“Thanatopsis” by William Cullen Bryant
The 19th century poet William Cullen Bryant could not recall when he wrote “Thanatopsis.” Similarly, I long ago lost count of how many of my high school students had not thought much about their mortality before we turned to the poem in our American Literature anthology. It caught their attention that he was their age — 17 — when he penned it (a detail recalled by a college friend of the poet).
That alone got the 17-year-olds in front of me thinking. They also immediately empathized with the poet upon finding out the poem was published in the North American Review in September 1817, after Bryant’s father showed it to the journal’s editor — without his son’s knowledge.
The title always had them scratching their heads. “Thana – what -sis?” one would invariably ask.
“Thanatopsis, from the Greek word that means ‘meditation on or contemplation of death,'” I’d reply. And then we’d start contemplating its smooth, deceivingly comfortable start.
To him who in the love of Nature holds
Communion with her visible forms, 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…
Teens like the simple connection to Nature the elegy opens with — after that Greek mumble of a title .“It’s like ‘The Giving Tree,’” I remember one saying. “Nature gives us what we need.”
Then the voice of the poem abruptly switches its focus to dying:
When thoughts
Of the last bitter hour come like a blight
Over thy spirit,
From the deathbed, the poem moves on to the end of life and interment. That oneness with Nature established earlier in the elegy becomes more literal in the grave.
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 for ever with the elements,
To be a brother to the insensible rock
William Cullen Bryant
This is where some in the class might get a bit squeamish, but a careful reader would be sure to bring out,“But that’s just where he says our body goes. This guy says our spirit will find some comfy place with a bunch of rich people, kings, and good looking people. The way he describes it reminds me of the woods in Harry Potter.”
Yet not to thine eternal resting-place
Shalt thou retire alone, nor couldst thou wish
Couch more magnificent. 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 sepulchre.
Other students, have said it sounded like a royal wedding or the Wizard’s Oz, even Bambi’s forest. Whatever images Bryant’s landscape of death conjured in their mind, it would be remarkable to witness their responses to a long-gone poet’s musings and have them raise questions about what happens after we die.
As we continued, “Thanatopsis” made all of us aware that we are equals in the way we must face the unknown, no matter our backgrounds or abilities. And most important, it gave us a prescription for the gift of life that remains until we are face to face with death in its last stanza.
So live, that when thy summons comes to join
The innumerable caravan, which moves
To that mysterious realm, where each shall take
His chamber in the silent halls of death,
Thou go not, like the quarry-slave at night,
Scourged to his dungeon, but, sustained and soothed
By an unfaltering trust, approach thy grave,
Like one who wraps the drapery of his couch
About him, and lies down to pleasant dreams.
If you’d like to read the entire poem, go to the Poetry Archive.
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First read this poem somewhere around 1966, while in high school at 16 years of age. It grabbed my attention. And I still remember some of the lines we had to memorize. It still grabs my attention today.
There is a lesson for everyone in this poem.
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Miss Cuff, my 7th grade teacher of English, had us memorize the final stanza of Thanatopsis, and I bless her soul for that. I’m 81 now and still can recite that stanza fluently. Following please find a story about my Thanatopsis moment.
I do a column for the East Oregonian called “A Slice of Life”. Just for fun I had submitted a piece written years ago and recently updated entitled “Curmudgeonly Ruminations About the Future of Humankind” and the editor apparently liked it so he asked if I would like to write a monthly column. I asked “what about? and he said to “write about anything you want to”. That’s quite an assignment!
In seventh grade my English teacher, Miss Cuff, had us memorize the final stanza of the Willian Cullen Bryant poem “Thanatopsis” – it follows below an addendum in my first “Slice of Life” column. That stanza has stuck with me all my life and I bless Miss Cuff for providing the wisdom to us. I think everyone should be aware of it, so I wrote a column about Thanatopsis and how that poem related to an adventure I had in northern Kenya when we lived/worked there.
A Slice of Life – Thanatopsis
Do you know the poem “Thanatopsis”?
The word means “A View of Death”. The poem examines subjects associated with death, ends saying So live that when thy summons comes ..… and presents a formula for confident living and peaceful death.
With the COVID19 disaster stalking our nation there have been many deaths and a great deal of grieving made more acute by the reduced contact between the dying person and loved ones.
But what actually happens in death? I came very close to dying from a violent allergic response to bee stings and in several minutes learned a great deal about death. I hope what I learned might offer some solace to those who are now grieving.
This happened on a Sunday afternoon family drive in northern Kenya. We lived near a small river where dams were used for water powered generation of electricity and pumping for irrigation. As we drove along I noticed an old discarded generator in a field near the river and I like to figure out how machinery works, so I went over to it and turned the shaft to see if the bearings were still good. Unbeknownst to me there was a colony of very aggressive African bees living in that old generator so as I turned that shaft it threatened them and they came pouring out to defend their home.
Bees swarmed me and stung, stung, stung. I ran back to the car as fast as I could and within several minutes the anaphylactic reaction began. My circulatory system collapsed and the smooth muscles in the arterial system completely relaxed, so my blood went out into peripheral circulation and stopped. My wife Barbara described me as being bright red, with all that blood sitting stationary out in my skin. Because of no blood pressure, no blood was coming back to my heart and so, hungry to pump and do its job, it speeded up more and more, beating furiously. With no blood going into my head my brain slowly oxygen-starved and began shutting down.
Darkness – the most intense and utterly, absolutely, perfectly, totally, beautifully black darkness encircled my being and came gently closing in, like a contracting circle. The dark circle slowly closed and became complete – perfect blackness and entry into unconsciousness, death, and termination of my existence. It was a completely peaceful experience.
But – I could not accept death from a bunch of bees! I had a wife and 5 young kids! I also had an inhaler of epinephrine in the car. I pumped the inhaler –“ I don’t want to overdose” – no change and more blackness; two more pumps – no change and more blackness; several more pumps – “where is the therapeutic dose of this stuff????” And then, the total and absolute blackness of indescribable density and a single, stunning thought – “OVERDOSE, HELL – I’M DYING!! Pump, pump, pump, pump and then BAM – every smooth muscle in my circulatory system contracted in one great spasm. Barbara described me as changing from bright red to very pale as a tsunami of blood blasted back into my heart and WHOMP … WHOMP … WHOMP. Every heartbeat shook my whole body as I crashed back into life.
So, I learned a wonderful lesson, firsthand. Death is an entirely peaceful experience. There was nothing even remotely frightening. There was no pain, no anguish, no negatives at all. Very simply, gentle and quintessential blackness enveloped me and it would be permanent. It was a beautiful and comforting experience.
If what happened to me is any measure of what death is typically, grief by the living loved ones is absolutely valid in that the living relationship has been terminated. But if what I underwent is how other deaths progress, grief for the dying person is perhaps not necessary. The process in final analysis was peaceful and sublime.
Back to Thanatopsis now, and the closing lines of the poem.
“So live that when thy summons comes to join the innumerable caravan which moves to that mysterious realm where each shall take his chamber in the silent halls of death, thou go not like a quarry slave at night, scoured to his dungeon, but sustained and soothed by an unfaltering trust approach thy grave like one who wraps the drapery of his couch about him and lies down to pleasant dreams.”
“So live”….. a dictum for those of us still living to live our lives to the fullest.
The complete poem follows below.
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