William Cullen Bryant Quotes

William Cullen Bryant was an American romantic poet, journalist, and long-time editor of the New York Evening Post. Wikipedia  

✵ 3. November 1794 – 12. June 1878
William Cullen Bryant photo

Works

A Forest Hymn
A Forest Hymn
William Cullen Bryant
William Cullen Bryant: 41   quotes 0   likes

Famous William Cullen Bryant Quotes

“The south wind searches for the flowers whose fragrance late he bore,
And sighs to find them in the wood and by the stream no more.”

Death of the Flowers http://www.bartleby.com/248/85.html (1832), st. 4, lines 23-24

“Loveliest of lovely things are they,
On earth, that soonest pass away.
The rose that lives its little hour
Is prized beyond the sculptured flower.”

A Scene on the Banks of the Hudson http://www.4literature.net/William_Cullen_Bryant/Scene_on_the_Banks_of_the_Hudson/, st. 3 (1828)

“But ’neath yon crimson tree
Lover to listening maid might breathe his flame,
Nor mark, within its roseate canopy,
Her blush of maiden shame.”

Autumn Woods. Reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)
Attributed

“The victory of endurance born.”

The Battlefield http://www.gutenberg.org/files/16341/16341-h/16341-h.htm#page222 (1839), st. 8

“The hills,
Rock-ribbed, and ancient as the sun.”

Source: Thanatopsis (1817–1821), l. 37

“The stormy March has come at last,
With winds and clouds and changing skies;
I hear the rushing of the blast
That through the snowy valley flies.”

March. Reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)
Attributed

William Cullen Bryant Quotes about love

“All things that are on earth shall wholly pass away,
Except the love of God, which shall live and last for aye.”

as quoted in Poems http://books.google.com.mx/books?id=Ep4tAAAAMAAJ&printsec=frontcover&vq=%22The+love+of+God%22#v=onepage&q=%22The%20love%20of%20God%22&f=false, from the Provensal Of Bernard Rascas

“The rugged trees are mingling
Their flowery sprays in love;
The ivy climbs the laurel
To clasp the boughs above.”

The Serenade http://www.gutenberg.org/files/16341/16341-h/16341-h.htm#page189, St. 14

“The summer morn is bright and fresh, the birds are darting by,
As if they loved to breast the breeze that sweeps the cool clear sky.”

The Strange Lady http://www.gutenberg.org/files/16341/16341-h/16341-h.htm#page211, st. 6 (1835)

William Cullen Bryant Quotes about flowers

“And the blue gentian flower, that, in the breeze,
Nods lonely, of her beauteous race the last.”

November. A Sonnet http://www.gutenberg.org/files/16341/16341-h/16341-h.htm#page74 (1824)

“The little wind-flower, whose just opened eye
Is blue as the spring heaven it gazes at.”

A Winter Piece http://www.gutenberg.org/files/16341/16341-h/16341-h.htm#page24, st. 3 (1821)

William Cullen Bryant Quotes

“To say that he who holds unpopular opinions must hold them at the peril of his life, and that, if he expresses them in public, he has only himself to blame if they who disagree with him should rise and put him to death, is to strike at all rights, all liberties, all protection of the laws, and to justify and extenuate all crimes.”

Editorial written in remembrance of Elijah Parish Lovejoy, Presbyterian minister, journalist, newspaper editor and abolitionist, who was murdered by a pro-slavery mob in Alton, Illinois during their attack on his warehouse to destroy his press and abolitionist materials.

Context: The right to discuss freely and openly, by speech, by the pen, by the press, all political questions, and to examine and animadvert upon all political institutions, is a right so clear and certain, so interwoven with our other liberties, so necessary, in fact to their existence, that without it we must fall at once into depression or anarchy. To say that he who holds unpopular opinions must hold them at the peril of his life, and that, if he expresses them in public, he has only himself to blame if they who disagree with him should rise and put him to death, is to strike at all rights, all liberties, all protection of the laws, and to justify and extenuate all crimes.

“For the spirit needs
Impulses from a deeper source than hers,
And there are motions, in the mind of man,
That she must look upon with awe.”

"The Conjunction of Jupiter and Venus" in Poems (1841)
Context: I would make
Reason my guide, but she should sometimes sit
Patiently by the way-side, while I traced
The mazes of the pleasant wilderness
Around me. She should be my counsellor,
But not my tyrant. For the spirit needs
Impulses from a deeper source than hers,
And there are motions, in the mind of man,
That she must look upon with awe. I bow
Reverently to her dictates, but not less
Hold to the fair illusions of old time —
lllusions that shed brightness over life,
And glory over nature.

“I would make
Reason my guide, but she should sometimes sit
Patiently by the way-side, while I traced
The mazes of the pleasant wilderness
Around me.”

"The Conjunction of Jupiter and Venus" in Poems (1841)
Context: I would make
Reason my guide, but she should sometimes sit
Patiently by the way-side, while I traced
The mazes of the pleasant wilderness
Around me. She should be my counsellor,
But not my tyrant. For the spirit needs
Impulses from a deeper source than hers,
And there are motions, in the mind of man,
That she must look upon with awe. I bow
Reverently to her dictates, but not less
Hold to the fair illusions of old time —
lllusions that shed brightness over life,
And glory over nature.

“Thine eyes are springs in whose serene
And silent waters heaven is seen;
Their lashes are the herbs that look
On their young figures in the brook.”

Oh Fairest of the Rural Maids http://www.gutenberg.org/files/16341/16341-h/16341-h.htm#page91 (1820)

“These struggling tides of life that seem
In wayward, aimless course to tend,
Are eddies of the mighty stream
That rolls to its appointed end.”

The Crowded Street http://www.gutenberg.org/files/16341/16341-h/16341-h.htm#page253, st. 10 (1864)

“Old ocean's gray and melancholy waste.”

Source: Thanatopsis (1817–1821), l. 43

“All that tread,
The globe are but a handful to the tribes
That slumber in its bosom.”

Source: Thanatopsis (1817–1821), l. 48

“Wild was the day; the wintry sea
Moaned sadly on New England's strand,
When first the thoughtful and the free,
Our fathers, trod the desert land.”

The Twenty-Second of December http://www.gutenberg.org/files/16341/16341-h/16341-h.htm#page154, st. 1

“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.”

To a Waterfowl http://www.gutenberg.org/files/16341/16341-h/16341-h.htm#page20, st. 2 (1815)

“And suns grow meek, and the meek suns grow brief,
And the year smiles as it draws near its death.”

October. A Sonnet http://www.gutenberg.org/files/16341/16341-h/16341-h.htm#page115 (1866)

“Go forth under the open sky, and list
To Nature's teachings.”

Source: Thanatopsis (1817–1821), l. 14

“The melancholy days are come, the saddest of the year,
Of wailing winds, and naked woods, and meadows brown and sere.”

Death of the Flowers http://www.bartleby.com/248/85.html (1832), st. 1

“Thou unrelenting Past!
Strong are the barriers round thy dark domain,
And fetters, sure and fast,
Hold all that enter thy unbreathing reign.”

The Past http://www.gutenberg.org/files/16341/16341-h/16341-h.htm#page143, st. 1 (1828)

“The groves were God's first temples.”

A Forest Hymn http://www.bartleby.com/248/83.html (1824)

“Truth, crushed to earth, shall rise again;
The eternal years of God are hers;
But Error, wounded, writhes with pain,
And dies among his worshippers.”

The Battlefield http://www.gutenberg.org/files/16341/16341-h/16341-h.htm#page222 (1839), st. 9

“Maidens hearts are always soft:
Would that men's were truer!”

Song: Dost Thou Idly Ask To Hear http://www.gutenberg.org/files/16341/16341-h/16341-h.htm#page62, st. 1 (1832)

Similar authors

William Blake photo
William Blake 249
English Romantic poet and artist
Percy Bysshe Shelley photo
Percy Bysshe Shelley 246
English Romantic poet
George Gordon Byron photo
George Gordon Byron 227
English poet and a leading figure in the Romantic movement
Walt Whitman photo
Walt Whitman 181
American poet, essayist and journalist
Mikhail Lermontov photo
Mikhail Lermontov 34
Russian writer, poet and painter
Hector Berlioz photo
Hector Berlioz 9
French Romantic composer
Ludwig Van Beethoven photo
Ludwig Van Beethoven 43
German Romantic composer
Aleksandr Pushkin photo
Aleksandr Pushkin 33
Russian poet
Robert Southey photo
Robert Southey 51
British poet
Jan Neruda photo
Jan Neruda 7
Czech poet, theater reviewer, publicist and writer