Mortality and Immortality

Throughout the poem the speaker examines several different states of existence in order to comment on the various ways in which people are capable of experiencing mortality and immortality.

One of the ways in which the speaker explores morality and immortality is by commenting on the connection between the internal world and the external world. The opening line of the poem, “a slumber did my spirit seal,” describes a sealing off of the spirit through the engagement with an abstract dream state (1). This sealing off of the spirit is essentially a division between the worlds of the physical and the metaphysical. While in this state of slumber in which the spirit is unencumbered by the sensory distractions of the physical world, the speaker says, “I had no human fears” (2). While “human fears” at first seems vague, the fact that it rhymes with “earthly years...