Death stands above me
4 lines · about a minute to read aloud
Walter Savage Landor · 1853
Free to use in the UK and the US
Death stands above me
Walter Savage Landor · 1853
Death stands above me, whispering low I know not what into my ear: Of his strange language all I know Is, there is not a word of fear.
Imaginary Conversations and Poems: A Selection, Walter Savage Landor. Project Gutenberg eBook #21628, https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/21628/pg21628.txt, printed as number XXVI and untitled.
Public domain in the UK and the US · serany.app
What Serany thinks about this poem
Background
One of the short poems Landor wrote in his seventies and published in 1853, eleven years before he died. It sits next to 'I strove with none' in the same sequence.
Meaning
Death is leaning over him and saying something he cannot make out. He has no idea what comes next and he says so. But whatever is being said to him, none of it sounds frightening. It is the rare funeral poem that admits it does not know anything and is comforting anyway.
Who's it for
Read this where the family do not believe anything in particular and will not pretend to. It offers no heaven and makes no claim, and it still says the thing a frightened room needs to hear. Four lines, so it works as the quiet moment between two longer readings, and it suits a death after an illness where the person was not afraid at the end. It is the wrong choice if the family want a poem that promises they will meet again.
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