Amy Levy "Epitaph" Victorian Poem Animation set to music

Heres a virtual movie of the tragic victorian poetess Amy Levy reading unforgetable poem "Epitaph"

One of seven brothers and sisters, Amy Levy 1861 - 1889 was born in Clapham southwest London to Isabelle and Lewis Levy, a comfortable middle-class Jewish family. She was educated at an early Girls' Public Day School Trust in Brighton, enjoying her time there immensely. At the age of 13, she published her first poem in The Pelican, a feminist journal. Then in 1879 she became the first Jewish student (and one of the first women) to attend Newnham College in Cambridge - publishing a story in Temple Bar during her first term there. However, she left before completing her education, never to return. Although she had given every appearance of enjoying her time there and was certainly popular with the other young women, it would seem that she found the opposition from some of the Cambridge men (who saw no point in educating women) difficult to tolerate...

A lifelong sufferer of depression tragicaly she commited suicide by inhaling charcoal fumes at the young age of 28...

I suppose Amy was contemplating in this poem the sort of end many of us will oneday face after we are found dead...not the fabled glorious death with an heroic fanfare ending,just the truth of something much more obscure as we pass away alone and uncomforted in our bed to meet our maker...

Regards.

Jim Clark

All rights are reserved on this video sound recording copyright Jim Clark 2003

Epitaph

(On a commonplace person who died in bed)

This is the end of him, here he lies:
The dust in his throat, the worm in his eyes,
The mould in his mouth, the turf on his breast;
This is the end of him, this is best.
he lies.