Ah, Are You Digging on My Grave

“When I Am Dead, My Dearest” by Christina Rossetti (1862)

Rossetti’s 1862 poem is an interesting companion piece to Hardy’s for two reasons. First, it offers an example of the fascination death held for Victorian poets. Second, the speaker in Rossetti’s poem takes the opposite point of view from Hardy’s deceased speaker: Rossetti’s speaker does not care whether her loved ones will remember and mourn her, as she describes death as total oblivion.

“In Memoriam” by Alfred Lord Tennyson (1850)

In this lengthy poetry cycle written in memory of a deceased friend, Lord Tennyson explores death and grief from various angles, examining the emotional devastation of grief and the religious promises of a life in the hereafter. This cycle is a rich and illustrative example of Victorian attitudes towards death by one of the era’s most famous and influential poets.

“The Voice” by Thomas Hardy (1912)

While “Ah, Are You Digging on My Grave?” depicts the deceased speaker as someone easily forgotten by those she once loved, “The Voice”—written just a year prior—reveals a more emotionally weighty and conflicted attitude towards death and memory. Hardy wrote the poem in response to the death of his wife Emma; the poem explores his grief and his uncertainty as to whether the “woman much missed” can still somehow speak to him from beyond the grave.