Valenzuela City Science High School

A. Marcelo St. Dalandanan, Valenzuela City

Literary Analysis

Submitted by: John Daniel C. Go

Submitted to: Sir Wilfred A. Tatoy

Date of Submission: October 10, 2012

I. Title: Thanatopsis 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 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, Make 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 share, and treads upon. The oak Shall send his roots abroad, and pierce thy mold. 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. The hills Rock-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, poured round all, Old Ocean's gray and melancholy waste,-Are but the solemn decorations 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, pierce the Barcan wilderness, Or lose thyself in the continuous woods Where rolls the Oregon, and hears no sound, Save his own dashings -- yet the dead are there: And millions in those 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 In silence from 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 favorite 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 fresh spring, and he who goes In the full strength of years, matron and maid, The speechless babe, and the gray-headed man-Shall one by one be gathered to thy side, By those, who in their turn, shall follow them. 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.

II. Authors Biographical Sketch

William Cullen Bryant (November 3, 1794 June 12, 1878) was an American romantic poet, journalist, and long-time editor of the New York Evening Post. Bryant was born on November 3, 1794, in a log cabin near Cummington, Massachusetts; the home of his birth is today marked with a plaque. He was the second son of Peter Bryant (b. Aug. 12, 1767, d. Mar. 20, 1820) a doctor and later a state legislator, and Sarah Snell (b. Dec. 4, 1768 d. May 6, 1847). The genealogy of both parents trace back to passengers on the Mayflower; his mother's, to John Alden (b. 1599, d.
1687); his father's, to Francis Cooke (b. 1577, d. 1663). Bryant and his family moved to a new home when he was two years old. The William Cullen Bryant Homestead, his boyhood home, is now a museum. After just two years at Williams College, he studied law in Worthington and Bridgewater in Massachusetts, and he was admitted to the bar in 1815. He then began practicing law in nearby Plainfield, walking the seven miles from Cummington every day. On one of these walks, in December 1815, he noticed a single bird flying on the horizon; the sight moved him enough to write "To a Waterfowl". Bryant developed an interest in poetry early in life. Under his father's tutelage, he emulated Alexander Pope and other Neo-Classic British poets. "The Embargo", a savage attack on President Thomas Jefferson published in 1808, reflected Dr. Bryant's Federalist political views. The first edition quickly sold outpartly because of the publicity earned by the poet's young ageand a second, expanded edition, which included Bryant's translation of Classical verse, was printed. The youth wrote little poetry while preparing to enter Williams College as a sophomore, but upon leaving Williams after a single year and then beginning to read law, he regenerated his passion for poetry through encounter with the English pre-Romantics and, particularly, William Wordsworth.

Writing poetry could not financially sustain a family. From 1816 to 1825, he practiced law in Great Barrington, Massachusetts, and supplemented his income with such work as service as the town's hog reeve. Distaste for pettifoggery and the sometimes absurd judgments pronounced by the courts gradually drove him to break with the legal profession. With the help of a distinguished and well-connected literary family, the Sedgwicks, he gained a foothold in New York City, where, in 1825, he was hired as editor, first of the New-York Review, then of the United States Review and Literary Gazette. But the magazines of that day usually enjoyed only an ephemeral life-span. After two years of fatiguing effort to breathe life into periodicals, he became Assistant Editor of the New-York Evening Post under William Coleman, a newspaper founded by Alexander Hamilton that was surviving precariously. Within two years, he was Editor-in-Chief and a

part owner. He remained the Editor-in-Chief for half a century (182878). Eventually, the EveningPost became not only the foundation of his fortune but also the means by which he exercised considerable political power in his city, state, and nation. Ironically, the boy who first tasted fame for his diatribe against Thomas Jefferson and his party became one of the key supporters in the Northeast of that same party under Jackson. Bryant's views, always progressive though not quite populist, in course led him to join the Free Soilers, and when the Free Soil Party became a core of the new Republican Party in 1856, Bryant vigorously campaigned for John Frmont. That exertion enhanced his standing in party councils, and in 1860, he was one of the prime Eastern exponents of Abraham Lincoln, whom he introduced at Cooper Union. (That "Cooper Union speech" lifted Lincoln to the nomination, and then the presidency.) Bryant edited the very successful Picturesque America which was published between 1872 and 1874. This two-volume set was lavishly illustrated and described scenic places in the United States and Canada. In his last decade, Bryant shifted from writing his own poetry to a blank verse translation of
Homer's works. He assiduously worked on the Iliad and The Odyssey from 1871 to 1874. He is also remembered as one of the principal authorities on homeopathy and as a hymnist for the Unitarian Churchboth legacies of his father's enormous influence on him. Bryant died in 1878 of complications from an accidental fall suffered after participating in a Central Park ceremony honoring Italian patriot Giuseppe Mazzini. He is buried at Roslyn Cemetery in Roslyn, Long Island, New York. In 1884, New York City's Reservoir Square, at the intersection of 42nd Street and Sixth Avenue, was renamed Bryant Park in his honor. The city later named a public high school in Long Island City, Queens in his honor. Although he is now thought of as a New Englande, Bryant, for most of his lifetime, was thoroughly a New Yorkerand a very dedicated one at that. He was a major force behind the idea that became Central Park, as well as a leading proponent of creating the Metropolitan Museum of Art. He was one of a group of founders of New York Medical College He had close affinities with the Hudson River School of art and was an intimate friend of Thomas Cole. He defended immigrants and, at some financial risk to himself, championed the rights of workers to form labor unions. As a writer, Bryant was an early advocate of American literary nationalism, and his own poetry focusing on nature as a metaphor for truth established a central pattern in the American literary tradition. A recently-published book, however, argues that a reassessment is long overdue. It finds great merit in a couple of short stories Bryant wrote while trying to build interest in periodicals he edited. More importantly, it perceives a poet of great technical sophistication who was a progenitor of Walt Whitman, to whom he was a mentor. Martin Luther King, Jr quoted Bryant in his speech "Give Us the Ballot", when he says: There is something in this universe which justifies William Cullen Bryant in saying: Truth crushed to earth will rise again.

III. Structural Analysis A. Meter Iamb- combination of an unstressed followed by a stressed syllable.

B. Line Length Pentameter- 5 feet. The poem has 5 feet.

C. Metrical Pattern The poem has 5 feet, following a pattern of an unstressed followed by an stressed syllable.

D. Rhyme Scheme The poem has no rhyme scheme.

E. Figures of Speech
Communion with her visible forms, she speaks

IV. In Depth Analysis Before extracting the meaning of the poem stanza by stanza, let us first have a simple introduction of the poem Thanatopsis. The poem came from the Greek word Thanatos which means death and opsis meaning sight. So generally, the poem talks about the way people perceive death. The author, William Cullen Bryant talks about his positive point of view regarding death. He wanted to tell the people that death is natural, that whether an individual like it or not, death will come for each and everyone of us. Now, I am going to tell my own interpretations and understanding about each line to understand the whole poem clearly.

The author would like to introduce an individual that loves nature in line 1. The individual were supposedly us. For every single human being should love the nature, for it plays a big role for our survival. Thats why also in the first line, the first letter of the word nature is expressed in capital letters (Nature). The second line strongly suggests us that the individual has a strong connection with nature. The author also substituted nature for the pronoun she which is an example of personification. Lines 3-5 tells us that nature communicates to him (individual) depending to his mood or atmosphere. In the line, the person is joyous which made the nature smile and eloquence of beauty, which is all about positive moods and thoughts. Lines 6-8 suggest that sometimes, the person has the feeling of sorrow and sadness. The nature helps him and takes away the sorrows and all the negative thoughts inside the persons mind. That whenever the person is feeling sad, the nature always cheers him up. Now, the line 9-10 strongly tells us that the very thing that makes the man worried is death. These thoughts frightened the man in the poem. In the line 11, the author expresses his ideas towards the readers of what death is, he described death with the use of terrifying, spooky words. He wanted to give us the bitter and scary thoughts when the word death comes. The lines 12-13 strongly convey us and give us a much scarier and intense feeling about death. That everyone should worry about what death is. The author now wants us to be fully aware of death. Lines 14-15 relieved us from the previous horrifying lines about death. We were somehow set free from the words used earlier. In lines 16-17, gives us comfort. That nature is described as quiet and gives peace. However, in the line 18, the author tells us that we will be gone soon. Lines 19-21 tell us the things that we will be leaving when we passed away.

Lines 22-30 shows us where an individuals body will be going. We will be going back to dust we once were. We will lose all our human traits. Every single detail of a person will be destroyed and will come back to Earth as nourishment. Lines 31-33 shows a little end of suffering, for we are told to rest in a much more comfortable place like a couch. Lines 34-37 tells us that every one of us will die, ranging from the highest and most important people up to the simplest persons. And all will die in this place called Earth. The lines 38-43 now gives us a physical description of Earth, as a place of living. Places such as woods, and ocean are mentioned.

Lines 44-45 now tells us that the places mentioned in the previous lines are just mere decorations in the grave of every one of us which is the Earth where everyone lives and dies. Lines 46-48 tell us that there are many beautiful things that can be found in the Earth. And as times passes by, people live and die in the Earth, that there is a cycle of life that can be found. Lines 49-50 tells us that there are just few people living in the Earth right now, compared to the people that are buried inside the Earth. The Earth here can now be described as the crib of life and grave of death at the same time. The lines 51-57 tell us that you can found death in every place in the world, that death is inevitable. Death can be found everywhere, even in the calmest places on Earth. The lines 58-61 are all about death. Everyone is destined to die, that all human beings will travel the same path like the others did. Lines 62-64 tell us that even if we die, the entire human race will go on. Death will most likely not change the whole human race, for instance, even if you die, the people will continue to pursue their lives as an individual. Lines 6566 tell us that even if you die, people will follow, for it is a cycle. Now, the lines 67-72 strongly tells us that everyone in this world in destined to pass away, the Rich or poor, famous or not known, and etcetera. For death doesnt pick any race, nationality, religion and others! You cannot avoid death. Everyone will die when the time comes and there is no excuse or exception for all. In the lines 73-74, the author wanted to tell us that we should enjoy life. We should live our life to the fullest for no one knows when death will call your name. It is like saying Live your life to the fullest. Lines 75-77 describe death, as a realm, for no one knows what is like. The last two lines of the poem tell us that we must accept death. Because it is a natural phenomenon, that everyone must undergo. The author leaves the reader a positive outlook about death. We must not be scared of facing death, for it is a cycle.

V. Theme