About William Cullen Bryant
William Cullen Bryant (November 3, 1794, Cummington, MA – June 12, 1878, New York) was an American Romantic poet, writer, jurist, and journalist. William Cullen Bryant was interested in poetry from a young age. His first book of poems, “The Embargo”, was published in 1808. He published his first poem at the age of ten. At seventeen, Bryant began his first major work, “The Thanatopsis”, which appeared in the “North American Review” in 1817. It was improved and expanded over the years. The subject of “The Thanatopsis” is the common and unifying destiny of death for humankind. “The Thanatopsis” was one of the most widely read poems of its time. Bryant also wrote “Lines to a Waterfowl”. Bryant's work, written in the English Romantic style, celebrates rural New England. It was well received by the public. Among his best-known poems are “The Rivulet”, “The West Wind”, “The Forest Hymn”, and “The Fringed Gentian”.Toward the end of his life, William Cullen Bryant focused on analyzing and translating Greek and Latin classics, such as Homer's Iliad and Odyssey. William Cullen Bryant's poetry is tender and graceful, filled with contemplative melancholy and a love for solitude and the silence of the forest. Although he was raised to admire Alexander Pope, and even imitated him in his youth, he was one of the first American poets to exert his own influence.
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Poetry is that art which selects and arranges the symbols of thought in such a manner as to excite the imagination the most powerfully and delightfully.
