Blue be the sky and soft the breeze

June

• I gazed upon the glorious sky
• And the green mountains round,
• And thought that when I came to lie
• At rest within the ground,
• ’Twere pleasant, that in flowery June,
• When brooks send up a cheerful tune,
• And groves a joyous sound,
• The sexton’s hand, my grave to make,
• The rich, green mountain-turf should break.

• A cell within the frozen mould,
• A coffin borne through sleet,
• And icy clods above it rolled,
• While fierce the tempests beat —
• Away! — I will not think of these —
• Blue be the sky and soft the breeze,
• Earth green beneath the feet,
• And be the damp mould gently pressed
• Into my narrow place of rest.

• There through the long, long summer hours,
• The golden light should lie,
• And thick young herbs and groups of flowers
• Stand in their beauty by.
• The oriole should build and tell
• His love-tale close beside my cell;
• The idle butterfly
• Should rest him there, and there be heard
• The housewife bee and humming-bird.

• And what if cheerful shouts at noon
• Come, from the village sent,
• Or songs of maids, beneath the moon
• With fairy laughter blent?
• And what if, in the evening light,
• Betrothed lovers walk in sight
• Of my low monument?
• I would the lovely scene around
• Might know no sadder sight nor sound.

• I know that I no more should see
• The season’s glorious show,
• Nor would its brightness shine for me,
• Nor its wild music flow;
• But if, around my place of sleep,
• The friends I love should come to weep,
• They might not haste to go.
• Soft airs, and song, and light, and bloom
• Should keep them lingering by my tomb.

• These to their softened hearts should bear
• The thought of what has been,
• And speak of one who cannot share
• The gladness of the scene;
• Whose part, in all the pomp that fills
• The circuit of the summer hills,
• Is that his grave is green;
• And deeply would their hearts rejoice
• To hear again his living voice.

William Cullen Bryant (1794–1878) was an American poet of the Romantic movement, a journalist, and longtime editor of the New York Evening Post. Although often grouped with the New England poets (Emerson, Lowell, et al.), Bryant was in fact a thorough New Yorker and spent most of his literary efforts in forging a national, rather than a regional, literature. Thanks in part to his influence, the Big Apple created two of its major landmarks, Central Park and the Metropolitan Museum of Art.