As a Romantic poet, William Cullen Bryant felt a closeness with nature. One of the ever-present lessons of nature is the organic cycle of birth, growth, death, and rebirth. It is interesting that, while Bryant composed the first version when he was only sixteen, he later revised it as an adult who had survived a close call with death. Because of his experience and his wiser perspective as an adult, there is great depth of feeling as well as insight in his poem. Bryant's poem reminds the reader of his theme oneness with nature in lines 17 through 72:
To Nature's teachings, while from all around--/Earth and her waters, and the depths of air--Comes a still voice,--
Another motif that is in Bryant's poem is that Death equalizes us all, for we are all equally children of Nature:
...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 mgihty sepulcher. (ll.33-37)
Thus, because a person becomes one with Nature and the equal of kings, he/she should
By an unfaltering trust, approach thy grave,/Like one who wraps the drapery of his couch/About him, and lies down to pleasant dreams. (ll.79-81)
These last three lines, indeed, can certainly provide a consolation to the dying as well as to the bereaved family of one who has died.
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