Death | Discouragement | Forgetting | Humor | Poetry | Remembering

AH, ARE YOU DIGGING ON MY GRAVE?
Thomas Hardy published a number of clever and witty poems under the general title Satires of Circumstance. One of the most delightful is the following in which the spirit of the dead person in the grave is puzzled by the disturbance of someone digging on her grave. She holds a dialogue with the intruder as follows: “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 us!
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?”