Do Not Stand at My Grave and Weep


"Do Not Stand at My Grave and Weep" is a poem attributed to be written in 1932 by Mary Elizabeth Frye. Although the origin of the poem was disputed until later in her life, Mary Frye's authorship was purportedly confirmed in 1998 after research by Abigail Van Buren, a newspaper columnist.

Origins

There have been many claimants to the poem's authorship, including attributions to traditional and Native American origins. Dear Abby author Abigail Van Buren researched the poem's history and concluded in 1998 that Mary Elizabeth Frye, who was living in Baltimore at the time, had written the poem in 1932. According to Van Buren's research, Frye had never written any poetry, but the plight of a German Jewish woman, Margaret Schwarzkopf, who was staying with her and her husband, had inspired the poem. Margaret Schwarzkopf was concerned about her mother, who was ill in Germany, but she had been warned not to return home because of increasing unrest. When her mother died, the heartbroken young woman told Frye that she never had the chance to "stand by my mother's grave and shed a tear". Frye, according to Van Buren's research, found herself composing a piece of verse on a brown paper shopping bag. Later she said that the words "just came to her" and expressed what she felt about life and death.
Frye circulated the poem privately, never publishing it. She wrote other poems, but this, her first, endured. Her obituary in The Times stated that she was the author of the famous poem, which has been recited at funerals and on other appropriate occasions around the world for 60 years.
However, other, similar versions of this poem had been circulating for some time and were sometimes found in tombstones prior to when Frye claimed to have written the poem, and Frye did not produce any real evidence that she actually wrote this work. In addition, while there had been considerable anti-semitism in Germany back in 1932, the Nazis did not win power till 1933, weakening the veracity of Frye's story which was never corroborated.
The poem was introduced to many in the United Kingdom when it was read by the father of a soldier killed by a bomb in Northern Ireland. The soldier's father read the poem on BBC radio in 1995 in remembrance of his son, who had left the poem among his personal effects in an envelope addressed 'To all my loved ones'.
The poem is common reading for funerals.

BBC poll

To coincide with National Poetry Day 1995, the British television programme The Bookworm conducted a poll to discover the nation's favourite poems, and subsequently published the winning poems in book form. The book's preface stated that "Do Not Stand at My Grave and Weep" was "the unexpected poetry success of the year from Bookworm's point of view"; the poem had "provoked an extraordinary response... the requests started coming in almost immediately and over the following weeks the demand rose to a total of some thirty thousand. In some respects it became the nation's favourite poem by proxy... despite it being outside the competition." This was all the more remarkable, since the name and nationality of the American poet did not become known until several years later. In 2004 The Times wrote: "The verse demonstrated a remarkable power to soothe loss. It became popular, crossing national boundaries for use on bereavement cards and at funerals regardless of race, religion or social status".

Translations

The poem has been translated into Danish, Dutch, French, German, Hebrew, Croatian, Ilocano, Japanese, Korean, Russian, Spanish, Swedish, Tagalog, and other languages. Several Swedish versions exist. One version starts: "Gråt ej vid min grav..." Translated, it reads: "Do not weep at my grave - I am not there / I am in the sun's reflection in the sea / I am in the wind's play above the grain fields / I am in the autumn's gentle rain / I am in the Milky Way's string of stars / And when on an early morning you are awaked by bird's song / It is my voice that you are hearing / So do not weep at my grave - we shall meet again."
Every so often the poem and similar variations appear in death and funeral announcements in Swedish morning papers. On August 29, 2010, the Swedish newspaper Dagens Nyheter carried the following short English version: "I am thousand winds that blow / I am the diamond glints on snow / I am the sunlight, I am the rain / Do not stand on my grave and cry / I am not there / I did not die".

Derivative works

Several notable choral compositions, pop songs, and other creative works have been based on "Do Not Stand at My Grave and Weep", adapting lines from Frye's poem as lyrics.