How we cite our quotes: (Line)
Quote #1
(Nor for you, for one alone,
Blossoms and branches green to coffins all I bring,
For fresh as the morning, thus would I chant a song for you O sane and sacred death.(46-48)
From the very beginning, we see the speaker treating death more like a "sacred" and unifying force for all people, rather than a frightening tragedy. Death gets its very own song too, celebrating its importance and beauty.
Quote #2
Approach strong deliveress,
When it is so, when thou hast taken them I joyously sing the dead,
Lost in the loving floating ocean of thee,
Laved in the flood of thy bliss O death. (147-150)
The speaker "joyously sing[s] the dead" here and imagines the "loving floating ocean" of death that he'd gratefully like to be "laved" in. It's not every day that we hear someone celebrating death in such an enthusiastic way. So we're really seeing death as something to be welcomed rather than dismissed as tragic.
Quote #3
I saw the debris and debris of all the slain soldiers of the war,
But I saw they were not as was thought,
They themselves were fully at rest, they suffer'd not,(180-182)
Despite the lovely song for death and all, the speaker still reminds us of the suffering that occurs because of war. Death, in the context of war, still strikes us as tragic with the jarring imagery of "debris and debris of all the slain soldiers." And yet, we also recognize that the dead soldiers aren't the ones suffering. It's the ones left behind that suffer most because of death.