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theological tenets of the New England of his day, and that the bent of
his young mind was, even then, toward graver subjects than would
naturally occupy the thoughts of a boy of that age.

His biographers assert that he drew his inspiration for this grand poem
from the pages of Kirke White and Southey. But whatever his acquaintance
with these poets may have done for him, there is a striking similarity
of imagery and sentiment between his own and the writings of the sacred
bards, whose utterances were as familiar to the children of a Christian
household in those days as their own childish nursery songs and hymns.

For instance, compare these lines from "Thanatopsis" with a well-known
passage in the Book of Job:--

"... Yet the dead are there:
And millions in those solitudes, since first
The flight of years began, have laid them down
In their last sleep,--the dead reign there alone."

The sacred poet says:--

"Yet shall he be brought to the grave, and shall remain in the tomb.
The clods of the valley shall be sweet unto him, and every man shall draw
after him as there are innumerable before him."

Then, again, in "The Old Man's Funeral":--

"Then rose another hoary man, and said,
In faltering accents, to that weeping train:
'Why mourn ye that our aged friend is dead?
Ye are not sad to see the gathered grain.'"

Compare this with:

"Thou shall come to the grave in a full age, like as a shock of corn
cometh in his season."

Examples similar to these occur in many of Bryant's poems, and tend to
show the result of the early religious training, that, as the son of a
thoughtful, God-fearing New England gentleman of that day, he most
certainly did receive.

That he was intensely, grandly, sometimes fiercely patriotic, is also
due, in a great measure, to the surrounding influences of his young
life.

The struggle for American independence was at last over, and the lusty
young Republic, springing, Minerva-like, from the mighty brain of a no
longer imperilled freedom, was ready to throw down the gauntlet of
defiance to all the world, and assert her rights as queen regnant of the
great Western World.

The armies had been disbanded, and the war-scarred veterans had joyfully
returned to their farms and workshops, ready to put their willing hands
again to the plough and the plane, and help to restore, by patient toil
and honest legislation, prosperity and peace to the la