  By William Cullen Bryant Note.—“He says in a letter that he felt, as he walked up the hills, very forlorn and desolate indeed, not knowing what was to become of him in the big world, which grew bigger as he ascended, and yet darker with the coming on of night. The sun had already set, leaving behind it one of those brilliant seas of chrysolite and opal which often flood the New England skies; and, while he was looking upon the rosy splendor with rapt admiration, a solitary bird made wing along the illuminated horizon. He watched the lone wanderer until it was lost in the distance, asking himself whence it had come and to what far home it was flying. When he went to the house where he was to stop for the night, his mind was still full of what he had seen and felt, and he wrote these lines, as imperishable as our language, To a Waterfowl.”—Parke Godwin, in Biography of Bryant. Whither, ’midst falling dew, Vainly the fowler’s eye Seek’st thou the plashy brink There is a Power whose care All day thy wings have fanned, And soon that toil shall end; Thou’rt gone, the abyss of heaven He who, from zone to zone, |
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