Do Not Stand By My Grave and Weep

I wrote before how I was captivated by this Japanese boy singing a song that Josh Groban made famous, You Raise Me Up.

So anyway, I decided to look up more of his YouTube videos and was listening to this one called, Sen No Kaze ni Natte. Kawai Yuto is the young Japanese boy and he's singing at a Korean TV show. It looks something like America's Got Talent. So the judges are speaking in Korean but Yuto is singing in Japanese.

As I listened to the words, it suddenly struck me that the lyrics are awfully, awfully familiar. My Japanese is VERY faulty. Mom tells me not to speak Japanese if I'm in Japan. However, I recognized the first words as sounding like Do not cry at my grave.  And then I'm hearing words like snow, then a star in the sky to watch over you, a bird, and wind in the sky...

It reminded me of the poem I'd heard a long time ago. I thought it was from the Civil War. My brain must be mixed up. Anyway, Just to prove you can find anything on the web, I looked online for the possible translation from Japanese to English.

Well... looking further I discovered it was not written during the Civil War. AI said it was attributed to Mary Elizabeth Frye (1905–2004). This is not true either.

When I looked it up on Wikipedia it said that Frye claimed she'd written it and said it was confirmed by Dear Abby. However, 

"Pauline Phillips and her daughter Jeanne Phillips, writing as Abigail van Buren, repeatedly confessed to their readers that they could not confirm who had written the popular poem."

This is also from Wikipedia:

Kansas native Clare Harner (1909–1977) first published "Immortality" in the December 1934 issue of poetry magazine The Gypsy and was reprinted in their February 1935 issue:

Clare Harner wrote it after the sad, sudden death of her brother.

When I looked further on YouTube, it turned out singer, Akikawa, Masafumi had written the Japanese version of the poem and made it into this beautiful song, "Sen no Kaze in Natte" which Yuto sang later.

All this just proves you can find out anything on the web, BUT you can't rely on just AI. You have to dig further on your own. 

And to close, here are the original words to Clare Harner's beautiful poem:

 Do not stand

          By my grave, and weep.

     I am not there,

   I do not sleep—

I am the thousand winds that blow

I am the diamond glints in snow

I am the sunlight on ripened grain,

I am the gentle, autumn rain.

As you awake with morning's hush,

I am the swift, up-flinging rush

Of quiet birds in circling flight,

I am the day transcending night.

  Do not stand

        By my grave, and cry—

      I am not there,

    I did not die.

— Clare Harner, The Gypsy, December 1934

POSTSCRIPT:

I did more digging. I still had that Civil War thing on my mind so I looked up Ken Burns' Civil War series which is where I thought I'd heard this poem. 

OK, it wasn't this poem by Clare Harner, but part of a letter written by Sullivan Ballou to his wife, Sarah that was read during the Ken Burns series. The letter was never mailed because he was killed the week after at the First Battle of Bull Run in July 21, 1861. It was found later after Sarah had already passed away.

"But, O Sarah! If the dead can come back to this earth and flit unseen around those they loved, I shall always be near you; in the gladdest days and in the darkest nights … always, always, and if there be a soft breeze upon your cheek, it shall be my breath, as the cool air fans your throbbing temple, it shall be my spirit passing by. Sarah do not mourn me dead; think I am gone and wait for thee, for we shall meet again …"

Here's a link to read more about it.  https://www.pbs.org/kenburns/the-civil-war/sullivan-ballou-letter