Reflection: Thanatopsis

This story is very hard to get my mind around. There seems to be many different things that Bryant is trying to get across. He starts off by talking about how having a “communion” with nature which is a token characteristic of the Romanticism period (Bryant 2). It then moves on to talk about Nature, giving it traits such as having “a voice of gladness, and a smile and eloquence of beauty.” Another trait of the Romanticism is exemplified in the first couple of lines in the poem. Bryant says “she speaks a various language; for his gayer hours she has a voice of gladness, and a smile and eloquence of beauty, and she glides into his darker musings, with a mild and healing sympathy, that steals away their sharpness, ere he is aware” (Bryant 2-8). This passage shows that Bryant thinks that Nature is more of a caring mother than a benevolent force.

The rest of the poem is where the name of the poem, which means “Thoughts on Death,” starts to show itself. Where it starts is when Bryant says

“When thoughts of the last bitter hour come like a blight over thy spirit, and sad images of the stern agony, and shroud, and pall, and the breathless darkness, and the narrow house, make thee to shudder, and grow sick at heart.” (Bryant 8-13)

This passage starts to turn to the subject of the poem to death and how nature shepherds us into a peaceful slumber. Bryant says that nature is there to soothe your mind when you start to think about death. He goes on to say that it makes him “sick at heart” to think about putting the body of a loved one in a coffin and putting them in their grave, or in a “narrow house” (Bryant 12). Then he goes on to talk about how one’s body becomes part of the Earth. Bryant’s view on that is that the “Earth, that nourished thee, shall claim thy growth, to be resolved to earth again, and, lost each human trace, surrendering up thine individual being, shalt thou go to mix forever with the elements” (Bryant 22-26). He also makes a statement that shows how he holds nature in high regard; he says “To be a brother to the insensible rock, and to the sluggish clod” (Bryant 27-28).

In an analysis of Thanatopsis by Randall Huff, he agrees with me on the point that this poem is trying to show how death is universal, and therefore nothing to fear. Randal says “A turning point in the poem occurs when Nature bgins to list the various stages of man at the time of death. This roll call reinforces the poem’s theme of the universality of death.”

Another way to tell that this poem is showing how death is universal is when it starts talking about how when you die, you are joining everybody else that has died in your grave. “Thou shalt lie down with patriarchs of the infant world,—with kings, the powerful of the earth,—the wise, the good, fair forms, and hoary seers of ages past, all in one mighty sepulcher” (Bryant 33-37).


Huff, Randall. "'Thanatopsis'." The Facts On File Companion to American Poetry, vol. 1. New York: Facts On File, Inc., 2007. Bloom's Literary Reference Online. Facts On File, Inc.


Lounsbury, Thomas R., ed. Yale Book of American Verse. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1912; Bartleby.com, 1999.