William Cullen Bryant

A few months ago I told a friend, "I hate English poetry!" I meant it too. After reading poetry in Spanish, I got really turned off by the whole English language and its glottal stops. Spanish has a lot of aesthetic advantages over English. But, maybe my low opinion of English was due to my ignorance of it. So some night, I was going to open my lit homework, which I was reading on a website. I wandered away from my assignment and found this gorgeous poetry by William Cullen Bryant, who I had never heard of. He writes about death, but sentimentally and even religiously, but not not at all like those famous suicidal poets. If no one's watching, read this out loud. It's from Death of the Flowers, about a woman who died in the fall. Here is a man who made English sound pretty, and I'm truly impressed: Where are the flowers, the fair young flowers, that lately sprang and stood/ In brighter light and softer airs, a beauteous sisterhood?/ Alas! they all are in their graves, the gentle race of flowers/ Are lying in their lowly beds, with the fair and good of ours./ The rain is falling where they lie, but the cold November rain/ Calls not from out the gloomy earth the lovely ones again.