Thanatopsis Summary

The poem “Thanatopsis” written by William Cullen Bryant is narrated by nature and over the course of our lives she speaks to us during our “gayer hours” in a language and when we are sad or having a harder time she will speak to us a “voice of gladness,” and fill us with her beauty. She steals away our sharpness to help ease the change into death. We are told that we will not be alone in death. No matter who you are you can not escape death and when we die we are all the same as one another. Bryant wrote this poem with the intention not to scare us about death but comfort us. Even in death we will keep going. When it is time to die “you ages glide away” because no matter how old you are you can still die.
In “Because I Could Not Stop for Death”