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William Cullen Bryant, 1794-1878
William Cullen Bryant brought the Romantic movement into American literature with his 1817 poem "Thanatopsis." His nature poems include "To a Waterfowl," which the English poet Matthew Arnold called "the most perfect brief poem in the language." But in early America, poetry was no way to make a living, and Bryant's main career was as a crusading newspaper editor at the New York Evening Post. Bryant's abhorrence of slavery made him a fervent Republican and a devout supporter of Lincoln, although he wished that Lincoln was more radical on abolition. His last literary work was a translation of Homer's Iliad and Odyssey.
Henry Kirke Brown, 1846 |