Grave spotting in Highgate
We found Mahler's daughter Anna not far in, took some time finding Max Wall and helped point a foreign tourist in the direction of George Elliot off the main path, up a bank near the perimeter wall.
Marx is perhaps the most famous 'resident', his colossal incredible hulk of a grave suggesting the power of his thought and intellect. There's graves that make you cry and some that make you laugh. Patrick Caulfield's tomb doesn't mince words, the neat precision cut geometric holes in his minimalist pristine headstone simply spelling out the word DEAD.
Nothing fancy then, the rationalists view of death as dead end, but is it-the end?
Entry to the Cemetery costs just three pounds. It's a beautiful and thought provoking place to spend time in and I hope to return later in the summer and gather some seed from the abundant aquilegas that thrive among the graves. I left with a phrase from one of the inscriptions repeating in my head 'they are not long, the days of wine and roses'. I've heard the words before but didn't know the full poem and felt moved to look it up. Here it is, words of 19th century romantic poet Ernest Dowson who knew Yeats, Wilde and Verlaine and died from a combination of TB and alcoholism age 32.
They Are Not Long by Ernest Dowson.
Vitae summa brevis spem
nos vetat incohare longam.
They are not long, the weeping and the laughter,
Love desire and hate;
I think they have no portion in us after
We pass the gate.
They are not long, the days of wine and roses
Out of a misty dream
Our path emerges for a while, then closes
within a dream.
