Journal 26: Thanatopsis

Nature communicates back in a peaceful tranquil tone. The advice was about death. Nature is trying to comfort the thoughts and musing of the narrator about death and trying to pacify the feeling through an explanation on how the cycle of life works. The advice was painting death in a way that shows that death is no big deal because every living thing goes through the cycle or life and death and then reborn because matters and energy are conserved. If there is life there is death. This is because when you die, you go back to nature's giant pool of matter and then from the pool of matter, atoms are selected to become another life form. This is the whole idea of reincarnation. However, the traditional view was that your body dies and then your spirit has two choices. Either it floats around in the realm of man, selected to go to heaven or hell, or reincarnate to become a new life. In this view, the spirit was not preserved, instead, our body is preserved in the form of matter and then be used for another life form or non-life form. The romantic belief was that the world doesn't operate like a machine instead is like a living thing that we are part of. Romantics look into nature for lessons and in this case Bryant look into nature for comfort and concept of death and after death, the concept. People die sad and stay sad; people die happy and stay happy.