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Lament: An Elegiac poem discussing the Graveyard Poets in rhyming verse

One poet feeling rather bereft
Wrote a poem about his dead wife
"A Nightpiece on Death"
Contemplating human life

Father of the Graveyard, Thomas Purnell
The grandfather of Mary Shelley's Frankenstein
Always waiting for the death knell
To finally reach the divine

Hailed from the Emerald Isle
He drank too much and was depressed

Wondering what made life worthwhile
Wondering about eternal rest

So he spilled his thoughts into verse
Images of darkness and of night
Made them rhyme and got published first
So here's a piece, just a sound bite

"The flat smooth stones that bear a name,
The chisel's slender help to fame,
(Which ere our set of friends decay
Their frequent steps may wear away,)"

Robert Blair, a Scottish bard
Wrote the Grave , hailed as great
He was held in high regard
49 editions published by 1798

Below an excerpt for you to peruse
An example of the School so fine
Using the grim reaper as a muse
Here it is line for line

"Cheerless, unsocial plant! that loves to dwell
'Midst skulls and coffins, epitaphs and worms:
Where light-heel'd ghosts, and visionary shades,
Beneath the wan, cold moon (as fame reports)
Embodied thick, perform their mystic rounds, "

First the death of his stepdaughter
Next the reaper came for his bride
But rather than let his soul falter
He wrote a poem and took it in stride

"Night Thoughts" was thought of as far too long
Yet this is the piece that was translated
Some thought he was the Father and that's just wrong
But the piece is far too underrated

No, he didn't use "melancholy" or "moonlight" first
He never claimed he had though he didn't refute
Still one should judge the merit of the verse
Famous in France though in England of ill-repute

The English felt he did not seem sincere
But the French made him the father of the Romantique
Despite it all he had a career
Stringing words so often dark and bleak

He brought the movement to them all
To the Germans, Italians and the Swedes
His derivative work did enthral
So much so, it was also translated into Portuguese

Using blank verse and no sing-song rhyme
To the English he was long forgot
"Procrastination is the thief of time,"
He wrote and the French loved him a lot.

The Complaint: or Night Thoughts on Life, Death and Immortality
A poem comprised of nine nights
As the fatal sisters spin and weave a destiny
Again, here are some sound bites.

"In human hearts what bolder thought can rise,
Than man's presumption on to-morrow's dawn?
Our mountain hopes, spin out eternal schemes
As we the Fatal Sisters could out-spin,
And big with life's futurities, expire."

So poets who loved gloom and the strange
Provided the roots of spooky tales
Inspiring artists of such range
From Poe to Stoker to Nine Inch Nails

Learn more about this author, Debbie Tam.
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