Welcome back to the Daily Poem, a podcast from Goldberry Studios.

I'm Sean Johnson, and today is Friday, February 9th, 2024.

Today's poem is by William Cullen Bryant, and it's called To a Waterfowl.

I'll read it once, offer a few comments, then read it one more time.

To a waterfowl.

Whither midst falling dew while glow the heavens with the last depths of day,

far through their rosy depths, dost thou pursue thy solitary way.

Vainly the fowler's eye might mark thy distant flight to do thee wrong,

as darkly seen against the crimson sky thy figure floats along. Seekest thou the plashy brink of

weedy lake, or marge of river wide, or where the rocking billows rise and sink on the chafed ocean side.

There is a power whose care teaches thy way along that pathless coast, the desert in a limitable air,

lone wandering but not lost. All day thy wings have fanned at that far height, the cold, thin atmosphere, yet stoop not weary to the welcome land, though the dark night is near.

And soon that toil shall end.

Soon shall thou find a summer home and rest, and scream among thy fellows.

Reed shall bend soon o'er thy sheltered nest.

Thou art gone, the abyss of heaven hath swallowed up thy form,

yet on my heart deeply hath sunk the lesson thou hast given,

and shall not soon depart.

He who, from zone to zone, guides through the boundless sky thy certain flight,

then the long way that I must trace alone will lead my steps right.

William Cullen Bryant, born 1794, died 1878, was maybe America's first celebrity poet or celebrity man of letters.

It was also a prominent New York newspaper editor for much of his adult life.

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