William Cullen Bryant

This 1846 marble bust of William Cullen Bryant by Henry Kirke Brown stands in the National Portrait Gallery in Washington, DC.

William Cullen Bryant brought the Romantic movement into American literature with his 1817 poem “Thanatopsis.” His nature poems include “To a Waterfowl,” which the English poet Matthew Arnold called “the most perfect brief poem in the language.” But in early America, poetry was no way to make a living, and Bryant's main career was as a crusading newspaper editor at the New York Evening Post. Bryant's abhorrence of slavery made him a fervent Republican and a devout supporter of Lincoln, although he wished that Lincoln was more radical on abolition. His last literary work was a translation of Homer's Iliad and Odyssey.  -- NPG

Read Bryant's “To a Waterfowl” here.