The Arkansaw traveler. (Little Rock, Ark.) 1882-1???, 1889-02-23
Bryant's Home and Grave.


Cullen Bryant-the home where came
the poet in 1S45 and made his place of
summer abiding. There he wrote
some of his best songs, there he used
TO love to come when the mood of
inspiration was over him, and in the
village close at hand he decreed that
his dust should sleep when at last
life's fitful dream should end. The
home where Bryant lived is almost
ideal, trifle near the common road,
perhaps. and yet so does the road har-
monte with the surroundings of the
place that there is only a slight sense
of incongruity. The house is large
and rambling, while the buildings
frame is at least q century old. 1t is
1.-The house of seven gables" trans
planted here, softened in its architect
ure as the civilization which clustered
round these bays had tenderer grace
than that which built its homes among
the Puritans. There are broad piazzas,
quaint hooks and coverts, extensions
and SUBJ extensions. The house sits
Just on that angle of the knoll where
an artist would have placed it for the
best vision of the sunset, high enough
above the waters TO get the effect of
the intervening lawns, and yet not so
far away that when the wind blows in
on autumn nights the poets ear could
not catch the sweet music of the waves
throwing their salt spray shoreward.
The house sets in great amplitudes of
space; before it is the bay, and here no
fence could restrain the poets sense OF
ownership, outward over the waters
his vision owned across the waters TO
far Cathay; northward there are
neighbors close at hand, but south
ward the lawns run on, and here and
there are knolls and tiny valleys with
lakes and brooklets. But little change
has come over the place as Bryant
loved it. Loving hands keep it from
neglect, while each day finds some Wis
itor knocking at the old fashioned
door for a ramble over the poets
home.
The grave of Bryant is in the viii
lage cemetery about a mile away. The
lot is large and hemmed in by trees.
There are but four graves in it, that
of the poet and his wife and their two
grandchildren. A massive monument
of granite, severely plain, is in the
center of the lot. On one side it
records the death of Fanny Bryant,
the poets wife, who was "the beloved
disciple of Christ, exemplary in every
relation of life, affectionate, sympa-
thetic, sincere, and ever occupied with
the welfare of Others" On the other
side there is simply the poets name,
his time and place of birth and death.
No epitaph is given, nor is one needed
for this poet, who wrote so grandly
and truly of nature, who sang the
songs of freedom as no one else has
sung them, and who combined the
wisdom of the man of affairs with the
larger wisdom of poets divination.
And the thought came to me involun-
tarily as / stood there and saw the
winter laurel twining over the rounded
grave, "How great is art, how grand
is nature, how the world loves him
who can give speech to that which is
inarticulate in other men. Here are
estates large and rich, occupied by men
strong of brain, who have won sue
cess in the busy world. We know not
their names; we care not for them.
The poets home is the only home in
all this place of homes for which men
ask, for which they care. There is, for
the stranger, but one grave in all this
place of graves"
Ii is a Curious Fact