CHAPTER I

INTRODUCTION
A. Background of the Study
Literature is a term used to describe written or spoken material. Broadly
speaking, literature is used to describe anything from creative writing to more
technical or scientific works, but the term most commonly used to refer to works
of creative imagination, including works of poetry.
People learn about poems; people enjoy the comedies and tragedies of
poems; and people may even grow and evolve through their literary journey with
poems. Poetry promotes literary, builds community, and fosters emotional
resilience.
A poet is a person who writes poetry. The work that is denied from a
specific event or in characteristic way. Poets have objective reality since antiquity,
in nearly all languages, and have produced works that vary greatly in different
cultures and time periods.
All of these set aside, the question on everyones mind; is there any poet
who creates an inspiring poem, if there is/are, whos one of them?
William Cullen Bryant is one of the famous poet. He was born on
November 3, 1794, in a long log cabin near Cummington, Massachusetts. A lot of
people say that his poetry has been described as being of a thoughtful, meditative
character, and makes but slight appeal to the mass of readers.
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B. Statement of the Research Questions

The researcher will investigate on the short biography of William Cullen
Bryant, his famous poems, his contributions in the English literature, and
achievements he obtained as a poet. Specifically, he would like to seek answers
for the following research questions:
1. Who is William Cullen Bryant?
2. What are his famous poems?
3. What are his contributions in the English Literature and in his
country?
4. What achievements did he obtained as a Poet and as an Editor?
C. Purpose of the Study
This research paper is deemed important to realize the following
aims/objectives stated as follows:
1. To use this as a reference in the future.
2. To encourage people to read his poems.
3. To pass his English subject.
D. Significance of the Study
The researcher finds the completion of the investigation importance for
following reasons:
1. It will help the other incoming poets to have a deeper
understanding on what they should do and what they might get.

2. The proposed study serves the student/the researcher as his

reference or guide in learning poetry.
3. The proposed study will benefits and help the future researcher as
their guide. The study can also open in development of this study.
E. Definition of Terms
The following are words and phrases that are found to be important in
understanding the topic of this research paper. They briefly defined using a
dictionary
1. Thanatopsis (n.) A meditation upon death.
2. Embargo (n.) A government order prohibiting the movement of
merchant ships into or out of its port.
3. Aversion (n.) A fixed, intense dislike; repugnance
4. Homoeopathy (n.) The method of treating diseases by drugs that
produces symptoms similar to those of the diseases.
5. Flamboyant (adj.) Highly elaborate; ornate
6. Genteel (adj.) Refined in manner; well bred and polite
7. Turmoil (n.) A state of extreme confusion or aggregation;
commotion or tumult.
8. Melancholy (n.)/(adj.) Sadness and/or depression of the spirits;
gloom
9. Vexation (n.) The act of annoying or irritating.
10. Rickety (adj.) Poorly made and likely to collapse

CHAPTER II
MAIN BODY
This section of the research paper provides answers to the research
questions previously stated in Chapter I. The following information is the result of the
investigation made by the researcher on the topic.
A. A Brief Biography of William Cullen Bryant
I.

Early Life
William Cullen Bryant was born on November 3, 1794, at

Cummington Massachusetts, the son of Peter Bryant, a literary country doctor, and
Sarah Snell Bryant. The Bryants lived in the household of the Snell grandparents,
strict Calvinists and Federalists.
II.

Youth and Education

Benton (p. 351) stated that William attended the district schools

until he was 12. Then he studied Latin and Greek with ministers in preparation for
college. He read much in his fathers library at home. At 13 he wrote a long satire
called The Embargo, which his father proudly had published. Later Bryant
regretted writing his piece, which was an attack on President Thomas Jefferson.
According to Abel (p. 664), when William was 15, he entered
Williams College in 1810, but he withdrew after a year. Augustyn said that at 16
William entered the sophomore class of Williams College. Because of finances and in
hopes of attending Yale, he withdrew without graduating. Unable to enter Yale, he
studied law under private guidance at Worthington and Bridgewater and at 21 was

admitted to the bar. He spent nearly 10 years in Plainfield and at Great Barrington as
an attorney, a calling for which he held a life long aversion.
III.

Editorial Career
Meantime William had already written Thanatopsis and To a

Waterfowl and put them aside without thought of publication. Writing poetry could
not financially sustain a family and from 1816 to 1825, he practiced law in Great
Barrington, Massachusetts. He supplemented his income with work such as the
service of the town's hog reeve. Distaste for pettifogger and the sometimes absurd
judgments pronounced by the courts gradually drove him to break with the legal
profession.
Augustyn (p. 75) said that the political conservatism of his father
stimulated The Embargo in which the 13-year-old poet demanded the resignation of
President Jefferson. But in Thanatopsis, which he wrote when he was 17 and which
made him famous when it was published in The North American Review in 1817.
In 1825, he was hired as editor, first of the New-York Review, then
of the United States Review and Literary Gazette. But the magazines of that day
usually enjoyed only an ephemeral life-span. After two years of fatiguing effort to
breathe life into periodicals, he became Assistant Editor of the New-York Evening
Post under William Coleman, a newspaper founded by Alexander Hamilton that was
surviving precariously. Bryant also became known as a defender of religious
minorities and immigrants, and an outspoken critic of slavery.
According to Muller (p. 96). Hamilton and Williams friends tapped
William Coleman, an attorney who was probably one of the best educated journalists

of his day. Coleman also was a great admirer of Bryants works, and was the first to
reprint Thanatopsis when Bryant visited New York in 1825. When Coleman was
injured in an accident in 1826, he hired Bryant, who was editor in chief, in fact
although not in name. At the time, Bryant looked upon journalism as beneath him.
However, he had no other job offers. A year later, he still questioned if he had found
his niche, since his creative energies had not been completely satisfied with
newspaper work.
Grisfold (p. 324) said he became one of the editors of the Evening
Post. He however found time for the cultivation of elegant literature, and joined
Verplanck and sands in writing the Talisman, which was published under the name of
an imaginary author, Francis Herbert, Esquire, for the years 1827, 1828 and 1829.
Augustyn (p. 73) also said that, in 1825 he moved to New York
City to became coeditor of the New York Review. He became an editor of the Evening
Post in 1827; in 1829 he became editor in chief and part owner and continued in this
position until his death in 1827. His careful investment of his income made Bryant
wealthy. He was an active patron of the arts and letters.
B. Bryants Famous Poems
One of Bryants more well known poems is To a Waterfowl. Albert
McLean, author of William Cullen Bryant, notes that throughout this poem Bryants
faith is very apparent and real. Although "Thanatopsis", his most famous poem, has
been said to date from 1811, it is more likely that Bryant began its composition in
1813, or even later. Bryant entered Williams College in 1810 and left after a year. In

1811 he wrote the first draft of his best-known poem, "Thanatopsis" (literally, view of
death), reflecting the influence of English "graveyard" poets such as Thomas Gray.
Perhaps the most remarkable feature of "Thanotopsis" is its anti-Christian,
stoical view of death. There is no heaven or hell beyond the grave; death ends life,
and that is all: "Thine individual being, shalt thou go/ To mix forever with the
elements,/ To be a brother to the insensible rock/ And to the sluggish clod. "
Published in 1817, the poem was a marked success; it was reprinted in 1821 in the
final, revised version familiar today.
A few years later Bryant modified his attitude to death in "To a
Waterfowl," in which a "Power" (God) is omnipresent and beneficent. The later
English poet Matthew Arnold considered this to be the finest short poem in the
English language. As the 1876 poem "The Flood of Years" makes clear, Bryant held
this view of death to the end of his life.
Shortly after Bryant wrote the first draft of "Thanotopsis," he came under
the influence of the romantic British poets William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor
Coleridge. In the opening lines of "Inscription for the Entrance to a Wood," Bryant
conveyed a love of nature that he retained throughout his career: "Thou wilt find
nothing here [in nature]/ Of all that pained thee in the haunts of men,/ And made thee
loathe thy life." However, like Wordsworth and other romantics, Bryant saw the
world of nature less as an escape from the evils of life in the city than as a positive,
vital force in itself. He explored this idea in other poems of this period, such as "The
Yellow Violet," "I Cannot Forget with What Fervid Devotion," "Green River," and

"A Winter Piece," and later in "A Forest Hymn," "The Death of Flowers," and "The
Prairies."
Following his year at Williams College, Bryant read for the law and in
1815 was admitted to the Massachusetts bar. From 1816 to 1825 he practiced law in
Great Barrington, Mass. He also kept up his literary activities, writing poetry and
essays. In 1821 he published his first volume, Poems, and read his Phi Beta Kappa
poem "The Ages" at Harvard. That same year he married Frances Fairchild, his
"Fairest of the Rural Maids." (William Cullen Bryant. Encyclopedia of World
Biography.)
Abel (p. 664) mentioned that Bryants famous poem, Thanatopsis, inspired
by his reading of the English Graveyard poets, was tinged with romantic stoicism in
its conception of death as a relapse into the universal life of nature.
C. Bryants Contributions in English Literature and in his country
According to Johnson (1974), many of Bryants poems are about the
seasons and the earth. He also wrote of the places he traveled and things that were
important to the times. For example, Bryant wrote many articles and poems on the
rights of slaves and the death of President Lincoln. Many of his writings were about
the places he traveled to and things that happened to him along the way.
Grisfold (p. 324) stated that the occasional poems and prose writings
William had published in the North American Review, and his longer poem, The
Ages, delivered before the Phi Beta Kappa Society of Harvard College, in 1821, had
however won for him a high reputation through all the country as a man of letters,
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and after ten years of experience in the courts he determined to abandon his
profession for the more congenial one of an author, and with this view removed to
New York, then, as now, the centre of intelligence and enterprise in America
Grisfold (p. 325) also stated that the most important of Mr. Bryants prose
writings are those which have appeared in the columns of the Evening Post, in the
ordinary course of his editorial labours. It is now twenty years since he became one of
the conductors of that journal, and during all this period he has taken an active part in
political controversies, and extend a powerful influence over public opinion.
His style is clear and pointed, his sentences smooth and compact, his
illustrations frequent and happily conceived, and his articles have a manifest sincerity
and integrity of purpose which secure attention and respect from readers of all
opinions.
So much is now said of nationality in literature, and by a certain sort of
critics it is so constantly and with such offensive arrogance denied that there is any
thing national in the productions of the American mind, that Grisfold cannot forbear
an allusion to this quality in Mr. Bryants writings. It may be truly said that, whatever
is in them of intrinsic truth, the views of Mr. Bryant on every subjects respecting
which the intelligent in all countries do not agree, are essentially American, born of
and nurtured by our institutions, experience and condition, and held only by ourselves
and by those who look to us for instruction and example. This is the true
Americanism.

Also, Muller (p. 97) mentioned that Bryant is credited with pioneering the
meaningful editorial page. As an editorial writer, he had no peer, except for Horace
Greeley, who he loathed. It was natural for a free-trade Democrat such as Bryant to
dislike Greeley, an ardent protectionist and Whig. But his dislike of one of Americas
most influential editors was not based on political disagreements. He just could not
stand Greeleys jumping from one tobacco, womens rights, and spiritualism,
according to Johnson. He also could not forgive Greeleys violent outburst to a Post
editorial in 1849. He wrote in the New York Tribune, You lie, villain! Willfully,
wickedly, basely lie. Bryant did all he could to thwart Greeleys run for presidency.
He wrote Why Mr. Greeley Should Not Be Supported for Presidency following
Greeleys nomination by Liberal Republicans and Democrats in the 1872 election. He
then went on a crusade, writing almost daily editorials to hurt Greeleys chance of
victory.
As an editor espousing liberal causes, Bryant has considerable impact on
the life of New York and of the nation. Typical of his editorials was The Right of
Workmen to Strike (1836), in which he upheld the workers right to collective
bargaining and ridiculed the prosecution of labor unions: Can any thing be imagined
more abhorrent to every sentiment of generosity or justice, than the law which arms
the rich with the legal right to fix the wages of the poor? If this is not slavery, we
have forgotten its definition.
Similarly, Bryant was firmly committed to many other liberal causes of the
day, including the anniversary movement, the free-soil concept, and free trade
among nations. He also helped in the formation of the new Republican party in 1855.
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Lastly, Voss (p. 198) said that in a change of heart in his refusal in 1865 to
assist committee planning a monument to Edgar Allan Poe at his grave in Baltimore,
Bryant composed an epitaph which was chosen over similar contributions by Holmes,
Longfellow, and Lowell, as well as Tennyson though in the end none was inscribed
on the stone.
D. Bryants Achievements as a Poet and as an Editor
Bryant strived for success, and he achieved that, but he also yearned to be
close to his family. Somehow Bryant was able to live his life surrounded by great
achievement and the love of a wife and two daughters, not to mention his brothers
and parents. (Johnson, Politics and Belly-full. 1974)
Young (p. 342) mentioned that Bryant achieved early fame with
Thanatopsis (1817), a poem in blank verse remarkable for its stoical view of death.
Poems (1821), although powerfully influenced by Wordsworth, was the most
important volume of original verse published in America until that time. Such
memorable poems as To a Waterfowl (1818) and A Forest Hymn (1825) reveal
Bryants romantic response to nature.
Continuing, Abel (p.664) said that Bryant reached the summit of his poetic
fame in 1830s, when he was regarded as the leading American poet, and he attained
some international notice when Poems, for which Washington Irving wrote a forward,
was published in London in 1832.
Bryant published nine volumes of poetry from 1832 on. He also translated
the Iliad and Odyssey. Though Bryant was not a great poet, his poems were much
11

admired in his own time, and a number of them are eminently readable today. As the
guiding force of Evening Post, he left his mark not only on the city his liberal paper
served but on the nation as well.
Also, Muller (p.179) said that Bryants Evening Post editorials raising
fundamental questions about the character of American democracy hade made him a
respected social and political voice. Fenimore Cooper, often in town to pursue his
libel suits against Whig editors, said it best: I place the name of Bryant as near the
top of American Literature, as any man has yet attained. In my view, he is not only
one of the noblest poets, but one of the best prose writers of the age
Additionally, Voss (p. 199) said that Bryant labored over revisions for a
new edition of the Library of Poetry and Song, and with detailed comments on
chapters of Popular History as they were drafted by Sydney Gay.

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CHAPTER III
SUMMARY, CONCLUSION, RECOMMENDATION
A. Summary
Bryant was born on November 3, 1794, in a log cabin near Cummington,
Massachusetts; the home of his birth is today marked with a plaque. He was the
second son of Peter Bryant, a doctor and later a state legislator, and Sarah Snell.
His maternal ancestry traces back to passengers on the Mayflower; his father's, to
colonists who arrived about a dozen years later. William Cullen Bryant was an
American romantic poet, journalist, and long-time editor of the New York
Evening Post. His poetry has been described as being "of a thoughtful, meditative
character, and makes but slight appeal to the mass of readers" such as
"Thanatopsis," "To a Waterfowl," "The Yellow Violet," "I Cannot Forget with
What Fervid Devotion," "Green River," and "A Winter Piece," and later in "A
Forest Hymn," "The Death of Flowers," and "The Prairies." Bryant contributed
twenty-three poems to the Literary Gazette, seventeen under the terms of his
agreement with Parsons and six more in 1825, when Bryant shed his commitment
after a new editor, trying to economize, offered half the stipend for half the
number of lines. Bryant is best remembered as the romantic poet and editor of
New York Evening Post.
B. Conclusion
William Cullen Bryant can be an inspiration to motivate future poets to
write an of a thoughtful, meditative character, and makes but slight appeal to the
mass of readers poems just like his poetry. Also, his courage as an editor can be
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a motivation to help other editors to overcome fear in publishing offensive-buttrue articles.

Bryants poems can also help the readers to have a better view in life. An
example of it is the To a Waterfowl that shows that there is a Power who guides
us on what were doing in our life.
C. Recommendation
The recommendations are offered for related research topic in the field of
Poetry. Poetry and editorials have shown that language can be propulsive and
continue to widen understanding. While the people are interested in technology, it
maybe an advantage to make a research on how we can distribute the benefit of
poetry using technology. Research related to other literary scholars that provide
means of defining their contribution to the discipline and to the goals of poetry
and editorials would be of value to the field of literature. The content of this
research paper can help the future poets and to gain more knowledge in poetry.
The same goes to future editors to gain more knowledge in editorial.

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