As early as eight years old, William Cullen Bryant was showing signs of a strong poetic ability. Bryant became the first native poet to gain worldwide fame in the United States. He specialized in and became well known for his poems regarding the presence of God during a person's life and death, the attractiveness of American nature, and his poetic recordings of past events. "Consumption" and "The Old Man's Funeral" are wonderful examples of Bryant's belief in God and Heaven. "The Yellow Violet" and "'Innocent Child and Snow-White Flower'" shows his obsession with the beauty of American nature, and "The Death of Slavery" is one of his many occasional poems that sums up his hatred for the institution of slavery and the happiness he felt when it was finally abolished.
             Bryant's belief in God has always been a strong and unrelenting belief. "Consumption" is a poem about a woman living her last moments of life. She is beyond the point of being healed. It is inevitable that she will die. Bryant writes that "The fields for thee have no medicinal leaf, And the vexed ore no mineral of power" (75). Instead of there being fear at the time of death, the poem is actually soothing and relaxing. There is no fear of death within the poem which proves Bryant's faith in God and Heaven. The calmness and unyielding faith are summed up in the last two lines which state "Close thy sweet eyes, calmly, and without pain: And we will trust in God to see thee yet again" (75).
             In "The Old Man's Funeral," Bryant states that people should not fear or mourn over death because you go to a much better place when you die. This poem is set at an old man's funeral. The people are sad and the women and children are crying when another man stands up and asks why is everyone upset about t
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