STRANGER, if thou hast learned a truth which needs

No school of long experience, that the world
Is full of guilt and misery, and hast seen
Enough of all its sorrows, crimes, and cares,
To tire thee of it, enter this wild wood
And view the haunts of Nature. The calm
shade

Shall bring a kindred calm, and the sweet breeze

That makes the green leaves dance, shall waft a balm

To thy sick heart. Thou wilt find nothing here

Of all that pained thee in the haunts of men,

10

And made thee loathe thy life. The primal

WHITHER, midst falling dew, While glow the heavens with the last steps of day,

Far, through their rosy depths, dost thou

pursue

Thy solitary way?

Vainly the fowler's eye

Might mark thy distant flight to do thee

wrong,

As, darkly seen against the crimson sky, Thy figure floats along.

Seek'st thou the plashy brink

Of weedy lake, or marge of river wide, 10

1 The poem, as first published in the North American Review for September, 1817, under the title A Fragment,' ended at this point. The last lines were added in the first edition of the Poems, in 1821.

On the origin of this poem, see Godwin's Life of Bryant, vol. i, pp. 143, 144. Hartley Coleridge once called it the best short poem in the English language; ' and Matthew Arnold was inclined to agree with his judgment. See an account of the incident in Bigelow's Life of Bryant, note to pp. 42, 43.

Yet, fair as thou art, thou shunnest to glide, Beautiful stream! by the village side; But windest away from haunts of men, To quiet valley and shaded glen;

And forest, and meadow, and slope of hill,
Around thee, are lonely, lovely, and still; 30
Lonely save when, by thy rippling tides,
From thicket to thicket the angler glides,
Or the simpler comes, with basket and
book,

For herbs of power on thy banks to look;
Or haply, some idle dreamer, like me,
To wander, and muse, and gaze on thee,
Still save the chirp of birds that feed
On the river cherry and seedy reed,
And thy own wild music gushing out
With mellow murmur of fairy shout,
From dawn to the blush of another day,
Like traveller singing along his way.

That fairy music I never hear,

40

Nor gaze on those waters so green and clear,

And mark them winding away from sight,
Darkened with shade or flashing with light,
While o'er them the vine to its thicket
\ clings,

And the zephyr stoops to freshen his wings,
But I wish that fate had left me free
To wander these quiet haunts with thee, 50
Till the eating cares of earth should de-
part,

And the peace of the scene pass into my

heart:

The conqueror of nations, walks the world, And it is changed beneath his feet, and all Its kingdoms melt into one mighty realm Thou, while his head is loftiest and his heart Blasphemes, imagining his own right hand 40 Almighty, thou dost set thy sudden grasp Upon him, and the links of that strong chain Which bound mankind are crumbled; thou dost break

Sceptre and crown, and beat his throne to dust.

Then the earth shouts with gladness, and her tribes

Gather within their ancient bounds again. Else had the mighty of the olden time, Nimrod, Sesostris, or the youth who feigned His birth from Libyan Ammon, smitten yet The nations with a rod of iron, and driven Their chariot o'er our necks. Thou dost avenge, 51

In thy good time, the wrongs of those who know

No other friend. Nor dost thou interpose Only to lay the sufferer asleep,

Where he who made him wretched troubles