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Megan asked in Arts & HumanitiesPoetry · 9 years ago

Help with the poem Thanatopsis by William Cullen Bryant?

Here is the poem:

A Meditation on Death

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 5

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 10

Of the stern agony, and shroud, and pall*,

or coffin used for burial

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— 15

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, 20

Nor in the embrace of ocean shall exist

Thy image. Earth, that nourished thee, shall claim

Thy growth, to be resolve to earth again,

And, lost each human trace, surrendering up

Thine individual being, shalt thou go 25

To mix forever with the elements,

To be a brother to the insensible rock

country lad

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. 30

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, 35

Fair forms, and hoary seers of ages past,

All in one mighty sepulcher*. The hills

Rock-ribbed and ancient as the sun; the vales

Stretching in pensive* quietness between;

The venerable woods; rivers that move 40

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, 45

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 50

Of morning, pierce the Barcan wilderness,

Or lose thyself in the continuous woods

Where rolls the Oregon, and hears no sound

Save his own clashings—yet the dead are there;

I need to know

1) Who is speaking in Lines 1 through 17?

2) What new voice begins in Line 17 and continues to the end of the poem? (The still voice)

3) To whom or to what does the pronoun she refer to in Line 4?

I just don't understand how I'm supposed to know these answers, and I've read the poem a million times and I still don't know. Please help!

Update:

OOPS just realized the rest of the poem did not paste!

here's the rest after "Save his own clashings - yet the dead are there;"

And millions in those solitudes, since first 55

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 60

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 65

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,

The speechless babe, and the gray-headed man— 70

Shall one by one be gathered to thy side,

By those who in their turn shall fo

4 Answers

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  • 9 years ago
    Favorite Answer

    Actually, you've still left off the last few lines of the poem:

    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.

    It's not hard at all to figure out the answers to those questions. The first few lines of the poem personify Nature. They say, "When somebody loves Nature and communicates with her 'visible forms,' she talks to him in various ways, depending on what he needs from her at any moment, depending on whether he's happy or sad." (Nature's "visible forms" are simply the physical realities of the natural world -- for example, "Earth and her waters, and the depths of air," in other words, rocks, plants, rivers, oceans, the wind, the sky, etc. The poem says that all of those things "talk" to us if we pay the right kind of attention.)

    The opening lines of the poems are spoken in the voice of an omniscient third-person narrator, somebody who doesn't actually take part in the poem. You've probably read many novels and short stories that are narrated in that kind of voice. For example, the narrator who says "Once upon a time" at the beginning of a fairy tale isn't usually one of the characters in the story.

    So the narrator says that Nature talks to people and teaches lessons if people are willing to listen. Then the narrator kind of turns to poem over to Nature's voice. The lesson that Nature is teaching in this case is a lesson about not being afraid of death, about accepting death as a natural part of life.

  • ?
    Lv 4
    5 years ago

    Paraphrasing?

  • Anonymous
    9 years ago

    Go to

    sparknotes.com

    for expert help on your queries.

    Good luck.

  • 6 years ago

    so who is speaking

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