the chirp of half-awakened birds in the morning twilight, we need not say what cordial welcome was extended to a poem which embodied in blank verse worthy of anybody since Milton thoughts of the highest reach and noblest power, or what wonder was mingled with the praise when it was announced that this grand and majestic moral teaching and this rich and sustained music were the work of a boy of eighteen.  Not that Bryant was no more than eighteen when “Thanatopsis” was printed, for he must pay one of the tributes of eminence in having all the world know that he was born in 1794; but he was no more than eighteen when it was written, and surely never was there riper fruit plucked from so young a tree.  And now we have before us, with the imprint of 1864, his latest volume, entitled “Thirty Poems.”  Between this date and that of the publication of “Thanatopsis” there sweeps an arch of forty-eight years.  With Bryant these have been years of manly toil, of resolute sacrifice, of faithful discharge of all the duties of life.  The cultivation of the poetical faculty is not always favorable to the growth of the character, but Bryant is no less estimable as a man than admirable as a poet.  It has been his lot to earn his bread by the exercise of the prose part of his mind,—­by those qualities which he has in common with other men,—­and his poetry has been written in the intervals and breathing-spaces of a life of regular industry.  This necessity for ungenial toil may have added something to the shyness and gravity of the poet’s manners; but it has doubtless given earnestness, concentration, depth, and a strong flavor of life to his verse.  Had he been a man of leisure, he might have written more, but he could hardly have written better.  And nothing tends more to prolong to old age the freshness of feeling and the sensibility to impressions which are characteristic of the poetical temperament than the dedication of a portion of every day to some kind of task-work.  The sweetest flowers are those which grow upon the rocks of renunciation.  Byron at thirty-seven was a burnt-out volcano:  Bryant at threescore and ten is as sensitive to the touch of beauty as at twenty.

The poetry of Bryant is not great in amount, but it represents a great deal of work, as few men are more finished artists than he, or more patient in shaping and polishing their productions.  No piece of verse ever leaves his hands till it has received the last touch demanded by the most correct judgment and the most fastidious taste.  Thus the style of his poetry is always admirable.  Nowhere can one find in what he has written a careless or slovenly expression, an awkward phrase, or an ill-chosen word.  He never puts in an epithet to fill out a line, and never uses one which could be improved by substituting another.  The range within which he moves is not wide.  He has not written narrative or dramatic poems:  he has not painted poetical portraits:  he has not aspired to the honors of satire, of wit, or of