On "In a Disused Graveyard"

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Mordecai Marcus

"In a Disused Graveyard" follows three poems that glance with various degrees of wistfulness at disappointed ideals that end in uncertainty or death. Here the speaker gently mocks people's unwillingness to die and gives stones the ability to see and say that death has ceased. The scene, however, is concrete: a New England graveyard no longer used because its community has faded. But visitors still come to read the tombstones, not out of affectionate attachment but out of curiosity. The attraction of these living by the dead emphasizes the contrast between vitality and arrest. The tombstones’ inscriptions speak of how those reading them must eventually join the dead. The tombstones' personification gently contrasts with their real incapacity, the speaker satirically focuses fear in the word "shrinking." At last he shifts voice and denies the kind of cleverness in which he has been engaging. He speculates that he could lie to the tombstones by expressing the human hope not to die as if that hope had become true, and he makes his strongest personification of the stones as dead people by sadly reflecting on the likelihood of fooling them. The last line radiates meanings: the stones "would believe the lie" because they know what fear is like (except that they know nothing), they would believe it because no one seems to join them anymore, and they would believe it because the speaker has projected his life-haunted feelings into them.

From The Poems of Robert Frost: an explication. Copyright © 1991 by Mordecai Marcus.

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IN A DISUSED GRAVEYARD-ROBERT FROST

The living come with grassy tread 
To read the gravestones on the hill; 
The graveyard draws the living still, 
But never anymore the dead. 
The verses in it say and say: 
"The ones who living come today 
To read the stones and go away 
Tomorrow dead will come to stay." 
So sure of death the marbles rhyme, 
Yet can't help marking all the time 
How no one dead will seem to come. 
What is it men are shrinking from? 
It would be easy to be clever 
And tell the stones: Men hate to die 
And have stopped dying now forever. 
I think they would believe the lie. 

Well look at the title of the poem and that should give you a clue...In an 'disused graveyard'..meaning that no new corpses are buried there anymore..there will no longer be any new men buried there..no new gravestones written anymore. 

The last bit means ....It would be easier to tell the stones that men hate dying and that is why they no longer die lol...he is saying that he thinks the stones would believe that as a reason for why there are no new graves being made there rather than just say that the graveyard is no longer in use..He speaks of the stones as if they were people ..that is how he personifies the stones.the stones have thoughts ..lol clever writing and humorous too. hope it helps

Analysis | Critique | Overview Below |||

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Many people analyze this poem as one that exemplifies the fear of death, of passing on, but I think of it a much more beautiful poem with a more hopeful message than that. No, I don't think this poem has to do with fear of dying at all. This poem is all about how the dead are never forgotten by the living.
"The living come with grassy tread
To read the gravestones on the hill;
The graveyard draws the living still,
But never anymore the dead."
The "grassy tread" of the living may point to the idea that they visit the graveyard often, getting grass on their feet a lot as they go to the graves of the dead. The graveyard "draws...never anymore the dead" but the living still come! To commemorate the dead! To honor them, even though they are long gone. No one is being buried in this "disused" graveyard; no one is being buried in the memories of the living or being forgotten.
"The verses in it say and say:
'The ones who living come today
To read the stones and go away
Tomorrow dead will come to stay.'"
The gravestones are Death claiming more of the living will be buried and forgotten in the graves there.
"So sure of death the marbles rhyme,
Yet can't help marking all the time
How no one dead will seem to come."
And yet Death is noticing and keeping time that no one is being buried, that no one dead is coming anymore. Even in death, we are alive if the living still remember and see our graves and never forget us.
"What is it men are shrinking from?"
This is the question Death is asking because no one dead is coming to graveyard anymore. The dead being only the people who have been forgotten, and since the living still visit those who have passed on, no one is really dead.
"It would be easy to be clever
And tell the stones: Men hate to die
And have stopped dying now forever.
I think they would believe the lie."

The living can say to Death, cleverly, that men have stopped dying now, and Death would believe us because Death only claims the dead, those who have been forgotten and tossed away, and since no one has been forgotten in this poem, Death isn't claiming anyone anymore.

My take -

In Frost's poem,  the narrator doesn't want to be reminded of death.  But the gravestones in graveyard are a constant reminder of death.  The stones are saying -- in their inscriptions -- that "Tomorrow dead will come to stay."  The narrator, in his spite, wants to play a trick on the stones and tell them that the reason why this graveyard is dead is because people have stopped dying. And he believes that the stones would believe him because they have not seen dead people arrive in this graveyard.

We are like these stones.  Forgetful.  We tend to forget death.  We tend to be living in a dead graveyard.  We are as stupid as the stones.  We are gullible.  In the gaiety of the living days, we forget that death will ever come.  We are sure of something that will not come to pass. 

We are like dead graveyards.  Because we have not seen death ourself, we tend to ignore it.  If someone would tell us that death does not happen anymore, we would probably believe them. 

Frost is quite indisputably the master of images. I can still remember
the intense reverie of meaning I experienced, when I first read this
poem. We have heard and heard too much, about death - its ultimacy, its
indefatigability and the utter hopelessness. We have heard a few say how
one must succumb to it with little resistance, and another - how one
must "rage against it." In all its varied essences and flavours, death
stands apart with one single unchanging attribute - the finality.

Which is why these fifteen lines shine stark in significance. Frost in a
single image, hooks the finality of images of death in one big question
mark, where neither the mortal men nor the waiting grave will achieve
the final victory. The graveyard, the elemental metaphor for a fullstop,
has brimmed without space, and now the roles are reversed. Though the
living still come and visit loved ones, the graveyard will never again
see them dead. The eternal wisdom in what the grave takes pride in
uttering to generations of men - "The ones who living come today/ To
read the stones and go away/ Tomorrow dead will come to stay." is
shattered. The certitude of the marble grounds is now jarring because,
neither the graveyard nor the wisdom has escaped what it celebrates so
tirelessly - death itself. And to the nether-land that wonders in
shrouting suspicion, "What hate men in me? Why don't they come to my
laps anymore?" one might just say "Men hate to die. And they will not
anymore."

As one tries to explain and the other to believe in this
mock-hypothesis, is not Death and all its allied emotions and images
failed metaphors? Do we really see Death and does wisdom really dawn or
are we merely fooling ourselves like the graveyard?