William Cullen Bryant (November 3, 1794 - June 12,
1878) was an American Romantic poet and
journalist.

He was born in Cummington, Massachusetts, the
second son of Peter Bryant, a prominent doctor.
His ancestors on both sides came over in the
Mayflower. Educated at Williams College he went on
to study law at Worthington and Bridgewater, he
was admitted to the bar in 1815.

Bryant was interested in poetry ever since his
childhood. His first published work is a book of
verse, The Embargo (1808). When he was seventeen
years old, Bryant began his first critically
acclaimed work, \"Thanatopsis\" (1817), which
appeared in the North American Review. It was
refined and expanded as the years passed. The
topic of \"Thanatopsis\" is death and how humanity
is united by death as a common fate.
\"Thanatopsis\" was one of the most popular poems
in circulation in its time. He also wrote Lines To
a Waterfowl. Bryant\'s work, written in an English
romantic style and celebrating the countryside of
New England, was well received. Among his best
known poems are also The Rivulet, The West Wind,
The Forest Hymn, The Fringed Gentian.

He worked as a lawyer in Northampton, Plainfield,
and Great Barrington until 1825 when he married
and moved to New York City and worked for the New
York Review and then the New York Evening Post.

At first an associate editor, he became editor in
1829 and remained in that post until his death,
the driving force of a liberal and literate paper
he was strongly anti-slavery.

Bryant was a lifelong political activist,
initially as a proponent of the Free Soil Party,
and later in life, as a founder of the Republican
Party. He was a fervent supporter of Abraham
Lincoln\'s presidential bid in 1860.

In his later years, Bryant focused on translating
and analyzing Ancient Greek and Latin works, such
as The Iliad and The Odyssey of Homer.

Bryant died in 1878 of c