Three Poems for Brittany Maynard

Perhaps like me, you met the news of Brittany Maynard's suicide today with the same shock, sadness, and guilt (yes guilt) that shook me when I heard this poor woman had killed herself. Like many thousands of others out there, our family had been praying for Brittany, and we hoped that God's grace would soften her heart, fill it with joy for the dignity of her own life and the meaning of suffering revealed in Christ. I keep thinking I could have done more. She must have received thousands of letters daily (I should have sent one). If I had taken the time to write her, I might have sent along the three works of poetic genius below. I would have asked her to read them aloud and in order. No doubt she would have seen in them a movement from a celebration of death to a rage against death to a joyful confidence in the death's own death.

The first poem, A.E. Housman's "To An Athlete Dying Young," lauds the athlete who dies (whether accidentally or not) before age outlives the quickly wilting garland of victory--a sign for the vigor of youth. The athlete is praised largely because he will never suffer the pain of being defeated, of being forgotten, of being a has-been. Housman captures the real, tangible fear the human soul has for the corruption of the body and the fickleness of fame. He captures as well the vain temptation to praise death as savior from these realities, for if the fame of the dead-in-youth lives on, it is but among shades who have mostly worn out their own. Shallow praise indeed to be adulated by the weakest of the weak, those whose only greedy wish is to have died as young as you. The poem at once creates an idol of physical health and popular renown while acting the lighthouse against their shoals.

The second, Dylan Thomas's "Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night," begs his dying father to "Rage, rage against the dying of the light." Thomas, falling to the opposite side of the mean, does not foolishly praise death but foolishly overstates and dignifies its power by his too-impassioned resistance. "Wise men," "good men," "wild men," "grave men," "and you" must do more than resist; all these rage. Perhaps were death a great injustice it may rightly demand rage, but it is on final count the fall's just desert; the God of life patiently withholds it on account of his mercy yet only duly delivers when death arrives. Dylan illumines, though, the innate inclination to continue being what one is, as one is: a creature in the image and likeness of life, light, truth, goodness, and beauty itself (i.e., God). Dylan's rage remembers the indelible dignity and value human life and the grave and disdainful, yet deserved disorder of death. Ultimately, though, Dylan's rage serves an idol, the idol of temporal, material life, or if not that then the idol of man's indomitable spirit. The poem displays a confidence but not yet the right kind.

Finally, John Donne's "Death Be Not Proud (Holy Sonnet 10)," finds the true mean between rage and praise, the rightful place of peace in the face of man's foe defanged. Donne denounces death; it is impotent, the pawn of the vicious and of chance, readily imitable, and ultimately mortal itself. Death, once a wall, has become a door opened to those who share in Christ's resurrection. Donne opens for us a horizon onto death that allows the Christian confidence to see it for its temporary necessity yet its enduring evil. Though Donne sees in death a door, he does not loose sight of death as the enemy it truly is. In this balance Donne navigates the narrow way between "Athlete Dying Young" and "Do Not Go Gentle." Death is no friend, but it is not so great an enemy as deserving the full passion of rage. Death, it seems, deserves a defiant laugh (and a bit of a scold). Death is laughable not for its impotence to cause intense pain, suffering, and fear. No, death's comedy is its error, its pride. Death dies in a moment while the eternal life the faithful already possess remains and reaches fullness in saecula saeculorum.

We need neither the foolish celebration nor the desperate raging against such an enemy. We need instead the peaceful confidence of sharing in the life of the one who once conquered and will definitively destroy death on the last day. Read with me now, and pray with me that Brittany's soul opened onto a horizon of humble Christian confidence, even if only with her dying breath.

To An Athlete Dying Young  ---  (by A. E. Housman)

The time you won your town the race

We chaired you through the market-place;

Man and boy stood cheering by,

And home we brought you shoulder-high.

Today, the road all runners come,

Shoulder-high we bring you home,

And set you at your threshold down,

Townsman of a stiller town.

Smart lad, to slip betimes away

From fields where glory does not stay,

And early though the laurel grows

It withers quicker than the rose.

Eyes that shady night has shut

Cannot see the record cut,

And silence sounds no worse than cheers

After earth has stopped the ears.

Now you will not swell the rout

Of lads that wore their honours out,

Runners whom renown outran

And the name died before the man.

So set, before its echoes fade,

The fleet foot on the sill of shade,

And hold to the low lintel up

The still-defended challenge-cup.

And round that early-laurelled head

Will flock to gaze the strengthless dead,

And find unwithered on its curls

The garland briefer than a girl's.

Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night ---  (by Dylan Thomas)

Do not go gentle into that good night,

Old age should burn and rave at close of day;

Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Though wise men at their end know dark is right,

Because their words had forked no lightning they

Do not go gentle into that good night.

Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright

Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay,

Rage, rage, against the dying of the light.

Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight,

And learn, too late, they grieve it on its way,

Do not go gentle into that good night.

Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight

Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay,

Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

And you, my father, there on the sad height,

Curse, bless, me now with your fierce tears, I pray.

Do not go gentle into that good night.

Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Death Be Not Proud (Holy Sonnet 10) --- (by John Donne)

Death, be not proud, though some have called thee

Mighty and dreadful, for thou art not so;

For those whom thou think'st thou dost overthrow

Die not, poor Death, nor yet canst thou kill me.

From rest and sleep, which but thy pictures be,

Much pleasure, then from thee, much more must flow,

And soonest our best men with thee do go,

Rest of their bones, and soul's delivery.

Thou art slave to fate, chance, kings, and desperate men,

And dost with poison, war, and sickness dwell,

And poppy or charms can make us sleep as well

And better than thy stroke; why swell'st thou then?

One short sleep past, we wake eternally

And death shall be no more; Death thou shalt die.