Chattering finch and water-fly Are not merrier than I; Here among the flowers I lie Laughing everlastingly. No: I may not tell the best; Surely, friends, I might have guessed Death was but the good King’s jest, It was hid so carefully.
Wow, the skull needs G.K. Chesterton to lead it’s new PR team.
How long in literature has the skull been a depressing image? How long has remembering that you will die been a grave (no pun intended) moment? The skull is supposed to be a symbol for the horrible. The memento mori we carry out of duty but loathe while it hangs from our belt.
Not so fast, says G.K., who twists the old symbol into a merry new one. That gaping hole is more reminiscent of mouth thrown open in laughter than lips pursed in meditation. Death came quickly and out of the blue, but it wasn’t met with mourning. It was met with an everlasting laughter.
I don’t know about you, but there are days when the chattering finch and water fly are most certainly merrier than I. I would assume the same was true of the speaker in this poem while he was alive. So did death make him more merry? Or at least more consistently merry? Given the changing nature of life experienced by the living, I don’t see any other way to interpret those lines.
While tempting to write off the laughter and merriment of the skeleton as figurative language, I think Chesterton meant quite literally that the person who died is still laughing. To Chesterton, death was far from oblivion.
And death is at your doorstep
And it will steal your innocence
But it will not steal your substance
Timshel - Marcus Mumford
Marcus Mumford is a well known fan of Chesterton, and I wonder if he had this poem in mind when he wrote Timshel. “Substance” is an ancient word. For Aristotle, your substance is that which is fundamentally you. Your nature; your definition. It cannot change, and if it does, you are no longer you. He contrasts this with “Accidents” which are characteristics you might have, but changing them does not change who you are.
Yet there is a quality even more fundamental than substance. Existence. You must first exist before you can be something. So, for Mumford to claim that death will not steal your substance is to claim not only that you will still be who you are after death but also that you will still exist. Death is no oblivion.
We can’t say for certain what life after death is; after all our friend the skeleton “may not tell the best.” But at least for Chesterton’s money it is something more merry than life. For Mumford it is something which does not fundamentally change who we are. Perhaps they are both right.