The poem regardless of its origin became an object of almost cult devotion in the UK. (Stephen had actually signed the poem as ‘anonymous’).
His father shared the poem with the national media and a mourning fiancé believed that Stephen himself had written it. The poem had been scribbled out by SC in a letter to be left for his family in the case of his death. It then reared up again on the death of a British soldier, Stephen Cummins, killed by an IRA road bomb in Northern Ireland in 1989. The poem first became internationally famous in 1986 when ‘Dear Abby’ (Abigal van Buren) set out to look for its origins: it had been a eulogy for John Wayne, which had been read by Howard Hawks at Wayne’s funeral in 1979, by John Wayne at Howard Hawks funeral in 1977 (see comment below) and this might (?) explain why it was later claimed for an American Indian chief. What is fascinating about the poem is that, even though (relatively) recent and much celebrated there is real doubt about who actually wrote it. It is what Orwell called ‘good bad poety’: and Beach says this without any sense of judgement having listened obsessively to Abba all week. It is not Auden or Elliot or Ted Hughes or Geoffrey Hill. She only made many copies and circulated them privately among people who liked her twelve-line, untitled verse.‘ Do not stand at my grave and weep’ is one of the most quoted twentieth-century poems in English. This is her only surviving poem and quite possibly her only poem. She wrote it to comfort a family friend, a German Jewish woman, who had just lost her mother and was unable to even visit her grave, because of increasing anti-Semitic unrest in Germany. Even though some say that she took inspiration from a Navajo song, Frye scribbled this poem in a moment of inspiration on a paper shopping bag.
This poem, written in 1932 by Mary Elizabeth Frye (1905-2004) an American housewife and florist, has become common reading for funerals. Sono la morbida luce notturna delle stelle. Sono lo scintillio del diamante sulla neve,
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