nto
a New-England wood on a late day in autumn without hearing the nuts drop
upon the withered leaves, and seeing the streams flash through the
smoke-like haze which hangs over the landscape.

But winter, especially our clear and sparkling New-England winter, has
its scenes of splendor and aspects of beauty; and the poet would not be
true to his calling, if he failed to recognize them.

"Come when the rains
Have glazed the snow, and clothed the trees with ice,
While the slant sun of February pours
Into the bowers a flood of light. Approach!
The incrusted surface shall upbear thy steps,
And the broad arching portals of the grove
Welcome thy entering. Look! the massy
Trunks are cased in the pure crystal; each light spray,
Nodding and tinkling in the breath of heaven,
Is studded with its trembling water-drops
That glimmer with an amethystine light;
But round the parent stem the long, low boughs
Bend, in a glittering ring, and arbors hide
The glassy floor."

There are many more lines equally good, but we have not space for them.
This is a description of winter as we have it here, compounded of the
elements of extreme cold, a transparent atmosphere, and brilliant
sunshine. No English poet can see such a scene, at least in his own
country: Ambrose Phillips did see something like it in Sweden, and
described it in a poetical epistle to the Earl of Dorset, which is much
the best thing he ever wrote, and has a pulse of truth and life in it,
from the simple fact that he saw something new, and told his noble
correspondent what he saw.

But Bryant's claims to the honors of a truly national poet do not rest
solely upon the fidelity with which he has described the peculiar
scenery of his native land, for no poet has expressed with more
earnestness of conviction and more beauty of language the great ideas
which have moulded our political institutions and our social life.
Before the breaking out of the Civil War he was a member of that great
political party of which Jefferson was the head, and he is still a
Democrat in the primitive sense of the word; that is to say, he believes
in man's capacity for self-government, and in his right to govern
himself. He has full trust in human progress; age has not lessened the
faith with which he looks forward to the future; his sympathies are
with the many, and not with the few. Though he has travelled much in
Europe, his imagination has been but little affecte