The Poet's Grave | Henry Louis Vivian Derozio
SE01E40
Be it beside the ocean’s foamy surge,
On an untrodden, solitary shore,
Where the wind sings an everlasting dirge,
And the wild wave, in its tremendous roar,
Sweeps o’er the sod!—There let his ashes lie,
Cold and unmourned; save, when the seamew’s cry
Is wafted on the gale, as if ‘twere given
For him whose hand is cold, whose lyre is riven!
There, all in silence, let him sleep his sleep!
No dream shall flit into that slumber deep—
No wandering mortal thither once shall wend,
There, nothing o’er him but the heavens shall weep,
There, never pilgrim at his shrine shall bend,
But holy stars alone their nightly vigils keep!Mood Music
The first four lines construct the atmospherics of the poem. There’s the sound of the wild vast deep ocean competing for your attention alongside the sombre baritone of the wind hovering over the ocean’s waters. There’s also the sandy shore, but despite that being there and very much occupying the visual in your head right now, you do get a sense of the fact that this is a place far from the maddening swirling crowds—a place not frequented even by the ones who vacation by the beach.
So, here in this cold bitterly cold landscape, which only the raging ranting elements of nature visit, is where the poet—or whatever remains of his earthly body in the form of ashes—is supposed to settle.
Dying Language
Yes, the language used does indicate a classic manner of talking about the dead: cold hands, a riven—broken—lyre, indicating that the poet can compose no more; and there’s also a line that talks of him having a dreamless sleep, which is quite a euphemism to say that well, the man is dead, brain dead, clinically dead, and so, don’t expect him to rise out of those ashes!
So far so good. There’s a lot of black and grey with a flickering bleak white in that visual. It empties the ocean of its blue, the sands of its golden yellow, and replaces all of it with shades you’ve seen people wear at funerals.
Then the poem dwells on the eventual evaporation of the poet from public memory. It talks about how no one will make their way down there to his grave; and for all practical purposes, the poet will be completely obliterated from societal remembrances.
And finally, towards the end, since perhaps the poet found it a bit too despondent to his own liking, there’s a bit of redemption thrown in with that line about how only the holy stars at night will watch over him as he sleeps.
Dying Symbols
So, all in all, it is a poem that you expect to be written as some sort of a twisted eulogy—a eulogy whose trappings fit right into the proceedings of a poet’s funeral. Simultaneously, it also symbolizes the death of the poet’s poems and his rhyme schemes and imagery. And if you peel the obviousness of the poem away and inspect a layer or two deeper, you may also find that it can shoulder the burden of representing the demise of poetry itself should you use it in an appropriate context: There’s the broken lyre (representing rhyme and verse mishaps) the hand gone cold (standing in for the inability to write a coherent line) and the dreamless sleep (which is quite a symbolism for an absolute lack of imagination).
However, I Cannot Leave It At That.
To me, a person living in the 21st century, this poem also offers a window into the state of things between both the poets. It offers me a glimpse into what might have been the relationship between both these poets: the one dead and the one who’s writing about the grave of the one dead.
True, the poem says that no one will come pay the dead poet obeisance, but then the poet writing the poem knows of the place. And if he has taken the trouble to write this, clearly he does have some affection for his dead counterpart and that affection just might bring him to his grave ever so often so as to keep his memory alive.
Now that, in turn, opens up speculation as to whether the poet was actively dissuading any of their common acquaintances to look for his dead counterpart. Perhaps the dead poet wanted it that way or maybe, just maybe, the poet writing the poem wanted to keep the dead poet all to himself. Now that makes you turn the spotlight on the bond between these poets. Perhaps they were close friends. Perhaps they were lovers—for all you know.
On the other hand, it could also be possible that they both loved the same person, romantically I mean, and this poem is the surviving poet’s way of ensuring his rival stays dead and forgotten. Why else, I can argue, does the poem dip the grave’s location in so much peril and desolation?
So, as you try to interpret this 19th-century poem, you’ll realize that it far from stagnates in its meaning and in its ability to evoke feelings in you. On the contrary, in my case at least, it blended into the experiences and observations that I brought to the table from my living in the 21st century; and that ease with which it amalgamates itself into contemporary experiences allows the poem to shoulder the weight of many such interpretations on its rather desolate melancholy lines.
The Family
Henry Louis Vivian Derozio is the poet who wrote this poem. As Eunice De Souza puts it in her book, Early Indian Poetry in English, Henry is considered to be the first poet to have written poems in English in India. His father, Francis Derozio, was of Portuguese and Indian descent, and his mother is said to be an English woman (though that bit about his mother being English is disputed by at least one researcher). So, Henry was an Anglo-Indian. But he always thought of himself as an Indian. The Derozio family was pretty well-off: Francis had his own property and a position of repute in J Scott and Company, a British firm whose business was trade and commerce.
The Education
Till the age of 14, Henry attended the Durromtollah (or Dharmatala) Academy, which was considered one of the best schools in Calcutta. This was where he met David Drummond, the Academy’s Scottish schoolmaster. Drummond introduced him to the philosophies of the 18th century Scottish Enlightenment. Consequently, Henry was very influenced by the works of such philosophers as David Hume, Thomas Reid, and Dugald Stewart. Among the poets, Byron, Shelley, and Keats are said to be the ones who shaped his craft of poetry.
The Scandal
When he was either 17 or 19, Derozio was appointed as a teacher of English Literature and History in Calcutta’s Hindu College. Derozio’s unorthodox ways of thinking about politics, religion, and the like found quite an audience among the students. He along with several of his students formed The Academic Association in which they furiously debated prevailing customs, beliefs, politics, and religion. Some of his Hindu students were so taken up by the discourse at these meetings that they broke with tradition and guzzled beer and relished beef as well. Naturally then, all this talk didn’t go down well with the parents of these students. And consequently, a very sharp incisive letter about Derozio’s teaching made its way to the management authorities of Hindu College. The result of that was Derozio was forced to resign in April 1831. Shortly thereafter, he contracted cholera and died in the December of that very year.
Still In The News?
In her book, Early Indian Poetry in English, Eunice De Souza says that Henry Derozio was still in the news in India sometime around 2002-2003. Eunice says that around that time, the Derozio Commemoration Committee was planning celebrations for the 171st death anniversary of the poet in collaboration with the state information and cultural affairs department. Then there was The Henry Derozio Poetry Award instituted by Melvyn Brown from Calcutta. The late Mr Brown was known to be a detailer chronicler of the Anglo-Indian community. And as part of the clean-up campaign in Calcutta back then, children has also tidied up Derozio’s grave.
But all of that was way way back in the first few years of the 21st century. In the year 2025, the year in which I’ve recorded this episode, Derozio is all but forgotten—much like the poet and the grave he wrote about.
Wrap-up
You’ve been listening to the 40th episode of I Could Think of Verse: a podcast about poems in all shapes and sizes. I’m your host Garfield and today’s episode was all about Henry Louis Vivian Derozio and his poem The Poet’s Grave.
Don’t forget to tune in to the next episode, which will be the 41st; and it’s going to be either about a poem or fascinating pieces of research about a poem that we may have already carried. So, until the next episode, here’s me saying goodbye, God bless, and stay safe.
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References:
Derozio, Henry. The Poet’s Grave. Early Indian Poetry in English: An Anthology: 1829-1947. Edited by Eunice De Souza, 2005.
De Souza, Eunice. Henry Derozio (1809-1832). Early Indian Poetry in English: An Anthology: 1829-1947. Edited by Eunice De Souza, 2005.
Henry Louis Vivian Derozio | Biography | Wikipedia.
Edwards, Thomas. Henry Derozio, The Eurasian Poet, Teacher, and Journalist. W. Newman & Co, Calcutta. 1884.
Paranjape, Makarand R. 2011. ‘EAST INDIAN’ COSMOPOLITANISM: The Fakeer of Jungheera and the Birth of Indian Modernity. Interventions 13 (4): 550–69.
Gibson, Mary Ellis. Henry Louis Vivian Derozio. Anglophone Poetry in Colonial India, 1780-1913: A Critical Anthology. Ohio University Press, 2011. Project MUSE.
Gibson, Mary Ellis. Two: Bards and Sybils: Landscape, Gender, and the Culture of Dispute in the Poems of H. L. V. Derozio and Emma Roberts. Indian Angles: English Verse in Colonial India from Jones to Tagore. Ohio University Press, 2011. Project MUSE.
Chander, Manu Samriti. The First Indian Poet in English: Henry Louis Vivian Derozio. A History of Indian Poetry in English, edited by Rosinka Chaudhuri, 2016, Cambridge UP.