Program 2: Reflections on the grave

This program follows from the prevous one on the shortness of life and the inevitabioity of death. It is poetry of people reflecting on the grave and its contents.

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Ideas that have shaped human history as expressed in poetry, speeches, myth, and documents. A podcast by Alan and Ford.

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The anonymity of the grave and its occupants is portrayed by the English poet Thomas Grey, 1716-1771, in his poem Anelogy written in a country churchyard, where Gray attempts to imagine the past lives in the village of the dead who occupy the graves, is similar in spirit to the Beatles' song Eleanor Rigby, about the funeral that no one attended and the grave that goes unvisited. Thomas Gray was an English poet, classical scholar, and professor at Cambridge University, known for an introspective, melancholic, and meditative poetry, often focusing on the themes of death and loss. He foreshadowed the English romantic movement of William Wordsworth, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, John Keats, Percy Shelley, Lord Byron, and William Blake, some of whom featuring in later programs. For the unfamiliar listener, William Wordsworth once defined romantic poetry as, quote, the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings. It takes its origins from emotions recollected in tranquility. As with most historical poetry, the language is dated and can be difficult for present-day listeners to understand. This particular poem is a long one, and so only excerpts from it are read. An elegy written in a country churchyard of Thomas Grey. The curfew tolls the knell of parting day. The lowering herds winds slowly over the lee. The ploughman homeward plods his weary way, And leaves the world to darkness and to me. Now fades the glimmering landscape on the sight, and all the air of solemn stillness holds, save where the beetle wheels his droning flight, And drowsing tinklings lull the distant folds. Beneath those rugged elms that yule tree shade, Where heaves the turf in many a mouldering heap, each in his narrow cell forever laid, The rude forefathers of the hamlet sleep. For them no more the blazing hearth shall burn, Or busy housewife ply her evening care. No children runs to lisp their sire's return, climb his knees with envied kiss to share. Oft did the harvest to their sickle yield, their furrows off the stubborn glebe has broke. How jacund did they drive their team afield, How bowed the wood beneath their sturdy stroke? The burst of heraldry, the pomp of power, and all that beauty, all that wealth ever gave, await alike the inevitable hour, path of glory leads but to the grave. Perhaps in this neglected spot is laid Some heart once pregnant with celestial fire, hands that the rod of empire might have swayed, Or wait to escape the living lyre. But knowledge to their eyes her ample page, rich with spoils of time, did ne'er unroll. Chill penury repressed their noble rage, And froze the junior current of the soul. Far from the matting crowds ignoble strife, their sober wishes never learnt to stray. Along the cool sequestered vale of life, they kept the noiseless tenor of their way. Yet even these bones from insult to protect some frail memorial still erect nigh, with uncouth rhymes and shapeless culture decked, implores the passing tribute of a sigh. Their name, their years by the unlettered muse, the place of fame and elegy supply. And many a holy text around she screws that teach the rustic moralist to die. Robert Louis Stevenson, 1850 to 1894, was a Scottish novelist, essayist, poet, and travel writer. He's best known for his novels Treasure Island, The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, and Kidnap. He settled in Samoa in 1890, where alarmed at the increasing European and American influence in the South Sea Islands, his writing turned from romance adventurous fiction towards a darker realism of death. He died of a stroke in Samoa in 1894 at the young age of forty-four. Robert Louis Stevenson wrote his own requiem, which contained the instructions for the first to be inscribed on his grave. It reads Under the wide and starry sky, grave and let me die. Glad did I live and gladly die. And I laid me down with a will, this be the verse you grave for me. Here he lies where he longed to be. Home is the soldier, home from the sea, and the hunter home from the hill. William Wadsworth, 1770 to 1850, was an English romantic poet, so long as Samuel Taylor Coleridge helped to launch the romantic age in English literature. Wadsworth lived much of his life in the Lakes District of England, which featured prominently in his poetry. He was a poet borrowed of the UK. The poet's epitaph was written in 1799, just at the end of the French Revolution. Wordsworth imagines the gravestone of a poet. He speaks in the voice of someone who sees the poet's headstone on the grave and reads the words written there. The epitaph says that the poet in the grave was not very famous and that people often misunderstood him. He did not seek money or praise. He cared more about truth and feelings than success. The speaker says the poet had a deep love for nature and for the simple joys of life, but his love also caused him sadness. The poet's heart was gentle. He often felt pain in a world full of noise and ambition. On one analysis, Wordsworth's central claim is that most kinds of worldly authority make you unfit to stand honestly at the poet's grave. The poem opens, turning people away by type satirists, lawyers, doctors, soldiers, physicians, moralists. What disqualifies them isn't simply their job, but the posture that comes with it, the habit of using other people as material. The speaker repeatedly insists that before you can think upon the dead, you must first learn how to love the living, without turning love into a project, a proof, or a performance. The poet's epitaph by William Wadsworth Art thou a satirist in the van of public conflicts trained and bred. First learn to love one living man, then mayst thou think upon the dead. A lawyer art thou, draw not nigh, go carry to some fitter place the keenness of that practised eye, the hardness of that sallow face Art thou a man of purple cheer, a rosy man, right plumb to see. Approach yet doctor not too near This grave no cushion is for thee or art thou one of gallant pride, a soldier and no man of chaff welcome, but lie thy sword aside and lead upon a peasant staff. A moralist perchance appears, led ever knows how to this poor sod. Now after continuing in this vein to chide other professions, Wordsworth goes on to note an ordinary man in ordinary clothes nearby and he writes Who is he with modest looks and clad in homely russet brown? He murmurs near the running brook, a music sweeter than their own. He is retired as the noontide dew or fountain in a nonday grove. The outward show of sky and earth, of hills and valleys his view, and impulse of deeper birth have come to him in solitude. In common things that round us lie, some random truths he can impart, the harvest of a quiet eye that broods and sleeps on its own heart. Both man and boy hath been an idler in the land, contented if he might enjoy the things which others understand. Come hither in thy hour of strength, come weak as in the breaking wave, for his stretch thy body at full length, will build thy house upon this grave. Edgar Allan Poe, eighteen oh nine to eighteen forty nine, was an American writer, poet, editor, and literary critic. He is best known for his poetry and short stories, and particularly his tales involving mystery and the macabre. He's widely regarded as one of the central figures of romanticism and gothic fiction in the United States and of early American literature generally. His cause of death remains unknown. It's been attributed to many causes, including alcoholism, substance abuse, and ultimately suicide. Not all graves are in the land, some are at sea, which is what Poe wrote about in his poem The City in the Sea. Poe's cemetery is a ship lying on the floor of the ocean. It still has joint torrents or towers that form part of the boiler of ships of his day. It's not lying so deep that the tides don't affect it. Some sunlight makes its way down to the ships during the day, but not during the night. The poem is a long one, and for that reason, Eptomi are read. Lo death has reared himself a throne, a strange city lying alone. Far down within the dim west, where the good and the bad and the worst and the best have gone to their eternal rest. The shrines and palaces and towers, time eating towers tremble not, resembling nothing that is ours. Around by lifting winds forgot, resignedly beneath the sky the melancholy water lies. No rays from the holy heavens come down on the long night time that town, but light from out the lurid sea streams up the turrets silently. Resignedly beneath the sky the melancholy waters lie. So blend the turrets and shadows there that all seem pendulous in the air, while from the proud tower in the town Death looks gigantically down. But lo a stir is in the air, the waves there is movement there, as if the towers had thrust aside in slightly sinking the dull tides, as if their tops had feebly given a void within the filmy heaven. The waves have now gone a redder glow, the hours are breathing faint and low, and when amid no earthly moans, down that small town shall settle hence, hell rising from a thousand thrones shall do it reverence. Edward Wraith was a so-called phantom poet hailing from an eighteenth century Massachusetts town. He was the author of the famous poem stroke novel called Sleepy Hollow. But Wraith also wrote a series of poems about death in the grave. The first of these The Gravestones Moan. I sit alone where the gravestones moan, and the wicked winds wailed wild, where willows weep and shifting shadows creep, and the dark is deep and defiled. Ghostly sighs where the lantern light dies, death spoke my name in a sable rain, with a voice both grave and grim, tapped his bones on the coal grave stones, as a pale hand pulled me in. For the grave is wide where the dreamers hide, and the dead are buried deep. There's a place for me in Staken Sea, where the restless spirits roam, and the night is kind to the weary mind when the reaper calls you home. He also wrote Where Death Worm Rhythes, which was a lament for the death loved one. It in part reads The night mist descends like a funeral pall, cascading down and consuming all. Upon this hill in sepulchre embrace lies the cold stiffness of thy pallid face. Despicable death, thou wicked cunning knave has haunted me and stolen my love away. Unveil the vault and open thy pitless lid, reveal my jewel that thou hast so hastily hid. Take me, take me into thy dark keep, let her rise while in silence I sleep. Forsooth, O grave, soon I shall fall, trapped in thy thrall, death's final call. Hold me, hold me, O grave so cold, cradle my bones beneath thy stone. There shall I rest in thy silent space by the side of my bride in eternal embrace. The American poet Robert Frost, eighteen seventy four to nineteen sixty three, wrote in a disused graveyard, which reads as follows The living come with grassy tread to read the gravestones on the hill. The graveyard draws the living still, but never any more the dead. The verses in it say and say The living ones who come today to read the stones and go away. Tomorrow dead will come to stay. So sure of death the marble rhyme, yet cannot help marking all the time how no one dead will seem to come. What is it men are shrinking from? It would be easy to be clever and tell the stones Men hate to die and have stopped dying now forever. I think they would believe the lie. In a similar vein, Mayer Anthony wrote a poem Echoes of the Pass In silent prose the stones do stand, guardians of time hand in hand, each marker a story untold of lives once lived in days of old. Whispers of past linger near, in every stone memories clear, echoes of laughter, tears and strife captured in this slice of life. Underneath the moon's gentle glow, stories of old in shadows show a dance of time in quiet repose in the graveyard history flows. Harriet Elizabeth Prescott Spothers 1835 to 1921 was an American writer of novels, poems, and detective stories. In the poem The Lonely Grave, she's reflecting on a lone grave from the American Civil War. It is a long poem, and I read only the opening experiences from it. Blood red the roses bloom in the dell, the bosky place where once the battle fell. Tall have the grass has grown since then rank, the ferns fed the ghastly dew they drank. Oh sweet, sweet, sweet these roses of the south, sweet these rain lilies blowing after drought. Sweet the wild grapes whose bunctures everywhere fling spice upon the lonesome summer air. Sweet the great orange bows and jasmine flowers in darken dust through all the visiting hours, a lonely grave, none care for it, none know his name who all these seasons sleeps below. The Romanian poet, mystic and philosopher Dan Anachi wrote Vale of Twilight As twilight falls the graveyard sighs underneath the painted skies. Shadows lengthen, merge and blend, where the veil of life they bend. In this dim light spirits may roam amidst the graves their silent home. A fleeting touch, a whispered tale in twilight veil, the past unveils. The living in the dead so near, in this hour boundaries disappear. In the quiet dust stories entwined In the graveyard past and present align. On the same theme, Ricky Menzus wrote The Silent Sentinel Steadfast and still the stones do keep vigil over those in eternal sleep. Sentinel silent in rows they stand, guarding the memories of the land. Each etching a name, a date, a life, a testament of joy, love and strife. In their silence they speak so loud of each soul once bright now shroud. Guardians of stories of times gone by, under the sun, the moon and sky. In their watch we remember and find the last footprints of mankind. The topic of the grave is so common that are a collection of poems from unknown author on the topic. The first is Serenity's Garden, a garden of peace amidst light's roar, where time stands still forevermore. Beneath the trees in quiet rest lies tales of those once earth's guests. Here the world seems so slow, in each grave love's final show, a tranquil haven for souls to sleep, in nature's arm, secrets they keep. In this serenity we find space to reflect, remember and embrace. In the quiet life echoes heard, in the graveyard, peace is stirred. The next one is called Whispering Winds, and bear in mind these were all by anonymous poets. The wind whispers through the stones, carrying tales in hushed tones. A gentle breeze, a sigh, a song of life's once here, now gone. In every gust the story heard, without a single spoken word, a link between now and then in the wind they speak again. The whispers weave through the air, in the graveyard everywhere, a bridge of tales old and new, in the wind they pass through. Next one is called Moonlit Memories. Beneath the moon's gentle gaze the graveyard lies in a silvery haze. Each stain a memory clear and bright, bathed in soft ethereal light. Paths where shadows play, echoing lives of yesterday. Then this light memories stir. Time's once live the gentle blur. T The moon watches silent and wise Over the graves under the skies. T in its light we feel the ties of moonly memories where love lies. The next is the gates to eternity. At the gates of stone we pause and see the threshold of eternity. A line between the here and there, in the graveyard both worlds share. Each step within a journey deep, into the realm of endless sleep, a crossing over a passage wide, where life and death gently collide. In these gates we ponder and roam between the earth and the great unknown. A solemn gate to what lies beyond. In the graveyard, I sternal bond. The next is called resting in harmony. In death's embrace all are the same, no rank, no wealth, no claim to fame. In the graveyard side by side, rest souls of every tide. Here the barriers all fade away, death's equal quiet sway, a field where every walk of life ends in peace, free from strife. Together they sleep in harmony, bound by life's final symphony. In the graveyard equality finds its place, in death's inclusive, gentle embrace. The last of these palms is the unspoken bond. In silent steps amongst the grave, we walk with those beyond the waves. An unspoken bond deep and profound in the graveyard is found. Each visit a silent conversation with those in eternal vacation. A connection that needs no word, in the stillness it is heard. In this the bond we find the link between the living and the bring. In the graveyard silently we bond. Edmund Vance Cook, 1866 to 1932, was a nineteenth and twentieth century poet who wrote the poem How did you die? Did you tackle the trouble that came your way with a resolute heart and cheerful? Or hid your face from the light of day with a craven soul and fearful? Oh, a trouble's a ton or a trouble's an ounce, or a trouble is what you make it. And it isn't the fact that you're hurt that counts, only how did you take it? You were beat to worth. Well, well, that's that. Come up with a smiling face. It's nothing against you to fall down flat, but to lie there, that's disgrace. The harder you're thrown, why the higher you bounce. Be proud of your blackened eye. It isn't the fact that you're lick that counts, it's how did you fight and why. And though you be done to death, what then? If you battled the best you could, if you played your part in the world of men, why the critic will call it good. Death comes with a crawl or comes with a pounce. Whether he's slow or spry, it isn't the fact that you're dead that counts, but only how did you die. Ernest Hemingway, an American novelist, 1899 to 1961. He won a Nobel Prize in Literature and the Pulitzer Prize for his short novel, The Old Man and the Sea. He served in World War One as an ambulance driver, and he fought in the Spanish Civil War of 1937. He died in 1961 as a suicide. Hemingway expressed a similar view to that of Cook about the meaning of life and the approach of death. He wrote, quote, Every man's life ends in the same way. It's only the details of how he lived and how he died that distinguish one man from another. And on the issue of adversity, he wrote, Man is not made for defeat. A man can be destroyed but not defeated. At the time of his death, Hemingway was suffering from chronic pain from injuries he'd received in the First World War and in an aeroplane crash some years before his death. He's reputed to have said before his death that when he could no longer drink with the young men and pull the women, then life wasn't worth living and he would end his life. At age 62, he shot himself with a shotgun. This is somewhat difficult to reconcile with the quotes I've just provided from Hemingway himself. Winston Hugh Orton, better known as WH Orton, 1907 to 1973, was a British American poet. He wrote Funeral Blues, which reads Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone, prevent the dog from barking with a juicy bone, silence the pianos, and with muffled drums bring out the coffin, let the mourners come, let aeroplanes circle moaning overhead, scribble on the sky message he's dead, put crate bows round the white necks of the public doves, let the traffic policeman wear black cotton gloves. He was my north, my south, my east, my west, my working week and my Sunday rest. My noon, my midnight, my talk, my song. I thought that love would last forever. I was wrong. The stars are not wanted now. Put out every one, pack up the moon and dismantle the sun, pour away the ocean and sweep up the wood, for nothing now can ever come to any good. The American native poet Claire Harner, nineteen oh nine to nineteen seventy seven, wrote the poem Immortality, which reads Do not stand at my grave and weep. I am not there, I do not sleep. I am a thousand winds that blow, I am the diamond glints on snow. I am the sunlight on ripened grain, I am the gentle autumn rain. When you awake in a morning's hush, I am the swift uplifting rush of quiet birds encircled flight. I am the soft stars that shine at night. Do not stand in my grave and cry. I am not there, I did not die. And this Scottish poet Robert Burns, whose biography we've traversed, wrote Epitaph on a friend which reads An honest man lies here, the friend of man, the friend of truth, the friend of age and guide of youth. Few hearts like his with virtue warmed, few heads with knowledge so informed. If there's another world he lives in bliss. If there is none, he made the best of this.

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A podcast by Alan and Ford.