'The Dead World's Much Too Crowded'

“I know, for both of us, the dead world’s much too crowded.” Live long enough and all, reluctantly, must agree. Most of our relatives and oldest friends are dead – the unhappy price paid for longevity. As Dr. Johnson describes grief in The Idler (January 27, 1759): “The loss of a friend upon whom the heart was fixed, to whom every wish and endeavour was tended, is a state of dreary desolation, in which the mind looks abroad impatient of itself, and finds nothing but emptiness and horror. The blameless life, the artless tenderness, the pious simplicity, the modest resignation, the patient sickness, and the quiet death, are remembered only to add value to the loss, to aggravate regret for what cannot be amended, to deepen sorrow for what cannot be recalled.” The line quoted at the top is from “Letter to Horace After Reading Ode i.24” by a poet new to me, Tamara Nicholl-Smith, and published in Modern Age. The poem is dedicated to David Solomon. She addresses the Roman poet as she might a…