eviously published in book form, in 1821,
his earliest poems, and the "Literary Gazette" itself, in its very first
number, had pronounced him the first "original poet formed on this side
of the Atlantic." "Our pleasure was equalled by our surprise," it says,
"when we took up Bryant's poems, listened to the uncommon melody of the
versification, wondered at the writer's perfect command of language, and
found that they were American poems." "Though the English critics say of
him," it continues, "that their poets must look to their laurels now
that such a competitor has entered the ring, yet, let him remember that
a few jousts in the ring never established the reputation of a
knight."{5} It is a curious fact that the difference in actual quantity
of poetic production between the older and younger poets should thus
have been unconsciously suggested by the editor when Longfellow was but
seventeen.

With Bryant and Longfellow, it would therefore seem, the permanent
poetic literature of the nation began. "The Rivulet" and "The Hymn of
the Moravian Nuns" appeared in the "Gazette" collection, and have never
disappeared from the poetic cyclopaedias. The volume included fourteen of
Longfellow's youthful effusions, only six of which he saw fit to
preserve; dropping behind him, perhaps wisely, the "Dirge Over a
Nameless Grave," "Thanksgiving," "The Angler's Song," "Autumnal
Nightfall," "A Song of Savoy," "Italian Scenery," "The Venetian
Gondolier," and "The Sea Diver." He himself says of those which he
preserved that they were all written before the age of nineteen, and
this is obvious from the very date of the volume. Even in the rejected
poems the reader recognizes an easy command of the simpler forms of
melody, and a quick though not profound feeling for external nature.
Where he subsequently revises these poems, however, the changes are apt
to be verbal only, and all evidently matters of the ear. Thus in
reprinting "The Woods in Winter," he omits a single verse, the
following:--

"On the gray maple's crusted bark
Its tender shoots the hoarfrost nips;
Whilst in the frozen fountain--hark!
His piercing beak the bittern dips."

It shows the gradual development of the young poet's ear that he should
have dropped this somewhat unmelodious verse. As a rule he wisely
forbore the retouching of his early poems. He also contributed to the
"Gazette" three articles in prose, quite in Irving's manner, including a
few verses. A