The most popular poem…
…in the English-speaking world—and perhaps the world as a whole—has quite a backstory:
Frye, who was living in Baltimore at the time, wrote the poem in 1932. She had never written any poetry, but the plight of a young German Jewish woman, Margaret Schwarzkopf, who was staying with her and her husband, inspired the poem. Margaret Schwarzkopf had been concerned about her mother, who was ill in Germany, but she had been warned not to return home because of increasing anti-Semitic unrest. When her mother died, the heartbroken young woman told Frye that she never had the chance to “stand by my mother’s grave and shed a tear”. Frye found herself composing a piece of verse on a brown paper shopping bag. Later she said that the words “just came to her” and expressed what she felt about life and death.
Frye circulated the poem privately, never publishing or copyrighting it. She wrote other poems, but this, her first, endured. Her obituary in The Times made it clear that she was the author of the famous poem, which has been recited at funerals and on other appropriate occasions around the world for 60 years…
What makes poetry “great”? “Do Not Stand…” would not be on any of my lists of great poems in terms of poetic craft. In fact, I don’t know that I’d ever encountered it before yesterday. But in terms of a demonstration of poetry’s ability to reach people and convey something deep and meaningful, one would be hard-pressed to come up with one more “great.”
I believe that it’s the universality of the poem’s subtext that accounts for its popularity. Everyone dies and that reality faces us all. The text declares that our grief is misplaced, based in a false belief, that we are our bodies.
Thus, the poem’s first assertion;
“I am not there.”
For only our bodies ‘die’.
And that premise, lies at the very heart of the battle between right and left because that disagreement is essentially a spiritual one.
“In 1952, [Whittaker] Chambers’s book “Witness” was published to widespread acclaim. Ronald Reagan credited the book as the inspiration behind his conversion from a New Deal Democrat to a conservative Republican.”
There are “two irreconcilable faiths of our time — Communism and God. The Communist vision is the vision of Man without God. Religion and freedom are indivisible. Without freedom the soul dies. Without the soul there is no justification for freedom. Faith is the central problem of this age. The crisis of the Western world exists to the degree in which it is indifferent to God.”
Chambers “believed that the west had willingly turned it’s back on God and unless men turned back to Him there was no hope for freedom and communism would win.”
IMO, it is not important whether we adhere to a particular religious dogma, only that we seek reunion with the divine. God does not reject the soul that seeks/welcomes that presence.
A much better poem is this one by Christina Rossetti:
When I am dead, my dearest,
Sing no sad songs for me;
Plant thou no roses at my head,
Nor shady cypress tree:
Be the green grass above me
With showers and dewdrops wet;
And if thou wilt, remember,
And if thou wilt, forget.
I shall not see the shadows,
I shall not feel the rain;
I shall not hear the nightingale
Sing on, as if in pain:
And dreaming through the twilight
That doth not rise nor set,
Haply I may remember,
And haply may forget.
@Poetry Bully
I disagree. While neither poem exhibits great poetic chops, Christina Rossetti’s is mannered and “poetical” (and not in a good way), while Frye’s simple and unpretentious.
My favorite poem about death is also about lives–the lives of common unnoticed people who had they been born to a higher station might have achieved great things.
Elegy Written In A Country Churchyard:
some passages:
The boast of heraldry, the pomp of pow’r,
And all that beauty, all that wealth e’er gave,
Awaits alike th’ inevitable hour.
The paths of glory lead but to the grave.
…..
Full many a gem of purest ray serene,
The dark unfathom’d caves of ocean bear:
Full many a flow’r is born to blush unseen,
And waste its sweetness on the desert air.
Some village-Hampden, that with dauntless breast
The little tyrant of his fields withstood;
Some mute inglorious Milton here may rest,
Some Cromwell guiltless of his country’s blood.
Alan W:
Gray’s “Elegy” is indeed a great poem. It also has quite a bit of fame and staying power.
I wrote about it here.
Speaking as an average person who doesn’t know much about poetry, I agree with Chuck. Something about “Do Not Stand…” moved me. Rossetti’s poem not so much.
Chris Burgess:
Rossetti’s poem is about NOT being moved. It does not give a message of comfort except for a fairly stoic one:
“[“haply” meaning “by chance”]
So your reaction is not surprising .
In contrast, “Do Not Stand…” was written to be a poem of comfort.
By the way, this poem by Edna St. Vincent Millay can be seen as a counter to the stoicism of Rossetti’s. Her poem rejects such comfort: “More precious was the light in your eyes than all the roses in the world.”
I’m not at all sure that Millay would have been comforted by Frye’s poem, either.
A similar poem with much the same message:
WHEN I MUST LEAVE YOU
By Helen Steiner Rice
When I must leave you
For a little while,
Please do not grieve
And shed wild tears
And hug your sorrow
To you through the years,
But start out bravely
With a gallant smile;
And for my sake
And in my name
Live on and do
All things the same,
Feed not on your loneliness
On empty days,
But fill each waking hour
In useful ways,
Reach out your hand
In comfort and cheer
And I in turn will comfort you
And hold you near;
And never, never
Be afraid to die,
For I am waiting
For you in the sky!
Death is nothing at all.
I have only slipped away into the next room.
I am I, and you are you.
Whatever we were to each other, that we still are.
Call me by my old familiar name, speak to me in the easy way that you always used.
Put no difference in your tone, wear no forced air of solemnity or sorrow.
Laugh as we always laughed at the little jokes we enjoyed together.
Play, smile, think of me, pray for me.
Let my name be ever the household word that it always was, let it be spoken without effect, without the trace of a shadow on it.
Life means all that it ever meant.
It is the same as it ever was; there is unbroken continuity.
Why should I be out of mind because I am out of sight?
I am waiting for you, for an interval, somewhere very near, just round the corner.
All is well.
Henry Scott Holland (1847-1918)
Canon of St. Paul’s Cathedral
Often times read in French at funerals in France, mistakingly attributed to Charles Péguy.
I’m not seeing the cite for “The most popular poem…
…in the English-speaking world” The Wik source seems to say only that “In some respects it became the nation’s favourite poem by proxy…”
Did I miss something that lifted it out of the UK and sounded its barbaric yawp across the world?
For Death, I have always found “Safe In Their Alabaster Chambers” describes how I think about it- the dead know nothing and are touched by nothing- the world goes on spinning along without them. While it is often described as a Christian poem, I have long had my doubts that is what Dickinson intended, but that doesn’t matter to me.
Dickinson always has Christianity firmly in mind when she composes…. to the extent that the King James Bible is always ready to hand .
In the case of Alabaster chambers it comes to hand with the “meek members of the Resurrection” as in those who shall inherit the Earth. [From within their satin lined coffins inside their burial vault of alabaster and stone roofs. ]
It’s complicated a bit because, mistress of the unfinished or abandoned poem that she is, there are ostensibly two versions of this poem (1859 -1861) with different ending stanzas.
The earliest one is
“Light laughs the breeze
In her Castle above them–
Babbles the Bee in a stolid Ear,
Pipe the Sweet Birds ingorant cadence–
Ah, what sagacity perished here!”
but that is most often omitted since it is clearly of second intensity to:
Grand go the Years–in the Crescent–above them–
Worlds scoop their Arcs–
And Firmaments–row–
Diadems–drop–and Doges–surrender–
Soundless as dots–on a Disc of Snow–
At the same time she was not, to say the least, a standard issue Christian of her era:
“Some keep the Sabbath going to Church — / I keep it, staying at Home”.
Neo: “In fact, I don’t know that I’d ever encountered it before yesterday.”
Same here.
How is it that a poem I hadn’t heard of before this post is “The most popular poem…in the English-speaking world–and perhaps the world as a whole”?
I never heard of this poem until now. I like it, but my own favorite is John Donne’s Death Be Not Proud
Death, be not proud, though some have called thee
Mighty and dreadful, for thou art not so;
For those whom thou think’st thou dost overthrow
Die not, poor Death, nor yet canst thou kill me.
From rest and sleep, which but thy pictures be,
Much pleasure; then from thee much more must flow,
And soonest our best men with thee do go,
Rest of their bones, and soul’s delivery.
Thou art slave to fate, chance, kings, and desperate men,
And dost with poison, war, and sickness dwell,
And poppy or charms can make us sleep as well
And better than thy stroke; why swell’st thou then?
One short sleep past, we wake eternally
And death shall be no more; Death, thou shalt die.
Found a family, build a state,
The pledged event is still the same:
Matter in end will never abate
His ancient brutal claim.
Indolence is heaven’s ally here,
And energy the child of hell:
The Good Man pouring from his pitcher clear
But brims the poisoned well.
– Melville –
Here is the poem in case you did not go to the link.
“Do Not Stand at My Grave and Weep” is a poem written in 1932 by Mary Elizabeth Frye. Although the origin of the poem was disputed until later in her life, Mary Frye’s authorship was confirmed in 1998 after research by Abigail Van Buren, a newspaper columnist.
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 awaken in the morning’s hush
I am the swift uplifting rush
Of quiet birds in circled flight
I am the soft stars that shine at night.
Do not stand at my grave and cry;
I am not there. I did not die.
And some variations of the poem via the link:
4 Derivative works
4.1 To All My Loved Ones (“Do Not Stand At My Grave And Weep”)
4.2 The Better Angels of Our Nature (song by Monks of Doom)
4.3 Requiem (composition by Eleanor Joanne Daley)
4.4 “The Ballad of Mairéad Farrell” (song by Seanchai and the Unity Squad)
4.5 “Do Not Stand at My Grave and Weep” (composition by Paul K. Joyce)
4.6 “Prayer” (song by Lizzie West)
4.7 “Do Not Stand at My Grave and Weep” (choral composition by Joseph Twist)
4.8 “Do Not Stand at My Grave and Weep” (choral song by Libera)
4.9 “A Thousand Winds” (song by Man Arai)
4.10 “The Soft Stars that Shine at Night” (choral composition by David Bedford)
4.11 Eternal Light: A Requiem (composition by Howard Goodall)
4.12 “Do Not Stand at My Grave and Weep” (song by Harry Manx and Kevin Breit)
4.13 “You Will Make It” (song by Jem)
4.14 “Do Not Stand at My Grave and Weep” (Music by Rudi Tas)
4.15 “Do Not Stand At My Grave” (song by Caitlin Canty)
4.16 “Alicia’s Poem” (“Do Not Stand At My Grave And Weep”)
I vote for the Henry Scottt Holland poem. I have never liked the other one as much as others do. It shows up on FB frequently …
Vanderleun,
I didn’t mean to imply that Christianity had no role in her poetry, it clearly is one of the greatest influences in her work, but more meant to say what you did at the end- her view of it was atypical for not only her times, but ours. The phrase, “meek members of the Resurrection” is almost tongue in cheek mocking the idea that the Dead have any further existence at all.