What effect does Bryant’s use of personification of nature have on the theme of the poem "Thanatopsis"?
Thanatopsis
William Cullen Bryant (1794 – 1878)
To him who in the love of Nature holds
Communion with her visible forms, she speaks
A various language; for his er hours
She has a voice of gladness, and a smile
And eloquence of beauty, and she glides
Into his darker musingsMeditation, thought, 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,a sheet used for burial purposes and pall.a cloth for a coffin or tomb
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,Is this passage just descriptive, or is it also prescriptive? 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 though go
To mix forever with the elements,
To be a brother to the insensibleIncapable of perceiving rock
And to the sluggish clod, which the rude swaina country farmer or shepherd
Turns with his share, and treads upon. The oak
Shall send his roots abroad, and pierce thy mould.
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