in one volume all the
poems which he had written, most of which had previously appeared in
magazines. A few months later an edition appeared in London with
an introduction by Irving. It was this volume which gave Bryant
an English reputation as great as that he enjoyed in America. Like
Cooper, he revealed an unfamiliar nature as seen in American forests,
hills, and streams, taking his readers with him into those solitary
and quiet places where dwelt the wild birds and wild flowers. The very
titles of his poems show how closely he lived to the life of the world
around him. _The Walk at Sunset_, _The West Wind_, _The Forest Hymn_,
_Autumn Woods_, _The Death of the Flowers_, _The Fringed Gentian_,
_The Wind and Stream_, _The Little People of the Snow_, and many
others disclose how Bryant gathered from every source the beauty which
he translated into his verses.

Among the poems which touch upon the Indian traditions are _The
Indian Girl's Lament_, _Monument Mountain_, and _An Indian at the
Burial-place of his Father_. In these he lingers upon the pathetic
fate of the red man driven from the home of his race and forced into
exile by the usurping whites. They are full of sadness, seeming to
wake once again the memories of other times when the forest was alive
with the night-fires of savage man and the days brought only the
gladness of freedom.

Besides his original work Bryant performed a noble task in the
translation of the _Iliad_ and _Odyssey_ of Homer. He was over seventy
when he began this work, and was five years in completing it. The
poems are put into blank verse, of which Bryant was a master, and they
have caught the very spirit of the old Greek bard; so faithfully
did the modern poet understand that shadowy past that he might have
watched with Helen the burning of Troy, or journeyed with Ulysses
throughout his wanderings in the perilous seas.

The light of Bryant's imagination burned steadily to the end. In his
eighty-second year he wrote his last important poem, _The Flood of
Years_. It is a beautiful confession of faith in the nobility of life
and the immortality of the soul, and a fitting crown for an existence
so beneficent and exalted.

His last public work was to participate in unveiling a monument to the
Italian statesman Mazzini in Central Park, when he was the orator of
the day. On the same evening he was seized with his last illness. He
died on June 12, 1878, and was buried at Roslyn, Long Island, o