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Home  »  The Poetical Works In Four Volumes  »  Bryant on his Birthday

John Greenleaf Whittier (1807–1892). The Poetical Works in Four Volumes. 1892.

Personal Poems

Bryant on his Birthday

  • Mr. Bryant’s seventieth birthday, November 3, 1864, was celebrated by a festival to which these verses were sent.


  • WE praise not now the poet’s art,

    The rounded beauty of his song;

    Who weighs him from his life apart

    Must do his nobler nature wrong.

    Not for the eye, familiar grown

    With charms to common sight denied,—

    The marvellous gift he shares alone

    With him who walked on Rydal-side;

    Not for rapt hymn nor woodland lay,

    Too grave for smiles, too sweet for tears;

    We speak his praise who wears to-day

    The glory of his seventy years.

    When Peace brings Freedom in her train,

    Let happy lips his songs rehearse;

    His life is now his noblest strain,

    His manhood better than his verse!

    Thank God! his hand on Nature’s keys

    Its cunning keeps at life’s full span;

    But, dimmed and dwarfed, in times like these,

    The poet seems beside the man!

    So be it! let the garlands die,

    The singer’s wreath, the painter’s meed,

    Let our names perish, if thereby

    Our country may be saved and freed!

    1864.