18 pages • 36 minutes read
Do Not Stand at My Grave and Weep
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Symbols & Motifs
Birds
The speaker of “Do Not Stand at My Grave and Weep” manifests through various natural phenomena; in Lines 10 and 11, the speaker takes the form of a rush of air, lifting “quiet birds in circling flight” (Line 11). The speaker describes the draft of air as “swift,” meaning “sudden” (Line 10). But birds called swifts fly in circular patterns, using thermal drafts to facilitate long migrations. Unrelated to songbird species, swifts’ quick, darting movements call to mind their closer relatives, hummingbirds. Their name itself may constitute anthimeria, the transfer of a word from one part of speech to another.
Thinking of the circling birds as swifts amplifies the metaphor of birds as the speaker’s soul. While birds commonly symbolize freedom, nature, or even the Holy Spirit, in this instance, the ever-mobile swift, who can sleep in flight, parallels the speaker’s flexible movement through multiple forms. Once the speaker denies their presence in the grave, they become omnipresent, until they inhabit time itself: “I am the day transcending night” (Line 12).
Grain
In keeping with the mood of a bereavement poem, the poem’s natural metaphors occupy two seasons, autumn and winter. The image of grain in poetry can represent potential, the growth process, or the harvest, depending on context. The “ripened grain” in Line 7 tells where the speaker falls in the process: The grain, completely matured, waits for harvest. Similarly, Keats, in his “Ode to Autumn,” revels in the abundance of the harvest and addresses Autumn itself, saying “Sometimes whoever seeks abroad may find / Thee sitting careless on a granary floor.” In “Do Not Stand at my Grave and Weep,” the image of grain, as it relates to the theme of nature and resurrection, directly recalls biblical symbolism: “Verily, verily, I say unto you, Except a corn of wheat fall into the ground and die, it abideth alone: but if it die, it bringeth forth much fruit” (KJV, John 12:24). Like the circling birds and the speaker themself, the grain indicates a coming transformation. Soon, harvesters will clear the field and the grain will be milled and put to use in a new form.
Sleep
Sleep can be a poetic shorthand for death. From Shakespeare’s Macbeth to Chandler’s The Big Sleep, the euphemism conveys meaning and mood, in most cases without becoming a cliché. In this poem, the sleep metaphor makes a bookend between the four-line introduction and the parallel four-line conclusion. In Line 4, the speaker claims “I do not sleep,” maintaining a poetic distance from the true terminology of death, though we know from Line 2 that the speaker has a grave. The poet then avoids any form of the word “death” until the final word of the poem, where the euphemism turns to the actual word, strengthening the wonder of the speaker’s assertion: “I did not die” (Line 16).
Sleep separates the speaker from the reader as well. In the middle of the poem, the speaker tells the reader where they will be “as you awake” (Line 9). If unfolding in the present as the poem’s tense suggests, the reader sleeps while the speaker conveys their message, making the incident a dream communication. More likely, the speaker refers to the reader’s daily waking: All of the speaker’s incarnations come from the reader’s experience. The mourner still awakes to the world, and the departed soul’s existence links to that awakening. When the bereaved loved one perceives beauty and remembers lost love, the soul of the departed inhabits that image.
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