122 Quotes by William Cullen Bryant

And we wept that one so lovely should have a life so brief.

Heed not the night; a summer lodge amid the wild is mine 'Tis shadowed by the tulip-tree, 'tis mantled by the vine.

The sweet calm sunshine of October, now / Warms the low spot; upon its grassy mould / The purple oak-leaf falls; the birchen bough / Drops its bright spoil like arrow-heads of gold.

The windflower and the violet, they perished long ago, And the brier-rose and the orchis died amid the summer glow; But on the hills the golden-rod, and the aster in the wood, And the yellow sunflower by the brook, in autumn beauty stood, Till fell the frost from the clear cold heaven, as falls the plague on men, And the brightness of their smile was gone, from upland glade and glen.

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.

And when the hours of rest / Come, like a calm upon the mid-sea brine, / Hushing its billowy breast- / The quiet of the moment, too, is thine: / It breathes of him who keeps / The vast and helpless city, while it sleeps.

Stand here by my side and turn, I pray, / On the lake below thy gentle eyes; / The clouds hang over it, heavy and gray, / And dark and silent the water lies;

Even while we sing, he smiles his last, / And leaves our sphere behind. / The good old year is with the past; / Oh be the new as kind! / Oh stay, oh stay, / One parting strain, and then away.

The stormy March is come at last / With wind, and cloud, and changing skies / I hear the rushing of the blast / That through the snowy valley flies.