Mary Frye was unknown to the poetic world for years. She produced no works, published no poetry until World War 2, when the Holocaust was beginning. A Jewish girl named Margaret Schwarzkopf was staying with Mary and her husband. The girl had been able to escape Germany but was forced to leave her mother behind. When Margaret received word that her mother had died, she regretted being unable to mourn at her mother’s grave. The girl’s grief inspired the only poem that Mary is known to have written, “Do not stand at my Grave and Weep”. This one poem, written in a moment of sympathy for another’s pain, would take the world by storm. It is read at funerals, put on cards, and was even read at Ground Zero on 9/11. In 1996, it was elected Great
