AUTOGRAPH MANUSCRIPT SIGNED (AMS): "The Love Of God"

New York, 9 May 1864. Hardcover. Contents Fine; front cover and first two blank pages neatly detached, leather on spine deteriorated. Overall Very Good. A handwritten poem on an 8-1/2" x 11" sheet of paper SIGNED "William Cullen Bryant" and dated at the conclusion. Bound in 3/4 dark blue morocco leather and blue cloth titled in gilt on the front cover containing the poem, an engraved portrait of Bryant, a hand-lettered calligraphic title page in red and black, and a typed transcript of the poem which consists of 18 lines with a number of differences in punctuation only from the printed version.

FROM THE PROVENCAL OF BERNARI RASCAS

All things that are on earth shall wholly pass away,
Except the love of God, which shall live and last for aye.
The forms of men shall be as they had never been;
The blasted groves shall lose their fresh and tender green;
The birds of the thicket shall end their pleasant song,
And the nigthingale shall cease to chant the evening long.
The kine of the pasture shall feel the dart that kills,
And all the fair white flocks shall perish from the hills.
The goat and antlered stag, the wolf and the fox,
The wild boar of the wood, and the chamois of the rocks,
And the strong and fearless bear, in the trodden dust shall lie,
And the dolphin of the sea, and the mighty whale, shall die.
And realms shall be dissolved, and empires be no more,
And they shall bow to death, who ruled from shore to shore;
And the great globe itself, (so the holy writings tell,)
With the rolling firmament, where the starry armies dwell,
Shall melt with fervent heat--they shall all pass away,
Except the love of God, which shall live and last for aye.