Compare the meanings of "The Chambered Nautilus" and "Thanatopsis" in regard to their messages about nature, life, and death.

There are, in fact, quite a few similarities between the
poems "The Chambered Nautilus" by Oliver Wendell Holmes and "Thanatopsis" by William
Cullen Bryant, but there are also some significant differences. Each poem confronts a
fear of mortality and looks to Nature for insight into human nature, though the poems
have differing ideas about the soul and the
body.

"Thanatopsis" means "meditation on death,"
and much of the poem is just that. The speaker of the poem begins by telling the reader
both joy and comfort can be found by observing Nature. The speaker regards Nature in a
general sense, describing valleys, mountains, the ocean, and the woods. He explains to
the reader that fear of death is unnecessary, since everyone has to die sometime, and he
asks the reader to find consolation in the fact that all men and women will become part
of Nature again as their bodies become one with the earth. For this speaker, comfort can
also be found in the fact that the dead inhabit every corner of the world and,
therefore, he will join a great multitude of spirits when he
dies.

While "The Chambered Nautilus" focuses on
one specific part of Nature--the shell left behind after the death of a mollusk--the
speaker finds a similar type of comfort when faced with mortality. For the speaker of
this poem, however, the spirit and the body are two very different things. While the
body will be left behind, as the nautilus was, the spirit has the chance to ascend to
heaven. The nautilus thus becomes a symbol of the spiritual journey. As the mollusk
outgrows each chamber, he builds a new one. Similarly, as a person grows in nobility, he
outgrows his figuratively small former life until, through death, he escapes the
confines of his body.