American poet & newspaper editor (1794-1878)
Then haste thee, Time--'tis kindness all
That speeds thy winged feet so fast:
Thy pleasures stay not till they pall,
And all thy pains are quickly past.
WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT
"The Lapse of Time"
Loveliest of lovely things are they,
On earth, that soonest pass away.
The rose that lives its little hour
Is prized beyond the sculptured flower.
WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT
"A Scene on the Banks of the Hudson"
They talk of short-lived pleasures--be it so--
pain dies as quickly: stern, hard-featured pain
Expires, and lets her weary prisoner go.
The fiercest agonies have shortest reign;
And after dreams of horror, comes again
The welcome morning with its rays of peace.
WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT
"Mutation"
Fair insect! that, with threadlike legs spread out,
And blood-extracting bill and filmy wing,
Does murmur, as thou slowly sail'st about,
In pitiless ears full many a plaintive thing,
And tell how little our large veins should bleed,
Would we but yield them to they bitter need.
WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT
"To a Mosquito"
Raise then the hymn of Death. Deliverer!
God hath anointed thee to free the oppressed
And crush the oppressor.
WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT
"Hymn to Death"
All that tread,
The globe are but a handful to the tribes
That slumber in its bosom.
WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT
Thanatopsis
Thine eyes are springs in whose serene
And silent waters heaven is seen;
Their lashes are the herbs that look
On their young figures in the brook.
WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT
"Oh Fairest of the Rural Maids"
To him who in the love of Nature holds
Communion with her visible forms, she speaks
A various language.
WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT
Thanatopsis
I stand upon my native hills again,
Broad, round, and green, that in the summer sky
With garniture of waving grass and grain,
Orchards, and beechen forests, basking lie,
While deep the sunless glens are scooped between,
Where brawl o'er shallow beds the streams unseen.
WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT
"Lines on Revisiting the Country"
Oh, leave me, still, the rapid flight
That makes the changing seasons gay,
The grateful speed that brings the night,
The swift and glad return of day.
WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT
"The Lapse of Time"
Art is the production of the beautiful and the sublime in nature and man.
WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT
"On the Study of Poetry"
These struggling tides of life that seem
In wayward, aimless course to tend,
Are eddies of the mighty stream
That rolls to its appointed end.
WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT
"The Crowded Street"
Thou unrelenting Past!
Strong are the barriers round thy dark domain,
And fetters, sure and fast,
Hold all that enter thy unbreathing reign.
WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT
"The Past"
The south wind searches for the flowers whose fragrance late he bore,
And sighs to find them in the wood and by the stream no more.
WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT
"Death of the Flowers"