William Cullen Bryant | Poetry Foundation

On June 12, 1878, William Cullen Bryant, American poet, died at the age of 83. From the article:

"Poet and editor William Cullen Bryant stood among the most celebrated figures in the frieze of 19th-century America. The fame he won as a poet while in his youth remained with him as he entered his 80s; only Henry Wadsworth Longfellow and Ralph Waldo Emerson were his rivals in popularity over the course of his life. “Thanatopsis,” if not the best-known American poem abroad before the mid 19th century, certainly ranked near the top of the list, and at home school children were commonly required to recite it from memory. Bryant served as editor of the New-York Evening Post for 50 years. At his death, all of New York City went into mourning for its most respected citizen, and eulogies poured forth as they had for no man of letters since Washington Irving, its native son, had died a generation earlier. The similarity was appropriate: Irving brought international legitimacy to American fiction; Bryant alerted the English-speaking world to an American voice in poetry."