A couple of English (well, UK) views on death:

Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow
Creeps in this petty pace from day to day
To the last syllable of recorded time
And all our yesterdays the way to dusty death.
Out, out, brief candle!
Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player
Who struts and frets his time upon the stage
And then is heard no more.
'Tis but a tale told by an idiot,
Full of sound and fury
Signifying nothing.
                   -- Billy-Bob Shakespeare
                      "The Scottish Play"

The Soldier
Rupert Brooke

If I should die, think only this of me;        
That there's some corner of a foreign field        
That is for ever England. There shall be        
In that rich earth a richer dust concealed;        
A dust whom England bore, shaped, made aware,                 
Gave, once, her flowers to love, her ways to roam,        
A body of England's breathing English air,        
Washed by the rivers, blest by suns of home.        

And think, this heart, all evil shed away,        
A pulse in the eternal mind, no less        
    Gives somewhere back the thoughts by England given;        
Her sights and sounds; dreams happy as her day;        
And laughter, learnt of friends; and gentleness,        
    In hearts at peace, under an English heaven.

Now, for your homework, compare and contrast these two passages with William Cullen Bryant's Thanatopsis, being certain to remark upon the differences between the American and UKer views on Death.