with grass,
Dark maples where the wood-thrush sings,
    And bowers of fragrant sassafras.
Yet all in vain—it passes still
    From hold to hold, it cannot stay,
And in the very beams that fill
    The world with glory, wastes away,
Till, parting from the mountain's brow,
    It vanishes from human eye,
And that which sprung of earth is now
    A portion of the glorious sky.

1. “Blessed Are They That Mourn”
2. Rizpah
3. A Scene on the Banks of the Hudson
4. The Hunter of the Prairies
5. William Tell

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