Poundbury, Dorset: Neighbours Nigh

A Tale of Two Cemeteries

The bodies of former convicts at Dorchester prison are to be reburied in Poundbury, Dorset Echo

Murderer who inspired Tess of the D'Urbervilles to be exhumed after Julian Fellowes campaigns,The Telegraph

"The remains include those of Martha Brown, the convicted murderess whose death was witnessed by a young Thomas Hardy and inspired one of his most well-known novels, Tess of the D’Urbervilles, and David Jennings, a convicted murderer, who was the last person to be buried at the yard after he was executed at the prison in 1941", Dorset Echo.

Thomas Hardy: 'Life and Death Are Neighbours Nigh'

"No answerer I. . .
Meanwhile the winds, and rains,
And Earth's old glooms and pains
Are still the same, and Life and Death are neighbours nigh".

Related: The Early Christian cemetery at Poundbury, persee.fr - by Christopher Sparey Green

Wikipedia, Poundbury Hill: 

"Just outside the fort was a large Romano-British. The majority of burials date to the late Roman era of the 4th century AD, although the cemetery was in use from the Neolithic times to the Middle Ages The cemetery, located on the northeast side of the hill fort, was excavated during the 1970s".

A Review

                        

When I look forth at dawning, pool,

Field, flock and lonely tree,

All seem to gaze at me

Like chastened children sitting silent in a school;

      Their faces dulled, constrained, and worn,

As though the master's ways

Through the long teaching days

Had cowed them till their early zest was overborne.

      Upon them stirs in lippings mere

(As if once clear in call,

But now scarce breathed at all)--

"We wonder, ever wonder, why we find us here!

      "Has some Vast Imbecility,

Mighty to build and blend,

But impotent to tend,

Framed us in jest, and left us now to hazardry?

      "Or come we of an Automation

Unconscious of our pains? . . .

Or are we live remains

Of Godhead dying downwards, brain and eye not gone?

      "Or is it that some high Plan betides,

As yet not understood,

Of Evil stormed by Good,

We the Forlorn Hope over which Achievement strides?"

      Thus things around. No answerer I. . .

Meanwhile the winds, and rains,

And Earth's old glooms and pains

Are still the same, and Life and Death are neighbours nigh.

Nature's Questioning

Thomas Hardy