Who wrote "Thanatopsis"?

• A. Paul Laurence Dunbar
• B. Ralph Waldo Emerson
• C. William Cullen Bryant
• D. Phillis Wheatley

Answer: (C)

Identifying who wrote Thanatopsis connects the poem to American Romanticism, where nature and the contemplation of mortality are central themes. The author is William Cullen Bryant, a foundational American Romantic poet known for meditative nature poetry and reflections on life and death. Thanatopsis is his famous meditation on death, suggesting that death is a natural, universal part of life and that we find comfort in the greater order of nature and the unity of all people in the face of mortality. This context helps you see why Bryant fits: his work often turns to nature as a guide and to mortality with a calm, consoling tone. The other poets listed are notable for different contributions—Dunbar for his dialect and African American life poetry, Emerson for transcendental essays and ideas about self-reliance, Wheatley for 18th-century religious verse—so they don’t align with this particular poem.