The rest of his life is more political and journalistic than literary. He made _The Evening Post_ a power in the development of the nation, but his work as editor interfered with his poetry, although he occasionally wrote verse to the end of his life. In middle life he began a series of trips abroad, and wrote many letters describing his travels. To occupy his attention after his wife died in 1866, he translated Homer's _Iliad_ and _Odyssey_, at the nearly uniform rate of forty lines a day. This work still remains one of the standard poetic translations of Homer. [Illustration: BRYANT'S HOME, ROSLYN, L.I.] As the years passed, he became New York's representative citizen, noted for high ideals in journalism and for incorruptible integrity, as well as for the excellence of his poetry. He died in 1878, at the age of eighty four, and was buried at Roslyn, Long Island, beside his wife. POETRY.--_Thanatopsis_, probably written in 1811, was first published in 1817 in _The North American Review_, a Boston periodical. One of the editors said to an associate, "You have been imposed upon. No one on this side of the Atlantic is capable of writing such verses." The associate insisted that Dr. Bryant, the author, had left them at the office, and that the Doctor was at that moment sitting in the State Senate, representing his county. The editor at once dashed away to the State House, took a long look at the Doctor, and reported, "It is a good head, but I do not see _Thanatopsis_ in it." When the father was aware of the misunderstanding, he corrected it, but there were for a long time doubts whether a boy could have written a poem of this rank. In middle age the poet wrote the following to answer a question in regard to the time of the composition of _Thanatopsis_:-- "It was written when I was seventeen or eighteen years old--I have not now at hand the memorandums which would enable me to be precise--and I believe it was composed in my solitary rambles in the woods. As it was first committed to paper, it began with the half line--'Yet a few days, and thee'--and ended with the beginning of another line with the words--'And make their bed with thee.' The rest of the poem--the introduction and the close--was added some years afterward, in 1821." _Thanatopsis_ remains to-day Bryant's most famous production. It is a stately poem upon death, and seems to come directly from the lips of Nature:-- "... from all around-- Earth and her waters and the depth of air-- Comes a still voice.-- Yet a few days, and thee The all-beholding sun shall see no more ..." No other poem presents "all-including death" on a scale of such vastness. The majestic solemnity of the poem and the fine quality of its blank verse may be felt in this selection:--