§16. Bryant the Citizen. V. Bryant and the Minor Poets. Vol. 15. Colonial and Revolutionary Literature; Early National Literature, Part I. The Cambridge History of English and American Literature: An Encyclopedia in Eighteen Volumes. 1907

The Cambridge History of English and American Literature in 18 Volumes (1907–21).
VOLUME XV. Colonial and Revolutionary Literature; Early National Literature, Part I.

V. Bryant and the Minor Poets.

§ 16. Bryant the Citizen.

II. MINOR POETS

So we return to the Poet. Yet when all is said, it is the whole man that is ours and that should be ours. He is the Citizen of our tradition; not to us today so much for his hand in the founding of two political parties, nor for his counsels by personal letter and speech that Lincoln, the Statesman of our tradition, heard with such grave respect, nor for his civic activities in art, charity, and reform; but for that Mosaic massive head, those deep, peering, brooding eyes, those white shaggy brows, and the great beard over the old man’s cloak that, in the engraving after Sarony’s photograph, has been now for a generation familiar in so many homes of our land.