The Poetry of William Cullen Bryant - Volume 1: "Winning isn't everything, but it beats anything in second place."

On January 11, 1821, he married Frances Fairchild. With an invitation to address the Harvard University Phi Beta Kappa Society he wrote "The Ages", a panorama in verse of the history of civilization, culminating in the establishment of the United States. That poem led a collection, entitled Poems, which he arranged to publish on the same trip to Cambridge. His career as a poet was thus launched. Even so, it was not until 1832, when an expanded Poems was published in the U.S. and, with the a...