The Friends of Cedarmere steering committee seeks community input for a business plan that will keep open the historic home of William Cullen Bryant. A meeting is scheduled for Saturday, April 25, 2009, at 10:30 A.M. at Trinity Episocopal Church Parish Hall in Roslyn. The committee also will report on an April 15 meeting between the steering committee and Nassau County.
Located on Bryant Avenue in Roslyn Harbor, Cedarmere is a public property overlooking Hempstead Harbor owned by Nassau County (see Save Cedarmere: Contact Nassau County Representatives, March 28, 2009, and Important Local, Publicly Owned Historic Site in Jeopardy, March 9, 2009). The site was once the home of William Cullen Bryant (1794–1878), one of the most important literary figures of the Romantic Movement. Although the facility has been used for some public programs during the last two decades, it has been underutilized and recently appeared destined for closure when the county began dismantling exhibits and removing artifacts.
The friends group is forming to ensure that the site remains open and accessible to the public. The group also plans to promote programs that reintroduce and update Bryant's legacy and that better utilize Cedarmere, where Bryant lived for half a century and hosted many of the most important authors, painters, politicians, building architects, and landscape architects of the period. According to the committee, Cedarmere will remain a viable public testament to this important national legacy only with sustained community vigilance and support.
Trinity Episcopal Church is located on Northern Boulevard just east of the Roslyn Viaduct.
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Thanatopsis (below), one of Bryant’s earliest and most famous poems, has been memorized by generations of high school students, including this writer when a student at North Shore High School. According to the Wikipedia entry for the poem, Bryant wrote most of the lines in his late teens. The title, from the Greek thanos (death) and opsis (sight), sometimes is translated as Meditation upon Death.
O him who in the love of Nature holds
Communion with her visible forms, she speaks
A various language; for his gayer hours
She has a voice of gladness, and a smile
And eloquence of beauty, and she glides
Into his darker musings, with a mild
And healing sympathy, that steals away
Their sharpness, ere he is aware. When thoughts
Of the last bitter hour come like a blight
Over thy spirit, and sad images
Of the stern agony, and shroud, and pall,
And breathless darkness, and the narrow house,
Make thee to shudder and grow sick at heart;
Go forth, under the open sky, and list
To Nature's teachings, while from all around
Earth and her waters, and the depths of air
Comes a still voice. Yet a few days, and thee
The all-beholding sun shall see no more
In all his course; nor yet in the cold ground,
Where thy pale form was laid with many tears,
Nor in the embrace of ocean, shall exist
Thy image. Earth, that nourish'd thee, shall claim
Thy growth, to be resolved to earth again,
And, lost each human trace, surrendering up
Thine individual being, shalt thou go
To mix for ever with the elements,
To be a brother to the insensible rock,
And to the sluggish clod, which the rude swain
Turns with his share, and treads upon. The oak
Shall send his roots abroad, and pierce thy mould.
Yet not to thine eternal resting-place
Shalt thou retire alone, nor couldst thou wish
Couch more magnificent. Thou shalt lie down
With patriarchs of the infant world--with kings,
The powerful of the earth--the wise, the good,
Fair forms, and hoary seers of ages past,
All in one mighty sepulchre. The hills
Rock-ribb'd and ancient as the sun, the vales
Stretching in pensive quietness between;
The venerable woods; rivers that move
In majesty, and the complaining brooks
That make the meadows green; and, pour'd round all,
Old Ocean's grey and melancholy waste,
Are but the solemn decorations all
Of the great tomb of man. The golden sun,
The planets, all the infinite host of heaven,
Are shining on the sad abodes of death,
Through the still lapse of ages. All that tread
The globe are but a handful to the tribes
That slumber in its bosom. Take the wings
Of morning, pierce the Barcan wilderness,
Or lose thyself in the continuous woods
Where rolls the Oregon and hears no sound
Save his own dashings--yet the dead are there:
And millions in those solitudes, since first
The flight of years began, have laid them down
In their last sleep--the dead reign there alone.
So shalt thou rest: and what if thou withdraw
In silence from the living, and no friend
Take note of thy departure? All that breathe
Will share thy destiny. The gay will laugh
When thou art gone, the solemn brood of care
Plod on, and each one as before will chase
His favourite phantom; yet all these shall leave
Their mirth and their employments, and shall come
And make their bed with thee. As the long train
Of ages glides away, the sons of men,
The youth in life's green spring, and he who goes
In the full strength of years, matron and maid,
The speechless babe, and the gray-headed man
Shall one by one be gathered to thy side
By those who in their turn shall follow them.
So live, that when thy summons comes to join
The innumerable caravan which moves
To that mysterious realm where each shall take
His chamber in the silent halls of death,
Thou go not, like the quarry-slave at night,
Scourged by his dungeon; but, sustain'd and soothed
By an unfaltering trust, approach thy grave,
Like one who wraps the drapery of his couch
About him, and lies down to pleasant dreams.
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