The Grave Poem

962 Words2 Pages

The Graveyard
By Nick Strong

This poem dramatizes the conflict of the regret and acrimony of a murder. The setting of the poem holds a valuable meaning because not only does it contain symbolization, it also contributes toward the dreary, sorrowful tone the poem is purposefully using. The poem titled “The Graveyard” by Nick Strong is literally about a graveyard that holds past events of disasters, heartbreak, and crime. There is a third-person speaker for this poem, and this is a smart decision made by Strong because the poem is regarding a graveyard and its description is quite detailed. It describes the setting and the events that took place from a third-person point of view; “A lone figure dressed in black/ Stands above an unnamed gravestone/ …show more content…

The poem begins describing what’s in plain sight in the graveyard, but goes further on to explain that what’s visible to the eye holds a deeper meaning. In the second stanza, Strong goes beyond the surface and writes how the graveyard is “A place of disasters, heartbreak, and crime/ All gathered there, forgotten by time/ As the trees bend to the seasons/ And the passing of years” (Stanza 2) The third stanza shows the cause of all the events that have made the graveyard so symbolic of the tragic events: “A lone figure dressed in black/ Stands above an unnamed gravestone/ Reflecting on past memories/ Of someone he had known.” This stanza is leading the reader to infer that the “lone figure dressed in black” is responsible for the buried body under the “unnamed gravestone” because he is reminiscing in his mind of the memories he and this deceased person once shared. One can conclude that the figure dressed in black has some connection to the murder of this person. Finally, in the fourth stanza, it describes a hole pre-buried in the ground, waiting for another person to fall into the ground and never come back, creating an even more mysterious ambiance for the graveyard. “Brown wet clinging clay lies/ Heaped by the side of a black hollow/ Waiting for another invited guest/ As the bell tolls,

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