dies, he left
the manuscript of this incomparable poem among his papers in the house
of his father, who found it after his departure. "Here are some lines
that our William has been writing," he said to a lady to whom he showed
them. She read them, and, raising her eyes to the face of Dr. Bryant,
burst into tears--a tribute to the genius of his son in which he was not
ashamed to join. Blackstone bade his Muse a long adieu before he turned
to wrangling courts and stubborn law; and our young lawyer intended to
do the same (for poetry was starvation in America seventy years ago),
but habit and nature were too strong for him. There is no difficulty in
tracing the succession of his poems, and in a few instances the places
where they were written, or with which they concerned themselves.
"Thanatopsis," for example, was followed by "The Yellow Violet," which
was followed by the "Inscription for the Entrance to a Wood," and the
song beginning "Soon as the glazed and gleaming snow." The exquisite
lines "To a Waterfowl" were written at Bridgewater, in his twentieth
year, where he was still pursuing the study of law, which appears to
have been distasteful to him. The concluding stanza sank deeply into a
heart that needed its pious lesson:

"He who, from zone to zone,
Guides through the boundless sky thy certain flight,
_In the long way that I must tread alone,_
_Will lead my steps aright._"

The lawyer-poet had a long way before him, but he did not tread it
alone; for, after being admitted to the bar in Plymouth, and practising
for a time in Plainfield, near Cummington, he removed to Great
Barrington, in Berkshire, where he saw the dwelling of the Genevieve of
his chilly little "Song," his Genevieve being Miss Frances Fairchild of
that beautiful town, whom he married in his twenty-seventh year, and who
was the light of his household for nearly half a century. It was to her,
the reader may like to know, that he addressed the ideal poem beginning
"O fairest of the rural maids" (_circa_ 1825), "The Future Life" (1837),
and "The Life that Is" (1858); and her memory and her loss are tenderly
embalmed in one of the most touching of his later poems, "October,
1866."

"Thanatopsis" was sent to the _North American Review_ (whether by its
author or his father we are not told), and with such a modest, not to
say enigmatical, note of introduction, that its authorship was left in
doubt. The _Review_ was managed by a