The Pond at Bryant Park: Now I can explain every word!

Looks like all aspects of New York City are decorated for the holidays. Above is the William Cullen Bryant statue at Bryant Park. Of course it took the following exchange for me to connect the dots:

ME: And this is the skating rink at Bryant Park, which they call The Pond. And with the trees in the backdrop, I guess you wanna feel like you're skating on a pond.
FRIEND: Really nice.
ME: And look -- they've placed holiday wreaths around the Bryant Park statue. A lot of people, including myself, sit at these tables to read, eat lunch, it's relaxing. I come here a lot.
FRIEND: Why is it called Bryant Park?
ME: You know? I don't know! I'll have to look that up.
FRIEND: Wait -- this statue has inscribed on it "William Cullen Bryant."
ME: Ohhhhhh...Duh. And I've only stared at this statue a hundred times.

So with a little research, i.e. wikipedia, I learned that William Cullen Bryant was a poet and a long-time editor of the New York Evening Post. After his death, the intersection of 42nd Street and Sixth Avenue was renamed Bryant Park. And if you're curious what it says below his name, it's an excerpt from one of his poems called The Poet:

Yet let no empty gust
Of passion find an utterance in thy lay,
A blast that whirls the dust
Along the howling street and dies away;
But feelings of calm power and mighty sweep,
Like currents journeying through the windless deep.