Thanatopsis (Masterplots II: Poetry Series)
At a glance:
- Author: William Cullen Bryant
- First Published: 1817
- Type of Work: Meditation
- Genres: Poetry, Meditation
- Subjects: Nature, Self, Human race, Death or dying, Personality, Fate or fatalism, Mortality, Joy or sorrow, Water, Air
The Poem
“Thanatopsis” is a meditative poem of eighty-two lines, granting consolation for human mortality through mankind’s unity with nature. The poem whose title in Greek means “a meditation on death,” was written in William Cullen Bryant’s seventeenth year in shorter form; it was frequently revised before its first appearance in North American Review in September, 1817, and was enlarged so as to include a new Wordsworthian opening (lines 1–17) and an extended, vaguely religious conclusion (lines 66–81) for its publication in Poems, 1821.
...[The entire page is 1534 words long]
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