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To Bryant, the Poet of Nature

About This Item

  • Title: To Bryant, the Poet of Nature
  • Date: 26 July 1842
  • Creator(s): Walt Whitman
  • Whitman Archive ID: per.00350
  • Source: New Era 26 July 1842: [2]. Our transcription is based on a digital image of an original issue. For a description of the editorial rationale behind our treatment of the periodical poems, see our statement of editorial policy.
  • Contributors to digital file: Elizabeth Lorang Kenneth M. Price Wendy Katz Susan Belasco
  • Cite this page: Whitman, Walt. "To Bryant, the Poet of Nature." The Walt Whitman Archive. Gen. ed. Matt Cohen, Ed Folsom, & Kenneth M. Price. Accessed 12 November 2024. <http://www.whitmanarchive.org>.
  • Source File: per.00350.xml (TEI)
per_el.00001per_el.00001_cropped For the New Era.

To BRYANT, the Poet of Nature1

Let Glory diadem the mighty dead— Let monuments of brass and marble rise To those who have upon our being shed A golden halo, borrowed from the skies, And given to time its most enduring prize; For they but little less than angels were: But not to thee, oh! nature's OWN, we should (When from this clod the minstrel-soul aspires And joins the glorious band of purer lyres) Tall columns build: thy monument is here— For ever fixed in its eternity— A monument God-built! 'Tis seen around— In mountains huge and many gliding streams— Where'er the torrent lifts a melancholy sound, Or modest flower in broad savannah gleams. W. W.

Notes

1. For information on the attribution of this poem to Walt Whitman, see Wendy J. Katz, "A Newly Discovered Whitman Poem About William Cullen Bryant," Walt Whitman Quarterly Review 32 (2014), 69–76. [back]

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