The landscape of the dead ….

… THOMAS GRAY AND CHURCHYARD REFLECTIONS. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)

The impact of Gray’s Elegy … extends beyond the realm of literature. Thanks to this one poem, the churchyard – especially the country churchyard – has a unique imaginative potency and emotional appeal: we feel at home in a churchyard, wandering among the gravestones in the long, soft shadow of Gray’s masterpiece.

There was a nuns’ graveyard on the grounds of the convent next to where I went to grade school. I often strolled past there, and sometimes sat nearby. The convent  — Eden Hall — is now gone, its grand buildings razed. It is a park now. I have never been in the park. I don’t know what was done with the graves.