'Its deadly breath'

The William Cullen Bryant Homestead, in the western Massachusetts hill town of Cummington, is the boyhood home and later summer residence of William Cullen Bryant (1794–1878), the (once-famous) poet and New York newspaper editor. The 155-acre  estate is  at 205 Bryant Rd. and open to the public on weekends in summer and early fall. An admission fee is charged. Many of Bryant's poems were inspired by the New England countryside.

"Kindred Spirits'' by Asher Durand,  depicts William Cullen Bryant with the painter Thomas Cole, in this quintessentially Hudson River School work.

"A power is on the earth and in the air,
  From which the vital spirit shrinks afraid,
  And shelters him in nooks of deepest shade,
From the hot steam and from the fiery glare.
Look forth upon the earth—her thousand plants
  Are smitten; even the dark sun-loving maize
  Faints in the field beneath the torrid blaze;
The herd beside the shaded fountain pants;
For life is driven from all the landscape brown;
  The bird hath sought his tree, the snake his den,
  The trout floats dead in the hot stream, and men
Drop by the sunstroke in the populous town:
  As if the Day of Fire dawned, and sent
  Its deadly breath into the firmament.''

-- ''Midsummer,'' by William Cullen Bryant (1794-1878