Poetical Works of William Cullen Bryant

Poetical Works of William Cullen Bryant is a household edition that includes a life sketch, which says the ancestry of William Cullen Bryant might have been inferred from the character of his writings. The life sketch says there was no profit in the publications it describes, though Bryant, Halleck, Willis, Dana, Bancroft, and Longfellow wrote for them. The sketch says Mr. Bryant's success as a metropolitan man of letters was not brilliant so far, and that he became one of the editors of the Evening Post.

One poem, The Future Life, asks how the speaker shall know a loved one in the sphere which keeps the disembodied spirits of the dead. A further poem says the Years roll on more gently, but with not less mighty sweep, and gather up again and softly bear all the sweet lives that late were overwhelmed and lost to sight. A different poem says that another hand shall wield the sword and another hand wave the standard, until the blast of triumph is pealed over a grave.