Thanatopsis

Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 1817

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Summary

Background

Poem Analysis

Themes

Symbols & Motifs

Literary Devices

Form and Meter

“Thanatopsis” is written in iambic pentameter: Each line contains five pairs of syllables, or metric feet, which follow a pattern of alternating unstressed and stressed syllables. The poem is in blank verse, meaning it does not have a formal rhyming scheme. However, the poem often features lines that end in assonance or near rhymes, like smile/glides/mild in lines 4-6.

The poem’s lines are almost exclusively enjambed, meaning lines do not end in punctuation, forcing readers to read several lines without pause to make sense out of the sentences and phrases that are broken up over more than one line. This enjambment echoes the speaker’s eagerness and the urgency of his message, creating a rhythm that causes the reader to remain somewhat unbalanced, and pulling the reader from one line to the next.

Apostrophe

The poem uses apostrophe, or direct address, to speak to its reader. The poem’s speaker talks to us, using the pronouns “you,” “thee,” “thy,” and “thine” to break the fourth wall. This creates an intimate and personal feeling—as though we are truly in communion with the poem’s speaker, who is delivering his message specifically to each reader. This literary device is an effective strategy for this poem, in which the reader is asked to contemplate their own eventual destination and fate, which would feel less personal and more removed if the poem were written in the third-person perspective. The poem asks the reader to consider the issue of their own mortality for themselves, causing them to meditate on what it means to be human.

Elegy

“Thanatopsis” includes elements of elegy, or a contemplative lyric poem that laments the death of someone or is reflective of the theme of mortality. Inspired by the 18th-century English Graveyard School of poetry, which focused on philosophical approaches to mortality, “Thanatopsis” meditates on the death of all humans—those who live and those who have already died. However, unlike traditional elegies, the poem does not present death as something to lament. Rather, the poem is intended to comfort those who fear death by focusing on its unifying aspects. Since death is unavoidable and universal, the poem argues, we should approach it with trust and peace of mind.

Personification

The poem personifies nature—a literary device that means giving an inanimate thing human attributes. Like a nurturing female figure, nature—described with the feminine pronoun “she” in the poem—reflects our happiness with a returned smile and provides “healing sympathy” in humans’ “darker musings” (Lines 6, 7). Later, nature is also personified as a great teacher. The speaker urges anyone worried or anxious about death to “Go forth, under the open sky, and list / To Nature’s teachings” (Lines 14-15), where “list” is a shortened form of the verb “listen.” This personification of nature comes from the poem’s references to Deism, an interpretation of Christianity that holds that truth can be arrived at through reason. In this case, since nature—as our teacher—informs us that all will come to lay to rest in the earth, its voice of reason should provide us with comfort in the face of death.