  &quot;'''Thanatopsis'''&quot; is a poem by the American poet William Cullen Bryant.  ==Overview==  The title is from the Greek thanatos (&quot;death&quot;) and -opsis (&quot;sight&quot;); it has often been translated as &quot;Meditation upon Death&quot;. Bryant wrote the bulk of the poem at age 17 (in 1811); he added the introductory and concluding lines 10 years later in 1821.  ==Critical reception== Due to the unusual quality of the verse and Bryant's age when the poem was first published in 1817 by the ''North American Review'', Richard Henry Dana, Sr., then associate editor at the ''Review'', initially doubted its authenticity, saying to another editor, &quot;No one, on this side of the Atlantic, is capable of writing such verses.&quot;  &quot;Thanatopsis&quot; remains a significant milestone in American literary history. It was republished in 1821 as the lead poem of ''Thanatopsis and Other Poems'', which was considered by many to be the first major book of American poetry. Nevertheless, over five years, it earned Bryant only $14.92.Gioia, Dana. &quot;Longfellow in the Aftermath of Modernism&quot;. ''The Columbia History of American Poetry'', edited by Jay Parini. Columbia University Press, 1993: 74–75. ISBN 0231078366  Poet and literary critic Thomas Holley Chivers, who often accused other writers of stealing poems, said that the only thing Bryant &quot;ever wrote that may be called ''Poetry'' is 'Thanatopsis', which he stole ''line for line'' from the Spanish.&quot;Parks, Edd Winfield. ''Ante-Bellum Southern Literary Critics''. Athens, GA: University of Georgia Press, 1962: 175.  ==Appearances in popular culture==  Wolcott Gibbs mentions the poem in his humor piece &quot;Death in the Rumble Seat,&quot; which appeared in the ''New Yorker''.   He writes that the poem is &quot;neither beautiful nor necessary, but hogwash.&quot;  In ''The Silence of the Lambs'' by Thomas Harris, Clarice Starling reveals to Hannibal Lecter one detail of her father's last days in hospital as an elderly neighbour reading to him the last lines of &quot;Thanatopsis.&quot;  In Sinclair Lewis' novel Main Street, the women's study club of Gopher Prairie is the Thanatopsis club.  In the novel ''East Is East'' by T.C. Boyle, &quot;Thanatopsis House&quot; is the name of the artist colony on Tupelo Island at which the protagonist, Hiro Tanaka, seeks refuge with aspiring artist Ruth Dershowitz.  The experimental band Thanatopsis was named after this poem. The band's first album, ''Thanatopsis'', was also named after this poem.  The deathcore/hardcore metal band Last Bitter Hour. The electronic artist Daedalus named the last song on the album ''Exquisite Corpse'' after the poem.  The Algonquin Roundtable (the social gathering of New York &amp; ''New Yorker'' wits including Robert Benchley, Dorothy Parker and Alexander Woollcott) had a poker club called  the Thanatopsis Literary and Inside Straight Club.  Connie Willis mentions the poem as a backdrop in her humorous short story Ado (1988) about political correctness.  The Avant Garde film-maker Ed Emshwiller's 1962 short film Thanatopsis was inspired by the poem. The film was intended as a meditation on our mortality and inevitable death.  In the episode &quot;Terminal&quot; of Space Ghost Coast to Coast, a portion of the poem is set to sappy folk music and sung by Dave Willis.  ==Further reading== * For an annotated version of the poem, follow this &quot;Thanatopsis&quot; search on Google books: [ * Max Cavitch, ''American Elegy: The Poetry of Mourning from the Puritans to Whitman'' (University of Minnesota Press, 2007). Includes a chapter on the poem. ISBN 081664893X * Connie Willis, ''Ado''  (Asimov's Science Fiction, 1988) A short story about political correctness and religious vigilance run amok on campus mentions this poem.  