“Safe in their alabaster chambers” Analysis

The narrator elucidates on the apathy of the living world to the dead and brings forth the understanding that: No matter how grand and mighty you are in life. In death, you are nothing. The living world does not care and your death is as impactless, trivial and “soundless as dots on a disk of snow”.

It gradually gets clearer as the poem progresses that the narrator is reflecting on the nature of death. In death, you finally get eternal rest. You are safe from and untouched by the vicissitudes, sorrows, joys and terrors of the living world. There is no regard for time (morning, noon) or the living. “Alabaster’ denotes gypsum or calcite, type of stone used for tombs and connotes something lifeless and eternal which reflects the permanence of death.

Yet, we are aware that death might not be as eternal as the poem describes for it is merely a ‘sleep’, a short rest in which during judgment day, the members of the resurrection’ or the dead would be called forth by lord into heaven and eternal life with the promise by Jesus that the meek shall inherit the earth. Yet, it is ironic to a certain degree as since the dead would gain eternal life in heaven, why are they still asleep inside their alabaster chambers?

The narrator continues in his description of the tomb or alabaster chambers of the dead, the ‘meek members of the resurrection’, with the beams lined with satin supporting a stone roof. In a series of dazzling contrasts, the narrator establish the indifferent attitude of the living in contrast with the dead; the lightheartedness of light laughing in contrast to the gravity of death, the castle of sunshine in contrast with the tombs of darkness. The dead lay unknown and the living is ignorant of the dead as the bee babbles disrespectfully into the unresponsive ear of the dead and the birds pipe ignorantly of the “sagacity”, the wise sages that is buried in the alabaster chambers.

Even with the momentousness of death, time continues as years pass in the crescent above the dead and the universe continue moving, “scooping’ and ‘rowing’. The living too continue living as royalty loses their crowns ( diadems) and wars are lost ( doges surrender). In death, the world does not cease to exist and each human life is brief and its fall (death) as dots on a disk of snow, inconsequential.