"In a Disused Graveyard" by Robert Frost

               In Ms. Lemon's freshman year English class, I was often referred to as the girl with the odd fascination with death. As you might imagine, this was not exactly how I planned to brand myself upon entering the high school. However, having chosen my first outside reading novel about a serial killer and his...adventures, I must confess that I did, in fact, fit that bill. Three years later, I have memorized Robert Frost's "In a Disused Graveyard." I guess some things never change...

In a Disused Graveyard

Robert Frost

The living come with grassy tread

To read the gravestones on the hill;

The graveyard draws the living still,

But never anymore the dead.

The verses in it say and say: 

"The ones who living come today

To read the stones and go away

Tomorrow dead will come to stay."

So sure of death the marbles rhyme, 

Yet can't help marking all the time

How no one dead will seem to come. 

What is it men are shrinking from?

It would be easy to be clever 

And tell the stones: Men hate to die

And have stopped dying now forever.

I think they would believe the lie. 

               I discovered this poem just days ago, as I flipped through a book of Frost's poetry. I love it for two reasons. I shall outline below:

               I read the first line, and I am there. My family harbors a special interest in cemeteries, so I am truthful when I say that I have wandered for hours through acres upon acres of gravestones and obelisks. "The living come with grassy tread...." I read the first line, and I am walking up a slight hill, grass grazing my legs because let's face it, the city does not shove all of its resources into maintaining the land of the dead. In all reality, this simplistic first line holds just about all the reader needs to know in six little words. The use of the words "the living" creates a stark contrast between the graveyard's inhabitants and its visitors and seems to produce a sense of detachment in regards to the strangers. They walk with "grassy tread," most likely having to navigate through overgrown pathways.This is confirmed two lines later, as we learn that the graveyard is no longer used; it simply serves as a playground for bored and interested strangers to explore a community long gone. If you have ever explored these eerily peaceful cities, you can hear the crunch of the grass beneath your feet and how such a miniscule sound can announce to the earth your disruptive presence. With one line of a poem, the reader is introduced to this juxtaposition between the living and the dead and speculates that these "living" are not quite where they belong.

                The last five lines of this poem are fantastic. While I could write pages on just that last line of the poem, I must focus my attention on the most important word in the poem: "shrinking." The tombstones are personified, as they speak of the passing of people who will eventually join everyone else in the ground. The poem asks, "what is it men are shrinking from?" Why are people in such denial about where they will eventually land? Frost's choice of "shrinking" introduces the element of fear to the poem. The strangers peruse the tombstones out of curiosity, not only interested in what the stones themselves say but also in this mysterious idea of spending eternity under people's feet.  For fear of dying, we live in denial, nonchalantly wandering around cemeteries and at times, going as far as to convince ourselves that our own fates will be different. In the poem, it seems that the graveyard is being taken advantage of. It is used by "the living" as an outlet to explore and dip their toes into the Garden of Good and Evil. As the loved ones of those residing in the graveyard die themselves, those buried there fall anonymous, left to be judged by only what was inscribed upon their tombstone.