, but soon left, and,
not having the means to pay his way through Yale, gave up the thought of
college altogether, and began the study of law. He also read widely in
English literature, and while in his seventeenth year produced what may
fairly be called the first real poem written in America, "Thanatopsis,"
a wonderful achievement for a youth of that age. Six months later came
the beautiful lines, "To a Waterfowl," and Bryant's career as a poet was
fairly begun. In 1821 came the thin volume in which these and other
poems were collected, and its success finally decided its author to
relinquish a career at the bar and to turn to literature.

In the years that followed, Bryant produced a few other noteworthy
poems, yet it is significant of the thinness of his inspiration that,
though he began writing in early youth and lived to the age of
eighty-four, his total product was scant in the extreme when compared
with that of any of the acknowledged masters. His earnings from this
source were never great, and, removing to New York, he secured, in 1828,
the editorship of the _Evening Post_, with which he remained associated
until his death.

In his later years, he became an imposing national figure. But his
poetry never regained the wide acceptation which it once enjoyed,
largely because taste in verse has changed, and we have come to lay more
stress upon beauty than upon ethical teaching.

America has never lacked for versifiers, and Bryant's success encouraged
a greater throng than ever to "lisp in numbers"; but few of them grew
beyond the lisping stage, and it was not until the middle of the century
that any emerged from this throng to take their stand definitely beside
the author of "Thanatopsis." Then, almost simultaneously, six others
disengaged themselves--Longfellow, Whittier, Poe, Lowell, Holmes and
Emerson--and remain to this day the truest poets in our history.

Of Emerson we have already spoken. His poetry has been, and still is,
the subject of controversy. To some, it is the best in our literature;
to others, it is not poetry at all, but merely rhythmic prose. It is
lacking in passion, in poetic glow--for how can fire come out of an
iceberg?--but about some of it there is the clean-cut beauty of the
cameo. You know, of course, his immortal quatrain,

Rhodora! if the sages ask thee why
This charm is wasted on the earth and sky,
Tell them, dear, that if eyes were made for seeing,
Then Beauty is i