sixty years after that crimson sky had paled into
chill December twilight, his lines never again vibrated with such
communicative passion.

Bryant's ensuing career revealed the steady purpose, the stoicism,
the reticence of the Puritan. It was highly successful, judged even by
material standards. "Thanatopsis" had been instantly regarded in 1817
as the finest poem yet produced in America. The author was invited to
contribute to the "North American Review" an essay on American poetry,
and this, like all of Bryant's prose work, was admirably written. He
delivered his Harvard Phi Beta Kappa poem, "The Ages," in 1821, the
year of Emerson's graduation. After a brief practice of the law in Great
Barrington, he entered in 1826 into the unpromising field of journalism
in New York. While other young Knickerbockers wasted their literary
strength on trifles and dissipated their moral energies, Bryant held
steadily to his daily task. His life in town was sternly ascetic, but he
allowed himself long walks in the country, and he continued to meditate
a somewhat thankless Muse. In 1832 he visited his brothers on the
Illinois prairies, and stopped one day to chat with a "tall awkward
uncouth lad" of racy conversational powers, who was leading his company
of volunteers into the Black Hawk War. The two men were destined to
meet again in 1860, when Bryant presided at that Cooper Union address of
Lincoln's which revealed to New York and to the country that the former
captain of volunteers was now a king of men. Lincoln was embarrassed on
that occasion, it is said, by Bryant's fastidious, dignified presence.
Not so Nathaniel Hawthorne, who had seen the poet in Rome, two years
before. "There was a weary look in his face," wrote Hawthorne, "as if
he were tired of seeing things and doing things....He uttered neither
passion nor poetry, but excellent good sense, and accurate information,
on whatever subject transpired; a very pleasant man to associate with,
but rather cold, I should imagine, if one should seek to touch his heart
with one's own." Such was the impression Bryant made upon less gifted
men than Hawthorne, as he lived out his long and useful life in the
Knickerbocker city. Toward the close of it he was in great demand for
public occasions; and it was after delivering a speech dedicating a
statue to Mazzini in Central Park in 1878, when Bryant was eighty-four,
that a fit of dizziness caused a fall which proved fatal to the
venerable