“I Broke the Spell That Held Me Long”

By William Cullen Bryant 1794–1878

I broke the spell that held me long,

The dear, dear witchery of song.

I said, the poet’s idle lore

Shall waste my prime of years no more,

For Poetry, though heavenly born,

Consorts with poverty and scorn.

I broke the spell–nor deemed its power

Could fetter me another hour.

Ah, thoughtless! how could I forget

Its causes were around me yet?

For wheresoe’er I looked, the while,

Was Nature’s everlasting smile.

Still came and lingered on my sight

Of flowers and streams the bloom and light,

And glory of the stars and sun; –

And these and poetry are one.

They, ere the world had held me long,

Recalled me to the love of song.

Biography

No line of his poetry survives in the consciousness of his nation, and none of his editorial pronouncements still resonates from his five decades with the New-York Evening Post, yet William Cullen Bryant stood among the most celebrated figures in the frieze of nineteenth-century America. The fame he won as a poet while in his youth remained with him as he entered his eighties; only Longfellow and Emerson were his rivals in . . .

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