The eternal years of God are hers;
But Error, wounded, writhes in pain,
And dies among his worshipers."

He added but slowly to the number of his poems, publishing a new
collection in 1840, another in 1844, and _Thirty Poems_ in 1864. His
work at all ages was remarkably even. _Thanatopsis_ was as mature as
any thing that he wrote afterward, and among his later pieces the
_Planting of the Apple Tree_ and the _Flood of Years_ were as fresh as
any thing that he had written in the first flush of youth. Bryant's
poetic style was always pure and correct, without any tincture of
affectation or extravagance. His prose writings are not important,
consisting mainly of papers of the _Salmagundi_ variety contributed to
the _Talisman_, an annual published in 1827-30; some rather sketchy
stories, _Tales of the Glauber Spa_, 1832; and impressions of Europe,
entitled _Letters of a Traveler_, issued in two series, in 1849 and
1858. In 1869 and 1871 appeared his blank-verse translations of the
_Iliad_ and _Odyssey_, a remarkable achievement for a man of his age,
and not excelled, upon the whole, by any recent metrical version of
Homer in the English tongue. Bryant's half-century of service as the
editor of a daily paper should not be overlooked. The _Evening Post_,
under his management, was always honest, gentlemanly, and courageous,
and did much to raise the tone of journalism in New York.

Another Massachusetts poet, who was outside the Boston coterie, like
Bryant, and, like him, tried his hand at journalism, was John Greenleaf
Whittier (1807- ). He was born in a solitary farm-house near
Haverhill, in the valley of the Merrimack, and his life has been passed
mostly at his native place and at the neighboring town of Amesbury.
The local color, which is very pronounced in his poetry, is that of the