Thanatopsis by William Cullen Bryant 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 dark musings with a mild and healing sympathy that steals away their sharpness ere he is aware. When thoughts of the last bitter hour come like a blight over thy spirit and sad images, of the stern agony and shroud and pall, and breathless darkness, and the narrow house makes thee to shudder, and grow sick at heart, go forth under the open sky and list to nature's teachings, while from all around, earth and her waters and the depths of air, comes a still voice. Yet a few days, and thee, the all-beholding sun shall see no more, in all his course, nor yet in the cold ground, where thy pale form was laid, with many tears, nor in the embrace of ocean shall exist.
thy image. 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 forever with the elements, to be a brother to the insensible rock, and to the sluggish clod which the rude swain turns with his shear and treads upon. The oak shall send his roots abroad, and pierce thy mould.
Yet not to thine eternal resting-place shalt thou go. 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, the hills rocked ribbed and ancient as the sun, the vales stretching in pensive quietness between the venerable woods, rivers that move in majesty, and the complaining brooks. that make the meadows green, and pour round all old oceans grey and melancholy waste, are but the solemn declarations all of the great tomb of man, the golden sun, the planets, all the infinite host of heaven, are shining on the sad abodes of death, through the still lapse of ages, all that tread the globe, are but a handful to the tribes that slumber in its bosom, take the wings of morning and the Barkhan desert pierce, or lose thyself in the continuous woods where rolls the oregon yet hears no sound save his own dashings yet the dead are there and millions in these solitudes since first the flight of years began have laid them down in their last sleep the dead reign there alone so shalt thou rest and what if thou withdraw unheeded by the living and no friend take note of thy departure all that breathe will share thy destiny The gay will laugh when thou art gone, The solemn brood of care plod on, And each one as before will chase his favourite phantom, Yet all these shall leave their mirth and their employments, And shall come and make their bed with thee. As the long train of ages glides away, The sons of men, the youth in life's green spring, And he who goes in the full strength of years, Matron and maid, and the sweet babe, And the grey-headed man, Shall one by one be gathered to thy side, by those who in their turn shall follow them so live and when thy summons comes to join the innumerable caravan that moves that each 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 that wraps the drapery of his couch about him and lies down to pleasant dreams.