d _To a
Waterfowl_.

These poems, when studied, are sure to reveal the simplicity and
sincerity not only of Bryant's love for nature, but of his character as
a man. They show the freedom from affectation that marks alike his
writings and his everyday life. He followed almost sternly his high
ideals both of moral right and literary correctness, and this has made
him seem somewhat cold and formal. But probably all who can read most
clearly the meaning of his life and works feel that so true-hearted a
man could not have been lacking in warm and generous kindliness.

TO A WATERFOWL

_By_ WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT

NOTE.--"He says in a letter that he felt, as he walked up the
hills, very forlorn and desolate indeed, not knowing what was to
become of him in the big world, which grew bigger as he ascended,
and yet darker with the coming on of night. The sun had already
set, leaving behind it one of those brilliant seas of chrysolite
and opal which often flood the New England skies; and, while he was
looking upon the rosy splendor with rapt admiration, a solitary
bird made wing along the illuminated horizon. He watched the lone
wanderer until it was lost in the distance, asking himself whence
it had come and to what far home it was flying. When he went to the
house where he was to stop for the night, his mind was still full
of what he had seen and felt, and he wrote these lines, as
imperishable as our language, _To a Waterfowl_."--Parke Godwin, in
Biography of Bryant.

[Illustration: THY FIGURE FLOATS ALONG]

Whither, 'midst falling dew,
While glow the heavens with the last steps of day,
Far through their rosy depths dost thou pursue
Thy solitary way?

Vainly the fowler's eye
Might mark thy distant flight to do thee wrong,
As, darkly painted on the crimson sky,
Thy figure floats along.

Seek'st thou the plashy brink
Of weedy lake, or marge of river wide,
Or where the rocking billows rise and sink
On the chafed ocean side?

There is a Power whose care
Teaches thy way along that pathless coast--
The desert and illimitable air--
Lone wandering, but not lost.

All day thy wings have fanned,
At that far height, the cold, thin atmosphere,
Yet stoop not, weary, to the welcome land,
Though the dark night is near.