Tide Falls Transcendentalism

With Bryant’s “Thanatopsis”, Longfellow’s “The Tide Rises, the TIde Falls”, and Emerson’s “Self-Reliance”, the reader can behold the integrity of romanticism and transcendentalism pieces. They explored a world that was not in sync with reality and went more into a realm of imagination and intricate figurative writing. In addition to these accomplishments, the messages of these pieces improves the future for the better while teaching readers about the universality of the human condition. Thus, “Thanatopsis,” “The Tide Rises, the Tide Falls,” and “Nature” all share these characteristics.

First, “Thanatopsis” teaches its readers the unknowable such as What comes after death? What lies within the afterlife? It explored the depth of nature and how the flow of nature is our calling. Thanatopsis explains how nature is essentially our answer to most of life’s conflicts. It delivers a reassurance that when death comes along we have mother nature to turn to. Bryant states, “Thou go not, like the quarry-slave at night, Scourged to his dungeon, but, sustained and soothed By an unfaltering trust, approach thy grave, Like one who wraps the drapery of his couch About him, and lies down to pleasant dreams.” (77-81). Towards the end, the poem tells us that death should not end in brutality and sorrow but end in a pleasant, …show more content…
The poem represents the affiliation with death but also life's cycle and process. The tide rises, the beginning of life, the tide falls, the end of a life. Though the poem expresses a great deal of darkness to emphasize that death is near, just the word dark is mentioned at least three times. A great example of this is in the second stanza when Longfellow says, “Darkness settles on roofs and walls, But the sea, the sea in darkness calls;The little waves, with their soft, white hands Efface the footprints in the sands, And the tide rises, the tide falls.”

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