Is It Far To Go?

Day-Lewis’s lover, Rosamond Lehmann, later remembered him writing this poem very rapidly in September 1944 and ‘tossing’ it over the table to her ‘with a flick of the wrist and a mock-modest smile’. It was published in Poems 1943-1947 in 1948 and the third stanza features on his gravestone in Stinsford churchyard in Dorset where he is buried close to Thomas Hardy.

Is it far to go?
A step - no further.
Is it hard to go?
Ask the melting snow,
The eddying feather.

What can I take there?
Not a hank, not a hair.
What shall I leave behind?
Ask the hastening wind,
The fainting star.

Shall I be gone long?
For ever and a day.
To whom there belong?
Ask the stone to say,
Ask my song.

Who will say farewell?
The beating bell.
Will anyone miss me?
That I dare not tell -
Quick, Rose, and kiss me.