The poem Thanatopsis is a very deep and depressing poem. Since thanatopsis literally means "View of death" you can tell that this poem is not going to be a happy one (Huff). This poem starts off with a not so depressing view on death. It sort of shows the views of death from a younger person's point of view, explaining how they do not really worry about it and how it happens all the time to other people. William Cullen Bryant, the writer of this poem, basically writes about how death happens. There is no way to avoid it. When it is your time, there is nothing you can do to escape it. He also claims that people should not really be afraid of dying. At the beginning of the poem, it seems that death is not real to him. It is almost as if he will welcome death when the time comes, but at the beginning it will not happen.
The Romanticism period really relates to this poem. During this time period, creativity was very important. Creativity was to Romanticism like God was to the Puritan time period. During this time period, one of the most important ways to show creativity was to write poems. William Cullen Bryant was very deep in this poem as he expressed his views on death. I found it very interesting how he viewed death. He explained some things that I would not be able to explain in words. Death is a very hard thing to talk about, but he was creative enough to write about what others wish they could find the words for. Not only did he find the words for it, but he made the words flow in a beautiful way.
In this poem, he seems to talk about a girl in a very high way. It seems like he thinks the world of her. For example, he says that "she speaks a various language, for his greyer hours..." (Bryant lines 2-3) and "she glides into his darker musings" (Bryant lines 5-6). These two passages that I took from Thanatopsis really make me happy. I feel that he used the perfect words to describe his feelings. He obviously felt strong feelings towards a subject, but this subject could be a number of different things. I am sure that different readers of this poem feel that he could hae been writing about a number of things. Although it is very easy to argue about what he was talking about, I think that it is clear that whatever he was talking about he felt very strongly about.
I wish that I could write like he did. The way he just magically through all of these words together amazes me. They were beautiful and it was a very interesting poem to read. I will probably venture out and read more by William Cullen Bryant. This poem really interested me. He seems like he was a very talented man.
Bryant definitely belonged in the Romanticism period. His life poem was very descriptive and showed a lot of beauty even when he was writing about a depressing subject.
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