Thomas Hardy, a British author, wrote this poem in the mid-1800s. I read it a hundred years later while teaching English at Oakwood Junior High in what was then called East Detroit, Michigan. If you think this is going to be a mournful blog about death, you may be only partially right. My intention is to motivate, not to depress. Let me throw the boomerang out there again.
When we got our yearbooks in the late spring of 1966 when I was about to graduate from University of Detroit High School, I was, of course, drawn to any pictures of me. But then I became intrigued by the list of accomplishments next to each graduate’s picture. I immediately began comparing my list to others’ accomplishments. To this day, I remember some troubling, if not scary, results from this scanning. Several students did not have one item next to their names!! How could this be? An editorial mistake? Truly, a student couldn’t go through four years of high school without making any memory.
Think of what we humans want most in life: to be noticed and to be remembered. We go to great lengths trying to be noticed from tattoos to sexy outfits to crazy hairstyles to outlandish behavior – anything to gain attention. Memorials ranging from city names, school names, public buildings to just the normal sized headstone on a grave are all created to maintain the deceased legacy. But after two generations go by, how many are actually remembered? When I die, no one will remember my grandfather who died in the 1970s. Is this a depressing reality or a warning?
And now, the boomerang is returning. The woman in Hardy’s poem had died and was speaking from her grave. She was excited that the ground above her coffin was being disturbed, being dug upon. She mistakenly thought that it was her former lover, then her relatives, and then even her enemy. But, it was none of the above. They had gone on with their lives with her lover having “went to wed, one of the brightest wealth has bred.”
Yet, someone was digging on her grave. “O, it is I, my mistress dear, your little dog who still lives near.” With this pronouncement, the dead woman becomes excited stating, ”That one true heart was left behind. What feeling do we ever find to equal among human kind a dog’s fidelity!” Not so fast there, dead person! It seems that the dog was there to bury a bone and simply “forgot it was your resting place.”
CARPE DIEM
Ah, Are You Digging on My Grave?
By Thomas Hardy
“Ah, are you digging on my grave
My loved one? — planting rue?”
— “No, yesterday he went to wed
One of the brightest wealth has bred.
‘It cannot hurt her now,’ he said,
‘That I should not be true.'”
“Then who is digging on my grave?
My nearest dearest kin?”
— “Ah, no; they sit and think, ‘What use!
What good will planting flowers produce?
No tendance of her mound can loose
Her spirit from Death’s gin.’ “
“But some one digs upon my grave?
My enemy? — prodding sly?”
— “Nay: when she heard you had passed the Gate
That shuts on all flesh soon or late,
She thought you no more worth her hate,
And cares not where you lie.”
“Then, who is digging on my grave?
Say — since I have not guessed!”
— “O it is I, my mistress dear,
Your little dog, who still lives near,
And much I hope my movements here
Have not disturbed your rest?”
“Ah yes! You dig upon my grave . . .
Why flashed it not on me
That one true heart was left behind!
What feeling do we ever find
To equal among human kind
A dog’s fidelity!”
“Mistress, I dug upon your grave
To bury a bone, in case
I should be hungry near this spot
When passing on my daily trot.
I am sorry, but I quite forgot
It was your resting-place.”
