Top 15 William Cullen Bryant Quotes

But ’neath yon crimson tree
Lover to listening maid might breathe his flame,
Nor mark, within its roseate canopy, Her blush of maiden shame.

The stormy March has come at last, With winds and clouds and changing skies;
I hear the rushing of the blast That through the snowy valley flies.

So live, that when thy summons comes to join
The innumerable caravan which moves
To that mysterious realm, where each shall take
His chamber in the silent halls of death,
Thou go not, like the quarry-slave at night,
Scourged to his dungeon, but, sustained and soothed
By an unfaltering trust, approach thy grave
Like one who wraps the drapery of his couch
About him, and lies down to pleasant dreams.

All that tread,
The globe are but a handful to the tribes
That slumber in its bosom.

Old ocean's gray and melancholy waste.

The hills,
Rock-ribbed, and ancient as the sun.

Go forth under the open sky, and list
To Nature's teachings.

To him who in the love of Nature holds
Communion with her visible forms, she speaks
A various language.

The right to discuss freely and openly, by speech, by the pen, by the press, all political questions, and to examine and animadvert upon all political institutions, is a right so clear and certain, so interwoven with our other liberties, so necessary, in fact to their existence, that without it we must fall at once into depression or anarchy. To say that he who holds unpopular opinions must hold them at the peril of his life, and that, if he expresses them in public, he has only himself to blame if they who disagree with him should rise and put him to death, is to strike at all rights, all liberties, all protection of the laws, and to justify and extenuate all crimes.

Wild was the day; the wintry sea
Moaned sadly on New England's strand,
When first the thoughtful and the free,
Our fathers, trod the desert land.

The rugged trees are mingling
Their flowery sprays in love;
The ivy climbs the laurel
To clasp the boughs above.

Glorious are the woods in their latest gold and crimson,
Yet our full-leaved willows are in the freshest green.
Such a kindly autumn, so mercifully dealing
With the growths of summer, I never yet have seen.

And suns grow meek, and the meek suns grow brief,
And the year smiles as it draws near its death.

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.

I would make Reason my guide, but she should sometimes sit Patiently by the way-side, while I traced The mazes of the pleasant wilderness Around me. She should be my counsellor, But not my tyrant. For the spirit needs Impulses from a deeper source than hers, And there are motions, in the mind of man, That she must look upon with awe. I bow Reverently to her dictates, but not less Hold to the fair illusions of old time — lllusions that shed brightness over life, And glory over nature.