★ Grave & Graveyard

For three million you could give everyone in Scotland a shovel, and we could dig a hole so deep we could hand her [Margaret Thatcher] over to Satan in person. Frankie Boyle

Covid-19 will eventually bring the people of Britain closer together in our mass graves. Frankie Boyle’s New World Order s4e7, BBC 2020

Your coffin reached the monstrous hole. And a part of me went down into the muddy earth with you and lay down next to you and died with you. Rosamund Lupton, Sister

I felt a Funeral, in my Brain,

And Mourners to and fro

Kept treading – treading – till it seemed

That Sense was breaking through –

And when they all were seated,

A Service, like a Drum –

Kept beating – beating – till I thought

My Mind was going numb –

And then I heard them lift a Box

And creak across my Soul

With those same Boots of Lead, again,

Then Space – began to toll,

As all the Heavens were a Bell,

And Being, but an Ear,

And I, and Silence, some strange Race

Wrecked, solitary, here –

And then a Plank in Reason, broke,

And I dropped down, and down –

And hit a World, at every plunge,

And Finished knowing – then – Emily Dickinson, The Complete Poems

I still don’t see why we have to dig the grave, carry the coffin, and everything else. The Young Ones: Nasty, Vyvyan carrying coffin, BBC 1984

Neil: We can’t bury Rick alive.

Vyvyan: That’s absolutely correct, Neil. We’d better kill him first. ibid.

But keep the wolf far thence that’s foe to men,

For with his nails he’ll dig them up again. John Webster, The White Devil

Whatever the barrow held

Once, has been taken away:

A hollow of nettles and dock

Lies at the centre, filled

With rain from a sky so grey

It reflects nothing at all.

I poke in the crumbled rock

For something they left behind

But after that funeral

There is nothing at all to find. Anthony Thwaite, The Owl in the Tree

Under the wide and starry sky

Dig the grave and let me lie.

Glad did I live and gladly die,

And I laid me down with a will.

This be the verse you grave for me:

‘Here he lies when he longed to be;

Home is the sailor, home from sea,

And the hunter home from the hill.’ Robert Louis Stevenson, Underwoods

Here Skugg lies snug

As a bug in a rug. Benjamin Franklin, letter to Georgiana Shipley, re death of her squirrel

For the grave cannot praise thee, death can not celebrate thee: they that go down into the pit cannot hope for thy truth. Isaiah 38:18

Therefore prophesy and say unto them, Thus saith the Lord God; Behold, O my people, I will open your graves, and cause you to come up out of your graves, and bring you into the land of Israel. Ezekiel 37:12

I will ransom them from the power of the grave; I will redeem them from death: O death, I will be thy plagues; O grave, I will be thy destruction: repentance shall be hid from mine eyes. Hosea 13:14

Rome’s readiest champions, repose you here in rest,

Secure from worldly chances and mishaps.

Here lurks no treason, here no envy swells,

Here grow no damned drugs, here are no storms,

No noise, but silence and eternal sleep.

In peace and honour rest you here, my sons. William Shakespeare, Titus Andronicus I i 151-156

And my large kingdom for a little grave,

A little, little grave, an obscure grave. William Shakespeare, Richard II III iii 152-153, King Richard to Aumerle

Thy ignominy sleep with thee in the grave,

But not remembered in thy epitaph! William Shakespeare, I Henry IV V iv 100

Is she to be buried in Christian burial that wilfully seeks her own salvation? William Shakespeare, Hamlet V i 1

How long will a man lie i’ th’ earth ere he rot? ibid. V i 148 Hamlet to gravedigger

Alas, poor Yorick. I knew him, Horatio; a fellow of infinite jest, of most excellent fancy. ibid. V i 201

To what base uses we may return, Horatio! ibid. V i 222

Lay her i’ the earth;

And from her fair and unpolluted flesh

May violets spring! I tell thee, churlish priest,

A ministering angel shall my sister be,

When thou liest howling. ibid. V i 260, Horatio

You do me wrong to take me out o’ th’ grave. William Shakespeare, The History of King Lear IV v 43, Lear

Here lies your brother,

No better than the earth he lies upon. William Shakespeare, The Tempest II I 285-286, Antonio

An old man, broken with the storms of state

Is come to lay his weary bones among ye;

Give him a little earth for charity. William Shakespeare, Henry VIII IV ii 21

So may he rest; his faults lie gently on him! ibid. IV ii 31

His promises were, as he then was, mighty;

But his performance, as he is now, nothing. ibid. IV ii 41

From my rotting body, flowers shall grow and I am in them, and that is eternity. Edvard Munch

Bends to the grave with unperceived decay,

While resignation gently slopes the way

And, all his prospects brightening to the last,

His heaven commences ere the world be past. Oliver Goldsmith, The Deserted Village

Graves like this have been discovered throughout Europe and we now know that this man once shared a common culture that stretched from Turkey to Portugal. We know this because he was one of our prehistoric ancestors: a Celt. Alice Roberts & Neil Oliver, The Celts: Blood, Iron and Sacrifice, BBC 2015

You see that: that’s not a patch on Slumberland, by the way. Rab C Nesbitt s1e2: Rat, Rab to graveside mourner, BBC 1990

Vampires: Highgate Cemetery officially opened in 1839 was once described as the most beautiful resting place in London. Colour film cited Night on Film: An A-Z of the Dark, BBC 2011

He armed himself with a cross and stake, and crouched between the tombstones waiting. ibid.

I think they’re nutcases. ibid. Highgate Cemetery groundsman, televised interview

O lonely workman, standing there

In a dream, why do you stare and stare

At her grave, as no other grave there were? ... Thomas Hardy, In the Moonlight

In a parish church in the Midlands lies the tomb of our greatest ever playwright: it’s only inscription is a curse. William Shakespeare’s strange-looking grave has long been surrounded by rumour and legend. Shakespeare’s Tomb, Channel 4 2016

The story claimed that a band of trophy-hunters had broken into the grave and stolen Shakespeare’s skull. ibid.

One of the wilder rumours – that Shakespeare wasn’t even buried at Holy Trinity. ibid.

Britain’s greatest dramatist was buried not in a grand vault but in a shallow grave without so much as a coffin. ibid.

My mother-in-law said, ‘One day I will dance on your grave.’ I said, ‘I hope you do; I will be buried at sea.’ Les Dawson