I CANNOT FORGET WITH WHAT FERVID DEVOTION by WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT

I CANNOT forget with what fervid devotion
I worshipped the visions of verse and of fame:
Each gaze at the glories of earth, sky, and ocean,
To my kindled emotions, was wind over flame.

And deep were my musings in life's early blossom,
'Mid the twilight of mountain groves wandering long;
How thrilled my young veins, and how throbbed my fall bosom,
When o'er me descended the spirit of song.

'Mong the deep-cloven fells that for ages had listened
To the rush of the pebble-paved river between,
Where the kingfisher screamed and gray precipice glistened,
All breathless with awe have I gazed on the scene;

Till I felt the dark power o'er my reveries stealing,
From his throne in the depth of that stern solitude,
And he breathed through my lips, in that tempest of feeling,
Strains warm with his spirit, though artless and rude.

Bright visions! I mixed with the world and ye faded;
No longer your pure rural worshipper now;
In the haunts your continual presence pervaded,
Ye shrink from the signet of care on my brow.

In the old mossy groves on the breast of the mountain,
In deep lonely glens where the waters complain,
By the shade of the rock, by the gush of the fountain,
I seek your loved footsteps, but seek them in vain.

Oh, leave not, forlorn and for ever forsaken,
Your pupil and victim, to life and its tears!
But sometimes return, and in mercy awaken
The glories ye showed to his earlier years.

Classic and Contemporary Poetry

Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!

Other Poems of Interest...