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.

2 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:

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
not

His rest

too.

thou dost strike down his tyrant