William Cullen Bryant
June
- I gazed upon the glorious sky
- And the green mountains round,
- And thought that when I came to lie
- At rest within the ground,
- ’Twere pleasant, that in flowery June,
- When brooks send up a cheerful tune,
- And groves a joyous sound,
- The sexton’s hand, my grave to make,
- The rich, green mountain-turf should break.
- A cell within the frozen mould,
- A coffin borne through sleet,
- And icy clods above it rolled,
- While fierce the tempests beat —
- Away! — I will not think of these —
- Blue be the sky and soft the breeze,
- Earth green beneath the feet,
- And be the damp mould gently pressed
- Into my narrow place of rest.
- There through the long, long summer hours,
- The golden light should lie,
- And thick young herbs and groups of flowers
- Stand in their beauty by.
- The oriole should build and tell
- His love-tale close beside my cell;
- The idle butterfly
- Should rest him there, and there be heard
- The housewife bee and humming-bird.
- And what if cheerful shouts at noon
- Come, from the village sent,
- Or songs of maids, beneath the moon
- With fairy laughter blent?
- And what if, in the evening light,
- Betrothed lovers walk in sight
- Of my low monument?
- I would the lovely scene around
- Might know no sadder sight nor sound.
- I know that I no more should see
- The season’s glorious show,
- Nor would its brightness shine for me,
- Nor its wild music flow;
- But if, around my place of sleep,
- The friends I love should come to weep,
- They might not haste to go.
- Soft airs, and song, and light, and bloom
- Should keep them lingering by my tomb.
- These to their softened hearts should bear
- The thought of what has been,
- And speak of one who cannot share
- The gladness of the scene;
- Whose part, in all the pomp that fills
- The circuit of the summer hills,
- Is that his grave is green;
- And deeply would their hearts rejoice
- To hear again his living voice.
William Cullen Bryant (1794–1878) was an American poet of the Romantic movement, a journalist, and longtime editor of the New York Evening Post. Although often grouped with the New England poets (Emerson, Lowell, et al.), Bryant was in fact a thorough New Yorker and spent most of his literary efforts in forging a national, rather than a regional, literature. Thanks in part to his influence, the Big Apple created two of its major landmarks, Central Park and the Metropolitan Museum of Art.