ote,
and one of the most remarkable ever written by a youth. This was
_Thanatopsis_, which his father discovered among his papers and sent
to the _North American Review_ without his son's knowledge, so little
did the poet of eighteen, who five years before had published the
tirade against Jefferson, realize that he had produced the most
remarkable verses yet written in America.

_Thanatopsis_ attracted instant attention in this country and in
England. It had appeared anonymously, and American critics insisted
that it could not be the work of an American author as no native poet
approached it either in sublimity of thought or perfection of style.
But _Thanatopsis_ bears no trace of English influence, nor was it
strange that an heir of the Puritan spirit, who had lived in daily
communion with nature, should thus set to the music of poetry the
hopes and inspirations of his race.

_Thanatopsis_ is the first great American poem, and it divides by a
sharp line the poetry hitherto written on our soil from that which was
to follow. Henceforth the poets of the newer England ceased to find
their greatest inspiration in the older land. At the time of the
publication of the poem Bryant was studying law in Great Barrington,
Mass., having been obliged by poverty to leave college after a two
years' course. It was in the brief interval before beginning his
office studies that he wrote _Thanatopsis_ putting it aside for future
revision.

He was already hard at work upon his profession when his sudden
literary success changed all his plans. Destined by nature to be a man
of letters, he poured forth verse and prose during the whole time he
was studying and practising law. Six months after the publication of
_Thanatopsis_ the poem entitled _To a Waterfowl_, suggested by the
devious flight of a wild duck across the sunset sky, appeared.

It is a perfect picture of the reedy river banks, the wet marshes, and
the lonely lakes over which the bird hovered, and it is full of
the charm of nature herself. From this time on Bryant's touch never
faltered. He was the chosen poet of the wild beauty of his native
hills and valleys, and his own pure spirit revealed the most sacred
meanings of this beauty.

In 1821 he published his first volume of poems under the title,
_Poems by William Cullen Bryant_. It was a little book of forty pages,
containing _Thanatopsis_, _Green River_, _To a Waterfowl_, and other
pieces, among which was the charming, _T