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One of the extraordinary qualities of William Cullen Bryant '92s celebrated poem '93To a Waterfowl '94 is the biographical background out of which the subject and theme of the poem emerged . Bryant , merely in his early twenties , was suffering inwardly and feeling doubtful about his future , and , while walking one evening , realized the experience which would later become the poem . '93The sun had already set , leaving behind it one of those brilliant seas of chrysolite and opal which often flood the New England

skies , and , while pausing to contemplate the rosy splendor , with rapt admiration , a solitary bird made its winged way along the illuminated horizon '94 Bryant stared at the lone bird '93until it was lost in the distance . He then went on with new strength and courage . When he reached the house where he was to stop for the night he immediately sat down and wrote the lines "To a Waterfowl the concluding verse of which will perpetuate to future ages the lesson in faith which the scene had impressed upon him (Bigelow , 1890 ,

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The essential fruit of the experience is spiritual and issues from nature , which is a hallmark of Romanticism . The lines , '93There is a Power whose care /Teaches thy way along that pathless coast ,- '96 /The desert and illimitable air ,- '96 /Lone wandering , but not lost '94 signal that nature is not random , but composed and also , contains within it a sort of code , which is perceived both through human senses and through the intimacy of poetic revelation , or expression . In other words , the fact of seeing a lone bird at flight in the twilight sky is identified by the poet as a correspondence with his own inwardly disheveled state of emotion . The moment becomes revelatory . And through the individual experience , Bryant reaches for universal articulation , seeing that the patterns in nature extend and correspond with the subjective viewer , he justly concludes that his experience may be translated through poetry to universal expression

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His words '93might have been written by any poet of any nationality or of any century . We are advised to go to Nature for counsel she comforts us with the thought of her eternal calm , in contrast to the transitory and feverish existence of man '94 (Phelps , 1924 ,

. 16 Looking into nature , then , for a Romantic poet , was tantamount to looking into the nature of oneself , and also , into the nature of the Creator . Bryant , a devout Christian , makes it clear that the identification with nature is also an identification with its creator thus the essential calming , reconciling aspect of the poem . '93 He who , from zone to zone / Guides through the boundless sky thy certain flight /In the long way that I must tread alone /Will lead my steps aright '94

In this way , Bryant demonstrates a triangulation of creative energy comprised of : human perception , nature , and the Almighty...