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Thanatopsis
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by
William Cullen Bryant (1794-1878): |
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| From the notes that are made (in the entries for December ) on the Poems of Alfred Street in The Southern and Western Literary Messenger of 1846: | ||
| The 'Thanatopsis' is a moral disquisition—an eloquent exhortation upon the nature of life and immortality. The subject necessarily admits of much discursiveness, but the adherence of the author, to its most prominent topic, is singularly marked and rigid.... [but from here] Mr. Street passes from speculation to soliloquy—from description to contemplation—from the elements to angels—from God to man—and this in the compass of two pages.... | ||
| [The two pages, in this particular case, are those that are taken from their analysis of Street’s poems, and the soliquoy and other equations that are made on it are a perfectly relevant observation of Bryant's journeys] | ||
