and sleep the reader is left with some very thought provoking questions. The answers to these questions reassure some readers while confusing others. Sleep is a time of rest. It allows preparation for the next day or event, and by relating this definition to death Bryant gives new insight on one's fate after earthly existence. "When thoughts of the last bitter hour come like a blight over thy spirit, and sad images of the stern agony, and shroud, and pall, and breathless darkness, and the narrow house, make thee to shudder, and grow sick at heart- Go under the open sky, and list to Nature's teachings, while from all around- Earth and her waters, and the depths of air- comes a still voice".Bryant is taking what can be considered the stereotype of what death and dying feels like and putting it in some strong words. He continues to say, as he does in the rest of the poem, that one's eternal resting place could never have been thought of as such a wonderful place that one could love so much. In a way he describes it to be a huge couch which when you lay down upon it you just melt in and never feel like getting up, by saying "nor couldst thou wish couch more magnificent". The way he describes the resting place sounds exactly like the stereotype that has also been formed of what heaven is like, a wonderful place where you sleep in the clouds and are joined with all of the people and things you love. When identifying sleep with death Bryant gives death many characteristics of slumber. People generally wake from sleep, and Bryant expands this occurrence to death. Death could simply be a time of rest that retires the bodies' of earthly beings, and allows the soul to wake and continue on in the afterlife. In lines 50 and 51 Bryant writes, "Take the wings of morning, pierce the Barcan wilderness." The wings in this statement symbolize a spiritual, angelic being, and the morning suggests a time of waking. After waking, the angelic being breaks thr...
