The main thrust of the poem is the preciousness of life.
These subterraneans have learned so much about life from death,
the brevity, the preciousness.
From the grave the dead now realize how precious life is, and how much of their lives they have spent on petty inconsequential things. It also calls into question the very human reluctance to question our tightly held beliefs. Of all the things an agnostic might miss, they miss hearing church bells. Go figure. Atheists wish they had had a more direct (positive) way of naming their position regarding a deity. Atheist – no god– is an apophatic (negative) statement, naming what they do not believe in order to define their position. They would rather have figured out a cataphatic (direct) way of naming their position. Fanatics after death wish they could have recognized doubt within them. Bankers wish they had seen more in silver than a convenient way of storing and transporting value.
Why gardeners and cooks? Why don’t the dead pity them? Because gardeners understand the earth. They befriend the soil and its inhabitants. They value the dynamics below ground level long before they are dead. And cooks understand that life is sustained by death. Plants and animals lose their livres for our well-being. Cooks transform the roots and seeds and flesh and fibers of the earth into good taste and nourishment.
Worms, denizens of humus and clay, share space with the dead. They overhear the comments of the dead concerning the living. Worms mourn for the wounded earth. A happy hymn of praise for earth beauty has become a funeral dirge.
Listen to the ancestors.
What can we learn from those have preceded us in death?