however, to prefer the more full and free and spontaneous version, and may even find it more beautiful than the other. It may lead us more gently and persuasively to the mood of quiet acceptance and aspiration which Bryant drew so often from converse with night and the stars. "The thoughtful stars," he calls them in The Firmament; he was ever their poet and devotee, and they never failed to bring him inspiration and "sweet commune." Most of all he loved the Pleiades—"the gentle sisters," as he names them here—
The group of sister-stars . . . the gentle seven,
as he says again in a later tribute, The Constellations. Through all his long life, devoted more to public service than to poetry, and for the most part "in city pent," he needed only to walk alone at night,
And toward the eternal stars again aspire,
in order to find again the memories of his youth, and the Nature-inspiration which was the inmost essence of his genius.
New York, February, 1907.
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