So live, that when thy summons comes to join
The innumerable caravan which moves
To that mysterious realm, where each shall take
His chamber in the silent halls of death,
Thou go not, like the quarry-slave at night,
Scourged to his dungeon, but, sustained and soothed
By an unfaltering trust, approach thy grave,
Like one that wraps the drapery of his couch
About him, and lies down to pleasant dreams.

These lines come from William Cullen Bryant’s poem “Thanatopsis,” written when he was very young (as a teenager) and first published in 1817 in the North American Review. The poem is a landmark of early American Romanticism, offering a meditative, non-sectarian consolation in the face of death by placing individual mortality within the vast, leveling processes of nature. The quoted passage occurs near the poem’s close, where Bryant shifts from describing nature’s universal grave to giving direct ethical counsel: one should live in such a way that death can be met calmly, with trust, rather than fear and coercion.

Bryant urges a life lived with moral steadiness and reflective acceptance so that death arrives not as punishment but as a natural, even gentle, conclusion. The “innumerable caravan” frames death as a communal journey shared by all humanity, dissolving the isolating terror of dying alone. The contrast between the “quarry-slave” driven to a dungeon and the person who “wraps the drapery of his couch” suggests two attitudes: fearful resistance versus composed surrender. “Unfaltering trust” is less a doctrinal claim than a cultivated confidence in the order of nature and the dignity of a well-lived life. The passage’s power lies in turning mortality into a guide for living.

1) “So live, that when thy summons comes to join / The innumerable caravan, that moves …”
2) “Approach thy grave / Like one who wraps the drapery of his couch / About him, and lies down to pleasant dreams.”
3) “Thou go not, like the quarry-slave at night, / Scourged to his dungeon …”