Thanatopsis: We're All Going to Die

Thanatopsis is all about looking at death in a different way. Most people view death as a horrible and scary thing, but with this poem Bryant attempts to portray death as just another part of life and not really something that is that scary at all. Bryant explains that death should not be feared because everybody dies and it's natural. When we die we return to the ground from which we came, it's the circle of life, so to speak. Since the Romantics thought that nature was pretty much the coolest thing around (something heavily exemplified in this poem), becoming part of nature would be considered kinda awesome. Bryant also mentions that when we die we join all the souls that have passed before us, "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...", so death is sort of like the great equalizer. This poem is romantic because of the two things I just mentioned. The glorification of nature and the emphasis on the fact that we are all a part of that nature, and the emphasis on death being something that the great, as well as the not-so-great men all have to go through. The common man as well as the king has to die sometime.