Clare Harner, in 'The Gypsy.'
I did not guess how KC lawyer Samuel L. Trusty, the eulogist who recited "Clare Harner's beautiful little poem of 'Immortality'" at the funeral service for Benjamin D. Pugh, knew about The Gypsy: all poetry magazine where "Immortality" had appeared in the December 1934 issue. Turns out, Trusty could have copied or clipped it from the local newspaper. The entire poem was reprinted in the Kansas City Times (morning edition of the Kansas City Star) on Friday, February 8, 1935 and attributed, just as in the Kansas City Bar Bulletin more than three years later, to
Clare Harner, in "The Gypsy."
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| Kansas City Times (Kansas City, Missouri) - February 8, 1935 via GenealogyBank |
IMMORTALITY.
Do not stand
By my grave, and weep.
I am not there,
I do not sleep—
I am the thousand winds that blow,
I am the diamond glints in snow,
I am the sunlight on ripened grain,
I am the gentle, autumn rain,
As you awake with morning's hush,
I am the swift, up-flinging rush
Of quiet birds in circling flight,
I am the day transcending night.
Do not stand
By my grave, and cry—
I am not there,
I did not die.
—Clare Harner, in "The Gypsy."
[As reprinted in the Kansas City Times on February 8, 1935.]
