Earth to earth, sort of

In Mount Auburn Cemetery, near Boston.

Adapted from Robert Whitcomb’s “Digital Diary,’’ in GoLocal24.com

“If this is dying then I don’t think much of it.’’

  -- Lytton Stratchey (1880-1932), English writer

I enjoy walking through most graveyards, of which New England has many beauties. Wandering around gorgeous garden cemeteries, such as  Swan Point, on the East Side of Providence, and Mt. Auburn, on the Watertown-Cambridge, Mass., line, can be soothing, even amidst the memento mori.  Actually, giving yourself frequent reminders of death can be healthy: It’s focusing!

But many  cemeteries are running out of space because people keep dying – very thoughtless of them. One of the challenges is that many families still want their loved ones’ corpses preserved  with chemicals and put into coffins in burial vaults or at least concrete-lined, which take up a lot of room for a very long time. I think that’s related to survivors’ varying levels of denial of death. There’s this (to me) weird idea that somehow preserving that organic, decaying thing called a dead body fends off the person’s annihilation. (I see the decay and disappearance of the body as simply its return to what we all came from – ultimately space dust. Call it recycling.) But I realize, as a former churchgoer, that Christians are told to believe in the resurrection of the body.

Cremation is much better than standard burials, though it requires burning natural gas. Take your loved ones’ ashes home with you in a bag and put them in a vase; they won’t mind. Then in a few or many years, someone will probably forget where that vase is, or even whose ashes are in it.

Then there are the environmentally admirable decisions to compost the remains or use hydrolysis to reduce remains to their elements. A gift to Nature. Yes, this goes against some folks’ feeling that the dead body still contains some supernatural life – a feeling that’s been very profitable for the funeral/burial industry.

He preferred to dig

Louis Agassiz's grave in the famous-dead-person-rich Mount Auburn Cemetery, which straddles Cambridge and Watertown, Mass. It’s a boulder from the moraine of the Aar Glaciers, near where he once lived in Switzerland.

“I cannot afford to waste my time making money.’’

— Louis Agassiz (1807-1873), Swiss-born geologist and biologist recognized as an innovative and prodigious scholar of Earth's natural history.

He emigrated to the United States in 1847 after he visited Harvard University, where he went on to become professor of zoology and geology, to head its Lawrence Scientific School and to found its Museum of Comparative Zoology.

He made vast institutional and scientific contributions to zoology, geology, and related areas, including writing multivolume research books. He is particularly known for his contributions to ichthyological classification, including of extinct species such as megalodon, and to the study of geological history, including the founding of glaciology.

But unfortunately, a Creationist, he resisted the Darwinian theory of evolution and shared in the racism of his times.

Louis Agassiz

'Sober gladness'

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s grave in glorious Mount Auburn Cemetery, which straddles Cambridge and Watertown, Mass.

With what a glory comes and goes the year!
The buds of spring, those beautiful harbingers
Of sunny skies and cloudless times, enjoy
Life’s newness, and earth’s garniture spread out;
And when the silver habit of the clouds
Comes down upon the autumn sun, and with
A sober gladness the old year takes up
His bright inheritance of golden fruits,
A pomp and pageant fill the splendid scene.

There is a beautiful spirit breathing now
Its mellow richness on the clustered trees,
And, from a beaker full of richest dyes,
Pouring new glory on the autumn woods,
And dipping in warm light the pillared clouds.
Morn on the mountain, like a summer bird,
Lifts up her purple wing, and in the vales
The gentle wind, a sweet and passionate wooer,
Kisses the blushing leaf, and stirs up life
Within the solemn woods of ash deep-crimsoned,
And silver beech, and maple yellow-leaved,
Where Autumn, like a faint old man, sits down
By the wayside a-weary. Through the trees
The golden robin moves; the purple finch,
That on wild cherry and red cedar feeds,
A winter bird, comes with its plaintive whistle,
And pecks by the witch-hazel, whilst aloud
From cottage roofs the warbling blue-bird sings;
And merrily, with oft-repeated stroke,
Sounds from the threshing-floor the busy flail.

O what a glory doth this world put on
For him who, with a fervent heart, goes forth
Under the bright and glorious sky, and looks
On duties well performed, and days well spent!
For him the wind, ay, and the yellow leaves
Shall have a voice, and give him eloquent teachings.
He shall so hear the solemn hymn, that Death
Has lifted up for all, that he shall go
To his long resting-place without a tear.

— “Autumn,’’ by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807-1882), probably the best known New England poet of his time

The Bigelow Chapel at Mount Auburn Cemetery. It’s named after Jacob Bigelow (1787-1879), Boston/Cambridge-based physician, botanist and botanical illustrator and prime mover in the creation of the internationally known cemetery, where many New England notables are buried.

'Human spiders'

A ropewalk

In that building, long and low,
With its windows all a-row,
  Like the port-holes of a hulk,
Human spiders spin and spin,
Backward down their threads so thin
  Dropping, each a hempen bulk. 

At the end, an open door;
Squares of sunshine on the floor
  Light the long and dusky lane;
And the whirring of a wheel,
Dull and drowsy, makes me feel
  All its spokes are in my brain. 

As the spinners to the end
Downward go and reascend,
  Gleam the long threads in the sun;
While within this brain of mine
Cobwebs brighter and more fine
  By the busy wheel are spun. 

Two fair maidens in a swing,
Like white doves upon the wing,
  First before my vision pass;
Laughing, as their gentle hands
Closely clasp the twisted strands,
  At their shadow on the grass. 

Then a booth of mountebanks,
With its smell of tan and planks,
  And a girl poised high in air
On a cord, in spangled dress,
With a faded loveliness,
  And a weary look of care. 

Then a homestead among farms,
And a woman with bare arms
  Drawing water from a well;
As the bucket mounts apace,
With it mounts her own fair face,
  As at some magician's spell. 

Then an old man in a tower,
Ringing loud the noontide hour,
  While the rope coils round and round
Like a serpent at his feet,
And again, in swift retreat,
  Nearly lifts him from the ground. 

Then within a prison-yard,
Faces fixed, and stern, and hard,
  Laughter and indecent mirth;
Ah! it is the gallows-tree!
Breath of Christian charity,
  Blow, and sweep it from the earth! 

Then a school-boy, with his kite
Gleaming in a sky of light,
  And an eager, upward look;
Steeds pursued through lane and field;
Fowlers with their snares concealed;
  And an angler by a brook. 

Ships rejoicing in the breeze,
Wrecks that float o'er unknown seas,
  Anchors dragged through faithless sand;
Sea-fog drifting overhead,
And, with lessening line and lead,
  Sailors feeling for the land. 

All these scenes do I behold,
These, and many left untold,
  In that building long and low;
While the wheel goes round and round,
With a drowsy, dreamy sound,
  And the spinners backward go.

“The Ropewalk,’’ by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807-82), a Portland, Maine, native and later a professor at Harvard. During some of his career he was America’s most famous poet. Ropewalks, where rope was made, especially for New England’s maritime-related businesses, were common enterprises even into the 20th Century. They tended to be sweat shops.

Longfellow’s grave in Cambridge, Mass.’s famous Mount Auburn Cemetery