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Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s “The Knight’s Tomb” · The Daily Poem

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  [music]
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  SPEAKER_00: Welcome back to The Daily Poem, a podcast from Goldberry Studios.
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  SPEAKER_00: I'm Sean Johnson, and today is Friday, October 30th, 2026.
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  SPEAKER_00: Today's poem is by Samuel Taylor Coleridge.
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  SPEAKER_00: It's called The Knight's Tomb.
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  SPEAKER_00: I'll read it once, offer a few comments, and read it one more time.
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  SPEAKER_00: The Knight's Tomb Where is the grave of Sir Arthur O'Kellan?
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  SPEAKER_00: Where may the grave of that good man be?
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  SPEAKER_00: By the side of a spring on the breast of Havelin, under the twigs of a young birch tree.
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  SPEAKER_00: The oak that in summer was sweet to hear,
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  SPEAKER_00: and rustled its leaves in the fall of the year,
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  SPEAKER_00: and whistled and roared in the winter alone,
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  SPEAKER_00: is gone, and the birch in its stead is grown.
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  SPEAKER_00: The night's bones are dust, and his good sword rust.
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  SPEAKER_00: His soul is with the saints, I trust.
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  SPEAKER_00: Seemed like a fitting poem for today,
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  SPEAKER_00: given it's coming on the heels of several other poems about Arthurian legend
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  SPEAKER_00: and knights and chivalry.
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  SPEAKER_00: And because on the calendar here in the West,
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  SPEAKER_00: we are approaching All Hallows' Eve and the Day of All Saints.
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  SPEAKER_00: And Coleridge here gives us an ideal culmination of A nightly life, a chivalric life.
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  SPEAKER_00: I mentioned in a comment earlier this week my great affection for Lancelot in
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  SPEAKER_00: the Arthurian legends.
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  SPEAKER_00: And in the Grail story,
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  SPEAKER_00: as Sir Thomas Mallory tells it,
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  SPEAKER_00: Lancelot Struggles in his quest for the grail because he is
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  SPEAKER_00: the greatest knight alive, at least in worldly terms.
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  SPEAKER_00: He is the strongest knight.
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  SPEAKER_00: He is the most handsome knight.
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  SPEAKER_00: He is the most successful and unconquerable knight.
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  SPEAKER_00: And it is exactly his prowess and his glory in the world that inhibits his success
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  SPEAKER_00: in the quest for the grail.
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  SPEAKER_00: Jesus says that one who desires to be great in the kingdom
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  SPEAKER_00: of heaven must become servant of all,
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  SPEAKER_00: and that's certainly the stated goal of chivalry, to be of service.
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  SPEAKER_00: However, greatness itself gets in the way of the implied humility that is required.
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  SPEAKER_00: To be great,
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  SPEAKER_00: one must lower themselves,
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  SPEAKER_00: and as several Religious and spiritual figures tell Lancelot along his journey,
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  SPEAKER_00: he has to let go of the things that make him strong and glorious in this life.
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  SPEAKER_00: So here Coleridge gives us Sir Arthur O'Kellan,
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  SPEAKER_00: a knight who seems to have been honorable and full of prowess in this lifetime.
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  SPEAKER_00: And he is associated with these trees that The oak that in summer was sweet
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  SPEAKER_00: to hear is gone in the same way that the living Sir Arthur is gone.
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  SPEAKER_00: And oaks are trees that represent strength and rigidity and resilience and longevity.
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  SPEAKER_00: Oaks live a long time.
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  SPEAKER_00: They're very tough.
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  SPEAKER_00: However...
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  SPEAKER_00: They can still be toppled.
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  SPEAKER_00: In fact,
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  SPEAKER_00: when the hurricane came through our town a few weeks ago,
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  SPEAKER_00: we lost a great big oak tree in our backyard that I have been laboring
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  SPEAKER_00: to finish digging up and remove for some time now.
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  SPEAKER_00: So oaks aren't forever.
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  SPEAKER_00: And in its place near his grave is a birch tree,
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  SPEAKER_00: which symbolizes, in the medieval symbolic vernacular, symbolizes new births.
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  SPEAKER_00: Birches are not mighty in the way that oaks are,
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  SPEAKER_00: however, but there's something lithe and supple about them.
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  SPEAKER_00: And this substitution seems to be presented here by the speaker as a positive one.
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  SPEAKER_00: Sure, the oak is gone, but it's a consolation that the birch has grown in its stead.
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  SPEAKER_00: Yes, the knight's bones are dust and his good sword has turned to rust, but...
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  SPEAKER_00: His soul is with the saints, I trust.
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  SPEAKER_00: And thus this poem,
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  SPEAKER_00: which begins on a somber note,
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  SPEAKER_00: maybe even a melancholy one, where is the grave of Sir Arthur?
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  SPEAKER_00: Ends, surprisingly, with an upturn.
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  SPEAKER_00: Literally, even, there's this movement upward, heavenward.
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  SPEAKER_00: His soul is with the saints.
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  SPEAKER_00: Whatever put him in the ground,
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  SPEAKER_00: whether it was being overcome by a mortal enemy,
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  SPEAKER_00: whether it was simply being overcome by the universal enemy of man, death,
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  SPEAKER_00: the defeat is a temporary one,
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  SPEAKER_00: and it's so immaterial that it doesn't even figure in the poem.
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  SPEAKER_00: What figures prominently and finally is the rest of his soul.
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  SPEAKER_00: Here's the poem one more time.
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  SPEAKER_00: Where is the grave of Sir Arthur O'Kellan?
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  SPEAKER_00: Where may the grave of that good man be?
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  SPEAKER_00: By the side of spring, on the breast of Helvellyn, under the twigs of a young birch tree.
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  SPEAKER_00: The oak that in summer was sweet to hear,
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  SPEAKER_00: and rustled its leaves in the fall of the year,
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  SPEAKER_00: and whistled and roared in the winter alone,
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  SPEAKER_00: is gone, and the birch in its stead is grown.
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  SPEAKER_00: The night's bones are dust, and his good sword rust.
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  SPEAKER_00: His soul is with the saints, I trust.
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  SPEAKER_00: This has been The Daily Poem.
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  SPEAKER_00: Thank you for listening.
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  SPEAKER_00: We'll be back next week with more poetry for you.
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  SPEAKER_00: For all of us at Goldberry Studios, I'm Sean Johnson wishing you happy reading.