With eyes suffused and heart dissolved with sorrow, <br />How often have I fled the realms of sleep, <br />And sought, not vainly, from thy page to borrow <br />That which forbids or eye or heart to weep! <br />Thy Thanatopsis! fraught with tenderest feeling, <br />Is like a June breeze to the ice-bound heart; <br />To us, thy humble followers, revealing <br />The sage, the seer, the poet that thou art, <br />Still roll 'The Ages,' still 'Green River' flows, <br />And odorous blossoms load the 'Apple Tree,'- <br />Into 'The Lake' still fall the fleecy snows, <br />And Nature everywhere doth speak of thee. <br />Oh, for a poet's tongue to name thy name! <br />But does it matter? Thine is deathless fame.<br /><br />Hiram Ladd Spencer<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/william-cullen-bryant/
