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Death In The Tide Rises, The Tide Falls

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Death brings forth thoughts of loss, grief, anger, or fear. People tend to think of Death as a sly snake stealing away loved ones. However, American-Romantic poets William Cullen Bryant and Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, seem to think differently. They both see death as a normal aspect of life. In the poem“Thanatopsis”, written by William Bryant, he portrays death not like the mysterious shadow that should be feared but the calming embrace of Nature. In Longfellow’s “The Tide Rises, The Tide Falls”, Longfellow showed the readers that Humans and Nature might live together in harmony, but there is one major difference. That would the amount of time each force has on Earth. The minute death seizes the last breath, a human dies, but Nature continues to live as if there was no effect. However, in “The Cross in Snow”, Longfellow portrays that Humans may be limited on life, but Human Emotions …show more content…

For example, in “The Cross of Snow” Longfellow states, “There is a mountain in the distant West/ That, sun-defying, in its deep ravines” (Lines 9-10). Here he is comparing himself to a mountain. Mountains are stagnant beings and stand tall for many centuries. Longfellow uses this aspect to develop that human emotions like his love for his wife or his grief will be forever unchanging. The sun never reaching shows the reader how the light or happiness will never reach the deepest parts of him because the darkness has claimed his wife. To show Nature is timeless and will continue beyond humans Longfellow uses a traveler to symbolize the cycle of a human life. Longfellow ends the poem with, “The day returns, but nevermore/ Returns the traveler to the shore, / And the tide rises, the tide falls.” (Lines 13-15). By the end of the poem the human traveler has died but Nature, the tide, is still rising and falling. Longfellow shows that Humans are not the all powerful storm but a mere ant in contrast to

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