How can one know death, until they experience it? This does not mean that to experience death one must actually die. It means to experience it through someone else, especially through one that is close to you. In "Thanatopsis", the author, William Cullen Bryant talks about death as if he was an authority on it. The mood in Bryant's poem does not give the reader a sense of seriousness, but a sense of fear. His viewpoint is very straight-forward. It is that all humans die and you just have to accept it. A different author, Henry Longfellow experienced death through his wife. He writes about his experience in the poem, "The Cross of Snow". He sets the poem in a serious mood. The poem talks about a man who is reminded of his wife and the horrible way she died and about his lack of acceptance to her death. Bryant and Longfellow use different points of views to express death, the main differences are through their mood, the difference on the acceptance of death and their personal experience of death. Both authors create a set mood in their poems. .
Bryant and Longfellow both have different moods for their poems. In "Thanatopsis" Bryant creates a "non-serious" mood. The essence of Bryant's poem makes you want to laugh him, because of the way he words the lines so bluntly and compares death to nature. The way he uses nature creates a happy, yet funny type of mood. Bryant says in lines 22 and 23, "Earth, that nourished thee, shall claim thy growth, to be resolved to earth again". These lines tell the reader that our body will go back in the ground when we die. The way he words his lines does not give the feeling of a serious poem, but that he is trying to scare you into believing him. In "The Cross of Snow", Longfellow gives a serious mood. When Longfellow says, "Never through martyrdom of fire was led"(Line 6). This sets the mood for the poem. The words martyrdom and fire draw the reader's attention.