William Cullen Bryant

“The little windflower, whose just opened eye is blue as the spring heaven it gazes at.”

“Where hast thou wandered, gentle gale, to find the perfumes thou dost bring?”

“Remorse is virtue's root; its fair increase are fruits of innocence and blessedness.”

“Eloquence is the poetry of prose.”

“I think I shall return to America even a better patriot than when I left it. A citizen of the United States, travelling on the continent of Europe, finds the contrast between a government of power and a government of opinion forced upon him at every step.”

“A sculptor wields The chisel, and the stricken marble grows To beauty.”

“The moon is at her full, and riding high, Floods the calm fields with light. The airs that hover in the summer sky Are all asleep tonight.”

“A herd of prairie-wolves will enter a field of melons and quarrel about the division of the spoils as fiercely and noisily as so many politicians.”

“Thine eyes are springs in whose serene And silent waters heaven is seen. Their lashes are the herbs that look On their young figures in the brook.”

“All that tread, the globe are but a handful to the tribes, that slumber in its bosom.”

“The birch-bark canoe of the savage seems to me one of the most beautiful and perfect things of the kind constructed by human art.”

“Pain dies quickly, and lets her weary prisoners go; the fiercest agonies have shortest reign.”

“A stable, changeless state, 'twere cause indeed to weep.”

“Difficulty, my brethren, is the nurse of greatness - a harsh nurse, who roughly rocks her foster - children into strength and athletic proportion.”

“Go forth under the open sky, and list To Nature's teachings.”

“Nothing can be more striking to one who is accustomed to the little inclosures called public parks in our American cities, than the spacious, open grounds of London. I doubt, in fact, whether any person fully comprehends their extent, from any of the ordinary descriptions of them, until he has seen them or tried to walk over them.”

“The Parisian has his amusements as regularly as his meals, the theatre, music, the dance, a walk in the Tuilleries, a refection in the cafe, to which ladies resort as commonly as the other sex. Perpetual business, perpetual labor, is a thing of which he seems to have no idea.”

“A beautiful city is Richmond, seated on the hills that overlook the James River. The dwellings have a pleasant appearance, often standing by themselves in the midst of gardens. In front of several, I saw large magnolias, their dark, glazed leaves glittering in the March sunshine.”

“The February sunshine steeps your boughs and tints the buds and swells the leaves within.”

“And suns grow meek, and the meek suns grow brief, and the year smiles as it draws near its death.”