Alas! I little thought that the stern power Whose fearful praise I sung, would try me thus Before the strain was ended. It must cease―― For he is in his grave who taught my youth The art of verse, and in the bud of life Offered me to the Muses. Oh, cut off Untimely! when thy reason in its strength, Ripened by years of toil and studious search And watch of Nature’s silent lessons, taught Thy hand to practise best the lenient art To which thou gavest thy laborious days, And, last, thy life. And, therefore, when the earth Received thee, tears were in unyielding eyes, And on hard cheeks, and they who deemed thy skill Delayed their death-hour, shuddered and turned pale When thou wert gone. This faltering verse, which thou Shalt not, as wont, o’erlook, is all I have To offer at thy grave――this――and the hope To copy thy example. Bryant was educated at Williams College, but left with an honorable discharge before graduation to take up the study of law, which he practiced one year at Plainfield and nine years at Great Barrington, but in 1825 he abandoned law for literature, and removed to New York where in 1826 he began to edit the “Evening Post,” which position he continued to occupy from that time until the day of his death. William Cullen Bryant and the “Evening Post” were almost as conspicuous and permanent features of the city as the Battery and Trinity Church. In 1821 Mr. Bryant married Frances Fairchild, the loveliness of whose character is hinted in some of his sweetest productions. The one beginning “O fairest of the rural maids,” was written some years before their marriage; and “The Future Life,” one of the noblest and most pathetic of his poems, is addressed to her:―― “In meadows fanned by Heaven’s life-breathing wind, In the resplendence of that glorious sphere And larger movements of the unfettered mind, Wilt thou forget the love that joined us here? “Will not thy own meek heart demand me there,―― That heart whose fondest throbs to me were given? My name on earth was ever in thy prayer, And wilt thou never utter it in heaven?” Among his best-known poems are “A Forest Hymn,” “The Death of the Flowers,” “Lines to a Waterfowl,” and “The Planting of the Apple-Tree.” One of the greatest of his works, though not among the most popular, is his translation of Homer, which he completed when seventy-seven years of age.