Do not Stand at My Grave and Weep: Clare Harner

The poem on a gravestone at St Peter’s church, Wapley, England "Do not stand at my grave and weep" is the first line and popular title of a bereavement poem of disputed authorship.
The poem was popularized during the late 1970s thanks to a reading by John Wayne that inspired further readings on television. During the late 1990s, Mary Elizabeth Frye claimed to have written the poem in 1932.
This was purportedly confirmed in 1998 research conducted for the newspaper column "Dear Abby" (Pauline Phillips).
However, the Oxford journal "Notes and Queries" published a 2018 article claiming the poem, originally titled "Immortality", was in fact written by Clare Harner Lyon (1909-1977) and first published under her maiden name (Harner) in the December 1934 issue of The Gypsy poetry magazine.

Below is the version published in The Gypsy of December 1934 (page 16), under the title "Immortality" and followed by the author's name and location: "CLARE HARNER, Topeka, Kan." The indentation and line breaks are as given there.

Other versions of the poem appeared later, usually without attribution, such as the one below. Differing words are shown in it by italics.

Do not stand at my grave and weep,
I am not there, I do not sleep.

I am a thousand winds that blow;
I am the diamond glints on the snow.

I am the sunlight on ripened grain;
I am the gentle autumn's rain.

When you awaken in the morning's hush,
I am the swift uplifting rush

Of quiet birds in circled flight.
I am the soft star that shines at night.

Do not stand at my grave and cry.
I am not there; I did not die.

The Gravestone at St Peter’s church, Wapley, England

The poem is twelve lines long, rhyming in couplets. Each line is in iambic tetrameter, except for lines five and seven, the fifth having an extra syllable, the seventh, two extra.

Who was Clare Harner?
Kansas native Clare Harner's original poem "Immortality" was reprinted from The Gypsy in the Kansas City Times on 8 February 1935.
Interest surged after the poem was read as a graveside eulogy by actor Harold Gould in the 1979 NBC TV movie Better Late Than Never. In 1981, newspaper columnist Bettelou Peterson identified the author for enquiring readers as "the late Clara Harner Lyon, of California." Later many other claimants to the poem's authorship emerged, including attributions to traditional and Native American origins. TV critic Richard K. Shull first publicized the claim for Mary Elizabeth Frye's authorship in a newspaper column for the Indianapolis News on 9 June 1983.
According to the London Times obituary for the "Baltimore housewife Mary E. Frye," Dear Abby author "Abigail Van Buren" researched the poem's history and concluded in 1998 that Ohio native Mary Elizabeth Frye (November 13, 1905 – September 15, 2004), a self-employed florist and amateur poet, who was living in Baltimore at the time, had written the poem in 1932. In print, however, Dear Abby columns by Pauline Phillips and her daughter Jeanne consistently treated authorship of the poem as an unsolved mystery.
As late as 2004, Jeanne Phillips acknowledged, "I regret that I have never been able to confirm the author." Supposedly 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 supposed 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.
According to her account, Frye circulated the poem privately, never publishing it. Her obituary in The Times asserted her claim to authorship of the famous poem, which has been recited at funerals and on other appropriate occasions around the world for 60 years.

John Wayne read the poem "from an unspecified source" on December 29, 1977 at the memorial service for film director Howard Hawks. After hearing John Wayne's reading, script writer John Carpenter featured the poem in the 1979 television film Better Late Than Never.
A common reading at funerals and remembrance ceremonies, 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's first four lines are engraved on one of the stones of the Everest Memorial, Chukpi Lhara, in Dhugla Valley, near Everest. Reference to the wind and snow and the general theme of the poem, the absence of the departed, particularly resonate with the loved ones of those who "disappeared" in the mountain range to whom the memorial is dedicated.
It is also reproduced on the gravestone of the actor Charles Bronson. This poem is also used as the lyrics in the song "Still Alive" by D.E.Q. This poem is recited on the episode “Welcome to Kanagawa” of season four of Desperate Housewives.
The poem was adapted for use in the video game World of Warcraft.[15] The last four lines of the poem were recited among others in Getting Over It with Bennett Foddy.
The poem is read by Lisa (Kerry Godliman), the dying wife of lead character Tony (played by Ricky Gervais) in the final episode of the Netflix series After Life.

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".

Korean Translation

천개의 바람이 되어

내 무덤 앞에서 울지 말아요
나는 그곳에 있지 않고, 잠들어 있지 않아요

나는 천개의 바람되어 불어다니고
나는 눈위에 금강석처럼 반짝이지요.

나는 익어가는 곡식위의 햇볕이에요
나는 부드러운 가을 비에요

당신이 아침 침묵속에서 깨어날 때
재빨리 상승하는 돌진이기도 하지요,

원형의 비상하는 조용한 새들 중에
나는 한밤중에 빛나는 부드러운 별이랍니다.

내 무덤 앞에서 울지를 말아요,
나는 거기에 있지도 않고, 나는 죽지도 않았어요.
  千風之歌 : 천의 바람노래
日本語——中國漢語繁體互譯： Japanese - Chinese Traditional Chinese Intertranslation

私のお墓の前で　泣かないでください
請不要佇立在我墳前哭泣

そこに私はいません　眠ってなんかいません
我不在那裡 我沒有沉睡不醒

千の风に千の风になって
化作千縷風 我已化身為千縷微風

あの大きな空を 吹きわたっています
翱翔在無限寬廣的天空裡

秋には光になって　畑にふりそそぐ
秋天 化作陽光照射在田地裡

冬はダイヤのように　きらめく雪になる
冬天 化身作白雪綻放鑽石般的光芒

朝は鸟になって　あなたを目覚めさせる
朝陽升起時 幻化為飛鳥輕聲呼喚你

夜は星になって　あなたを见守る
夜幕低垂時 幻化為星辰溫柔守護你


私のお墓の前で　泣かないでください
請不要佇立在我墳前哭泣

そこに私はいません　死んでなんかいません
我不在那裡 我沒有離開這裡

千の风に 千の风になって
化作千風 我已化身為千縷微風

あの大きな空を 吹きわたっています
翱翔在無限寬廣的天空裡

千の风に 千の风になって
化作千風 我已化身為千縷微風

あの大きな空を 吹きわたっています
翱翔在無限寬廣的天空裡

あの大きな空を 吹きわたっています
翱翔在無限寬廣的天空裡…… ……

Immortality image


Bee Gees - Immortality (Live in Las Vegas, 1997


Céline Dion - Immortality (Official Video) ft. Bee Gees - YouTube


 

Immortality Celine Dion

So this is who I am
And this is all I know
And I must choose to live

For all that I can give
The spark that makes the power grow
And I will stand for my dream if I can

Symbol of my faith in who I am
But you are my only
And I must follow on the road, that lies ahead
And I won't let my heart control my head

But you are my only
And we don't say goodbye
We don't say goodbye

And I know what I've got to be
Immortality

I make my journey through eternity
I keep the memory of you and me
Inside

Fulfill your destiny
Is there within the child

My storm will never end
My fate is on the wind

The king of hearts, the joker's wild
We don't say goodbye
We don't say goodbye

I'll make them all remember me
'Cause I have found a dream that must come true

Every ounce of me must see it through

But you are my only
I'm sorry I don't have a role for love to play

Hand over my heart I'll find my way
I will make them give to me
Immortality

There is a vision and a fire in me
I keep the memory of you and me, inside
And we don't say goodbye

We don't say goodbye
With all my love for you

And what else we may do
We don't say, goodbye

  Celine Dion - Immortality (Lyrics) Youtube - Kelsey Straeten


千の風になって - 秋川雅史


化為千風 (千風之歌)


Kwan Ho Chung - March 5, 2022 /