In the poem, "Thanatopsis", W.C. Bryant expresses his views on the after-life. He believed that when you die, your body joins with nature for eternity. In line 31 Bryant describes the grave as "... thine eternal resting place ...". As you can see, he does not believe that there is a Heaven. Instead, he says that your body becomes part of the earth.
             Bryant's idea that your body becomes part of the earth is, in my opinion, correct. In the Bible it states that when you die, your body returns to the dust from which man was created. Bryant's opinion that when you die you die, you remain there forever. This is also, in my opinion, correct. Your body does remain in the earth. In I Thessalonians 4:16-17 of the Bible it states: (verse 16) "For the Lord himself shall descend form Heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel, and with the trump of God: and the dead in Christ shall rise first: (verse 17) Then we which are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them in the clouds, to meet the Lord in the air: and so shall we be forever with the Lord."
             In these verses he is referring to the souls of Christians meeting him in the air and not their bodies. In I Corinthians 6:18 of the Bible, it says that the body is the temple of the soul and the Holy Spirit.
             As a believer in Heaven, I must disagree with Bryant's theory as a whole, but it does contain some truth. Bryant was very young when he wrote this poem, so his convictions may have changed before his death.
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