Till my life’s last hour nears,
And, above the beat of my heart,
I hear Her voice in my ears.
But I shall not understand –
Being set on some later love,
Shall not know her for whom I strove,
Till she reach me forth her hand,
Saying, ‘Who but I have the right?’
And out of a troubled night
Shall draw me safe to the land.
RUDYARD KIPLING (1865-1936)
The Suicides
It is hard for us to enter
the kind of despair they must have known
and because it is hard we must get in by breaking
the lock if necessary for we have not the key,
though for them there was no lock and the surrounding walls
were supple, receiving as waves, and they drowned
though not lovingly; it is we only
who must enter in this way.
Temptations will beset us, once we are in.
We may want to catalogue what they have stolen.
We may feel suspicion; we may even criticise the decor
of their suicidal despair, may perhaps feel
it was incongruously comfortable.
Knowing the temptations then
let us go in
deep to their despair and their skin and know
they died because words they had spoken
returned always homeless to them.
JANET FRAME (b. 1924)
Life
I made a posie, while the day ran by:
Here will I smell my remnant out, and tie
My life within this band.
But Time did beckon to the flowers, and they
By noon most cunningly did steal away,
And wither’d in my hand.
My hand was next to them, and then my heart:
I took, without more thinking, in good part
Times gentle admonition:
Who did so sweetly deaths sad taste convey,
Making my minde to smell my fatall day;
Yet sugring the suspicion.
Farewell deare flowers, sweetly your time ye spent,
Fit, while ye liv’d, for smell or ornament,
And after death for cures,
I follow straight without complaints or grief,
Since if my scent be good, I care not if
It be as short as yours.
GEORGE HERBERT (1593-1633)
Epitaph Upon A Child That Died
Here she lies, a pretty bud,
Lately made of flesh and blood:
Who as soon fell fast asleep
As her little eyes did peep.
Give her strewings, but not stir
The earth that lightly covers her.
ROBERT HERRICK (1591-1674)
The Child Dying
Unfriendly friendly universe,
I pack your stars into my purse,
And bid you, bid you so farewell.
That I can leave you, quite go out,
Go out, go out beyond all doubt,
My father says, is the miracle.
You are so great, and I so small:
I am nothing, you are all:
Being nothing, I can take this way.
Oh I need neither rise nor fall,
For when I do not move at all
I shall be out of all your day.
It’s said some memory will remain
In the other place, grass in the rain,
Light on the land, sun on the sea,
A flitting grace, a phantom face,
But the world is out. There is no place
Where it and its ghost can ever be.
Father, father, I dread this air
Blown from the far side of despair,
The cold cold corner. What house, what hold,
What hand is there? I look and see
Nothing-filled eternity,
And the great round world grows weak and old.
Hold my hand, oh hold it fast –
I am changing! – until at last
My hand in yours no more will change,
So hand in hand, twin-leafed despair –
I did not know death was so strange.
EDWIN MUIR (1887-1959)
On My First Sonne
Farewell, thou child of my right hand, and joy;
My sinne was too much hope of thee, lov’d boy,
Seven yeeres tho’wert lent to me, and I thee pay,
Exacted by thy fate, on the just day.
O, could I loose all father, now. For why
Will man lament the state he should envie?
To have so soone scap’d worlds, and fleshes rage,
And, if no other miserie, yet age?
Rest in soft peace, and, ask’d, say here doth lye
BEN. JONSON his best piece of poetrie.
For whose sake, henceforth, all his vowes be such,
As what he loves may never like too much.
BEN JONSON (1572/3-1637)
Light
(for Ciaran)
My little man, down what centuries
of light did you travel
to reach us here,
your stay so short-lived;
in the twinkling of an eye
you were moving on,
bearing our name and a splinter
of the human cross we suffer;
flashed upon us like a beacon,
we wait in darkness for that light
to come round, knowing at heart
you shine forever for us.
HUGH O’DONNELL (b. 1951)
On the Death of a Child
The greatest griefs shall find themselves
inside the smallest cage.
It’s only then that we can hope to tame
their rage,
The monsters we must live with. For it
will not do
To hiss humanity because one human threw
Us out of heart and home. Or part
At odds with life because one baby failed
to live.
Indeed, as little as its subject, is
the wreath we give –
The big words fail to fit. Like giant boxes
Round small bodies. Taking up improper room,
Where so much withering is, and so much bloom.
D.J. ENRIGHT (1920-2003)
The Unquiet Grave
The wind doth blow today, my love,
And a few small drops of rain;
I never had but one true-love;
In cold grave she was lain.
‘I’ll do as much for my true-love
As any young man may;
I’ll sit and mourn all at her grave
For a twelvemonth and a day.’
The twelvemonth and a day being up,
The dead began to speak:
‘O who sits weeping on my grave,
And will not let me sleep?’ –
‘’Tis I, my love, sits on your grave,
And will not let you sleep;
For I crave one kiss of your clay-cold lips,
And that is all I seek.’ –
‘You crave one kiss of my clay-cold lips;
But my breath smells earthy strong;
If you have one kiss of my clay-cold lips,
Your time will not be long.
‘’Tis down in yonder garden green,
Love, where we used to walk,
The finest flower that ere was seen
Is wither’d to a stalk.
‘The stalk is wither’d dry, my love,
So will our hearts decay;
So make yourself content, my love,
Till God calls you away.’
ANONYMOUS
Remembrance
Cold in the earth – and the deep snow piled above thee!
Far, far removed, cold in the dreary grave!
Have I forgot, my only love, to love thee,
Severed at last by time’s all-wearing wave?
Now, when alone, do my thoughts no longer hover
Over the mountains, on that northern shore,
Resting their wings where heath and fern-leaves cover
That noble heart for ever, ever more?
Cold in the earth, and fifteen wild Decembers
From those brown hills have melted into spring –
Faithful indeed is the spirit that remembers
After such years of change and suffering!
Sweet love of youth, forgive if I forget thee
While the world’s tide is bearing me along:
Sterner desires and darker hopes beset me,
Hopes which obscure but cannot do thee wrong.
No other sun has lightened up my heaven,
No other star has ever shone for me:
All my life’s bliss from thy dear life was given –
All my life’s bliss is in the grave with thee.
But, when the days of golden dreams had perished,
And even despair was powerless to destroy,
Then did I learn how existence could be cherished,
Strengthened, and fed without the aid of joy.
Then did I check the tears of useless passion,
Weaned my young soul from yearning after thine;
Sternly denied its burning wish to hasten
Down to that tomb already more than mine!
And even yet, I dare not let it languish,
Dare not indulge in memory’s rapturous pain;
Once drinking deep of that divinest anguish,
How could I seek the empty world again?
EMILY BRONTË (1818-48)
After the Burial
Yes, faith is a goodly anchor;
When skies are sweet as a psalm,
At the bows it lolls so stalwart,
In bluff, broad-shouldered calm.
And when over breakers to leeward
The tattered surges are hurled,
It may keep our head to the tempest,
With its grip on the base of the world.
But, after the shipwreck, tell me
What help in its iron thews,
Still true to the broken hawser,
Deep down among seaweed and ooze?
In the breaking gulfs of sorrow,
When the helpless feet stretch out
And find in the deeps of darkness
No footing so solid as doubt,
Then better one spar of Memory,
One broken plank of the Past,
That our human heart may cling to,
Though hopeless of shore at last!
To the spirit its splendid conjectures,
To the flesh its sweet despair,
Its tears o’er the thin-worn locket
With its anguish of deathless hair!
Immortal? I feel it and know it,
Who doubts it of such as she?
But that is the pang’s very secret, –
Immortal away from me.
There’s a narrow ridge in the graveyard
Would scarce stay a child in his race,
But to me and my thought it is wider
Than the star-sown vague of Space.
Your logic, my friend, is perfect,
Your morals most drearily true;
But, since the earth clashed on her coffin,
I keep hearing that, and not you.
Console if you will, I can bear it;
’Tis a well-meant alms of breath;
But not all the preaching since Adam
Has made Death other than Death.
It is pagan; but wait till you feel it, –
That jar of our earth, that dull shock
When the ploughshare of deeper passion
Tears down to our primitive rock.
Communion in spirit! Forgive me,
But I, who am earthy and weak,
Would give all my incomes from dreamland
For a touch of her hand on my cheek.
That little shoe in the corner,
So worn and wrinkled and brown,
With its emptiness confutes you
And argues your wisdom down.
JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL (1819-91)
Especially When It Snows
especially when it snows
and every tree
has its dark arms and widespread hands
full of that shining angelfood
especially when it snows
and every footprint
makes a dark lake
among the frozen grass
especially when it snows darling
and tough little robins
beg for crumbs
at golden-spangled windows
ever since we said goodbye to you
in that memorial garden
where nothing grew
except the beautiful blank-eyed snow
and little Caitlin crouched to wave goodbye to you
down in the shadows
especially when it snows
and keeps on snowing
especially when it snows
and down the purple pathways of the sky
the planet staggers like King Lear
with his dead darling in his arms
especially when it snows
and keeps on snowing
ADRIAN MITCHELL (b. 1932)
(for Boty Goodwin, 1966-95)
2
Lives Enriched
POEMS OF CELEBRATION
O how shall I warble myself for the dead one there I loved?
And how shall I deck my song for the large sweet soul that has gone?
And what shall my perfume be for the grave of him I love?
Sea-winds blown from east and west,
Blown from the Eastern sea and blown from the Western sea, till there on the prairies meeting,
These and with these and the breath of my chant,
I’ll perfume the grave of him I love.
WHITMAN
And death shall have no dominion…
Though lovers be lost love shall not.
DYLAN THOMAS
That which is of the sea is going to the sea:
it is going to the place from whence it came –
From the mountain the swift-rushing torrent,
and from our body the soul whose motion
is inspired by love.
RUMI
CELEBRATION is the uplifting counterweight to grief. Our lives were enriched – and are still enriched – by the person we’re mourning. One of their gifts was humour, and in two of the poems here by American writers, the poets project their comic selves into fantasy funerals, Langston Hughes even scripting bluesy words to be ‘hollered’ by his female mourners in ‘As Befits a Man’ (33), while William Carlos Williams attacks convention and cant in ‘Tract’ (34), calling for the kind of honest simplicity typical of his own life and work. Critic Jahan Ramazani says we need these kinds of disturbingly modern poems ‘because our society often sugarcoats mourning in dubious comfort, or retreats from it in embarrassed silence’. To be true to life, we may need the poet to throw a cat amongst the mourning doves. And we should be ourselves, urges Joyce Grenfell, ‘So sing as well’ (33).
Because He Lived
Because he lived, next door a child
To see him coming often smiled,
And thought him her devoted friend
Who gladly gave her coins to spend.
Because he lived, a neighbor knew
A clump of tall delphiniums blue
And oriental poppies red
He’d given for a flower bed.
Because he lived, a man in need
Was grateful for a kindly deed
And ever after tried to be
As thoughtful and as fine as he.
Because he lived, ne’er great or proud
Or known to all the motley crowd,
A few there were whose tents were pitched
Near his who found their lives enriched.
EDGAR A. GUEST (1881-1959)
Epitaph on a Friend
An honest man here lies at rest,
The friend of man, the friend of truth,
The friend of age, and guide of youth:
Few hearts like his, with virtue warm’d,
Few heads with knowledge so inform’d;
If there’s another world, he lives in bliss;
If there is none, he made the best of this.
ROBERT BURNS (1759-96)
The Good
The good are vulnerable
As any bird in flight,
They do not think of safety,
Are blind to possible extinction
And when most vulnerable
Are most themselves.
The good are real as the sun,
Are best perceived through clouds
Of casual corruption
That cannot kill the luminous sufficiency
That shines on city, sea and wilderness,
Fastidiously revealing
One man to another,