Song: Love Lives Beyond the Tomb Essay Questions

Explain the concepts of transcendence and immanence. How are they relevant to “Love Lives Beyond the Tomb”?

Transcendence and immanence form one of the most important binaries in the study of religion. Something is transcendent if it defies the limitations of the material world. Conversely, a thing is immanent if it is contained by the material world. In “Love Lives Beyond the Tomb,” Clare takes these two seemingly mutually exclusive ideas and suggests that both are correct ways of understanding love. It is eternal in a way nothing in the material world is, but it is also apparent in all the beautiful and ephemeral facets of the natural world.

Discuss one image in “Love Lives Beyond the Tomb.” What is unusual or surprising about it?

In the second line of the poem, Clare describes the earth as a tomb “which fades like dew.” The image emphasizes that everything in this world is temporary. However, the image of dew is unexpected in relation to the tomb. Rather than the gradual and highly physical process of rotting, the image of dew casts death as a silent, mysterious, and total disappearance from the physical world. The comparison between dew and the tomb echoes the poem’s generally abstracted and romanticized depiction of the natural world, despite Clare’s emphasis on its ephemerality.