Arizona republican., 1904-01-12
Poetic Repentance.

When he was n sophomore in Will
liams college, William Cullen Bryant
wrote a boyish satire in verse and read
it to some of the other boys. He call
ed it "Gulielmopolis." CWiTiamstown)
That was in 1911. In 1915 William A
Hallock found the manuscript In 1876
General James Grant Wilson heard OF
it and asked Mr.. Bryant to let it be
printed. "Oh, no." said the poet. 1T
was one of my boyish pranks. 1 have
no copy of the lines, nor do I remem-
Der much about them. At the time,
] believe, 1 did not like the dark rooms,
the low-lying land, and the rigid col
lege regulations. and 1 suppose l so
expressed myself in the verses that DR..
Hallock showed you" The lines ap-
peared last week in the independent"
of New York, with General Wilson's
notes:
NO more the brumal tempest SHEDS
Its gathered stores in sleety showers;
Nor yet the vernal season spreads
Its verdant mantle gemmed with
flowers.
Eut fettered stands $he naked year,
And shivers tc the chilling air.
And often struggles to unclasp
Reluctant Winters icy grasp,
And greet the arms of Spring
Hemmed in with hills, whose heads as
Dire,
Abrupt and rude and hung with
woods
4 A.
Where devious Hoosac rolls his floods
Dear wales where every pleasure
meets.
Fain would I paint thy Shiny streets,
Thy soil with churlish guardians blest
And horrors OF the bleak Northwest,
Poured through the chasm affair."
Safe from the mornings golden eye,
And sheltered from the Western
breeze,
There happy regions bosomed lie,
The seats of joy and bowers of ease.
Fair favored spot! whose fertile breast.
Now draughts with heightened blaze
infest.
Now tempests drench with copious
flood,
Alternate heat and cold surprise.
A frozen desert now it lies,
And now sea OF mud.
While rising on the tainted gale.
The morbid exhalations ride,
And hover DER the unconscious vale,
And sleep upon the mountains side.
There on her misty car reclined
Disease unseen directs her way;
Yields the black scepter of her reign
and hurls her shafts with keenest
pain,
And singles out her prey.
WHY should 1 sing it's turbid springs
That trickle through its rocks of
lime,
And why those domes whence Science
filings
Her far-diffusing rays sublime,
Where through the horror breathing
hall
The pale faced moping students crawl,
Like spectred monuments of woe,
Or studious seek the unwholesome cell
Where dust and gloom and cobwebs
dwell
Dark. dirty, dank and low.
Yet Ger the picture, dark with shade.
Let not the eye of fancy gaze;
Where lawless power her nest has laid,
And stern suspicion treads her maze
The storm that DER the wintry West
Rides bowling on the Northern blast,
In time will curb its furious way
But that DER Hoosac's vale which low
ers,
viii never hail serener hours.
Nor open to the day."
In one of his notes General Wilson
recalls the fact that Tennyson in his
youth fired this sonnet not included
in his collected works. at the univer-
sity Of Cambridge:
Therefore your Halls, your ancient
Colleges,
Your portals statued with old kings
and queens,
Your gardens, myriad volumed librar-
Wax-lighted chapels, and rich-carven
screens,
Your doctors and your proctors and
your deans,
Shall not avail you, when the Day.
New risen DER awaken'd Albion-Nol
Nor yet your solemn organ-pipes that
Melodious thunders thro' your vacant
courts
AT noon and eve-because your man.
ner sorts
Not with this age wherefrom Won
stand apart
Because the lips of little children
preach
Against you, you that do profess to
teach,
And teach us nothing feeding not the
heart"
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