Pleasant.

Collins, River Vista, 2009

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 for ever 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 mould.   

     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 glide 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—   

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.

William Cullen Bryant