THE AUTHOR'S OWN ESTIMATE OF "MAY"
"The chief purpose of this poem is to celebrate the Maytime beauty of Nature; to accomplish this aim more easily, the Maytime of Nature is set against varying periods of human life. Thus, for instance, in the first part. the sedate, etc., love in nature is set against the wild, passionate, uncontrollable love of man; likewise other qualities of Maytime Nature are set against corresponding periods of human life in other parts. The story, then, or the action of the Poem, is not to be considered as the most important part of the poem, for only those parts of the story were used in the poem that were essential to the attainment of the main purpose."
(*) On the last page of the first edition of "Maj" the author inserted an "Explanation" of this line as follows: "It was late in the afternoon when I attended the funeral of one of my friends at the Old-town cemetery. The gravedigger, partly covering the casket, remarked: 'They'll not bring any one else tonight, so this one can stand up and guard the place.' Upon further inquiry, he gave me this explanation. There is an old superstition that the last one buried on a cemetery must be left standing as a guard, and must remain standing every night till somebody else is buried, who then takes his place. In this manner, no cemetery is left without a guard, and it happens that on the cemeteries of small, isolated communities, the dead man is often left standing for several years."
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