I’m Sorry for the Dead Today
poem 529
I’m Sorry for the Dead Today - meaning Summary
Rural Life and the Dead
The speaker reflects on feeling sorrow for the dead amid a busy rural haying season. As neighbors gather and fields fill with carts, mowers, and labor, the speaker imagines graves left behind, possibly lonely without the everyday noises and communities of farm life. The poem contrasts the convivial, seasonal activity of the living with the quiet permanence of burial, suggesting compassion for the way death is separated from communal routines.
Read Complete AnalysesI’m sorry for the Dead Today It’s such congenial times Old Neighbors have at fences It’s time o’ year for Hay. And Broad Sunburned Acquaintance Discourse between the Toil And laugh, a homely species That makes the Fences smile It seems so straight to lie away From all of the noise of Fields The Busy Carts the fragrant Cocks The Mower’s Metre Steals A Trouble lest they’re homesick Those Farmers and their Wives Set separate from the Farming And all the Neighbors’ lives A Wonder if the Sepulchre Don’t feel a lonesome way When Men and Boys and Carts and June, Go down the Fields to Hay
Feel free to be first to leave comment.