Thanatopsis: An Analysis When you are sad, go visit nature because it will lift your spirits and when you die go pleasantly, for kings also die and nature will tell you that it is still there with you. That is the theme of this poem by William Cullen Bryant. This essay will be set up in three sections of the poem which will make this theme more easily understood by the reader. The first section is from lines one through seventeen of the poem. In this section Bryant tells the reader how pleasant nature is and how it can brighten life. The best example of this is when Bryant writes: . .."shudder and grow sick at heart, Go forth under the sky and list to natures teachings