I have only to pray heartbroken that he will be with the saints and angels forever.
--Owen Roe O'Sullivan (1748-1782), Irish poet
Níl agam ach guidhe le h-intinn éagnaig comhaingil agus naoimh bheith síor dá aodhaireacht.
It's for you that I play Grandfather-- it's for you.
All the others hear me but you, you listen.
We're made of the same wood, we have the same blood,
and I carry your name and you are a little bit me.
Exiled from Corfu and Constantinople,
Ulysses who never retraced his steps,
I am from your country, a métèque like you,
a child of the child that Penelope bore you.
You were already old when I was just born,
arriving just in time to take up the relay.
And I will end up one day resembling
the photo where you posed as an ancestor.
It's for you that I play Grandfather, it's for you
that I slide my fingers along my six strings
to awaken a tranquil single-chord tune
that's all that I know to do with my ten fingers.
Master of laziness, expert at poaching,
like you I have lived in the shadow of boats
and to make a feast I would steal birds
that the sea wind brought me from the deep
Like you I ran after girls and dreams
drinking at each stream I crossed
and without ever really quenching my thirst
without ever tiring of sowing my seed.
It's for you that I play Grandfather, it's for you.
To put back in the present all that has passed
since I began to speak only French
and I write songs you don't understand
It's for you I play Grandfather, it's for you.
All the others surround me but you wait for me
even though you are far off in space and in time
when it's time to die we'll find each other again.
--Georges Moustaki (1934- ), written in 1969. He was born to Greek Jews in Alexandria, Egypt, and became a famous singer in French.
C'est pour toi que je joue Grandpère c'est pour toi
Tous les autres m'écoutent mais toi tu m'entends
On est du même bois on est du même sang
Et je porte ton nom et tu es un peu moi
Exilé de Corfou et de Constantinople
Ulysse qui jamais ne revint sur ses pas
Je suis de ton pays, métèque comme toi
Un enfant de l'enfant que te fit Pénélope
Tu étais déjà vieux quand je venais de naître
Arrivé juste à temps pour prendre le relais
Et je finirai bien un jour par ressembler
A la photo où tu as posé à l'ancêtre
C'est pour toi que je joue Grand-père c'est pour toi
Que je glisse mes doigts le long de mes six cordes
Pour réveiller un air tranquille et monocorde
C'est tout ce que je sais faire de mes dix doigts
Maître en oisiveté expert en braconnage
Comme toi j'ai vécu à l'ombre des bateaux
Et pour faire un festin je volais les oiseaux
Que le vent de la mer me ramenait du large
Comme toi j'ai couru les filles et les rêves
Buvant à chaque source que je rencontrais
Et sans être jamais vraiment désaltéré
Sans jamais être las de répandre ma sève
C'est pour toi que je joue Grand-père c'est pour toi
Pour remettre au présent tout ce qui est passé
Depuis que je ne parle plus que le français
Et j'écris des chansons que tu ne comprends pas
C'est pour toi que je joue Grand-père c'est pour toi
Tous les autres m'entourent mais toi tu m'attends
Même si tu es loin dans l'espace et le temps
Quand il faudra mourir on se retrouvera.
Alas! I am so unhappy
that I cannot speak my misery
except to say that it's hopeless:
despair is already at the door
to throw me to the bottom of the well
where it seems there is no escape.
My eyes are throwing out so many tears
that they don't see the earth or the sky,
there is such an abundance of weeping.
My mouth is lamenting everywhere,
from my heart nothing better comes out
than sighs with no relief.
Sadness with its great efforts
has made my body so weak
that it has no energy or power.
It is like one of the dead,
so that seeing it from the outside,
one loses all recognition.
I have nothing left but the sad voice
that I hear myself crying with,
lamenting the terrible absence.
Alas! I have lost the happy presence
of the one I lived for
and saw with such good heart!
I am sure that his spirit
reigns with his ruler Jesus Christ
contemplating the divine essence.
How much will his body be ordered
the promises of the Holy Writ
will make it live in heaven without doubt.
While he was healthy and strong,
faith was his comfort.
His God he possessed by belief.
In this lively faith he died,
which has brought him to the very sure port
where he has the knowledge of God.
But alas! my body is banished
from him with whom it was united
since the time of our childhood!
My hope also is punished,
when it finds itself stripped
of his, full of all knowledge.
Mind and body are full of mourning,
so much that they are changed to laments;
only weeping is my face.
I cry in the woods and in the plains,
to heaven and earth I complain,
I think of nothing but my grief.
Death, who has played me such an evil trick
to beat down my force and my tower,
all my refuge and my defense,
has not known how to ruin my love
which I feel growing night and day,
which my sorrow makes grow and advance.
My pain cannot be revealed
and it is so hard for me to swallow it
that I lose all patience about it.
I must not talk about it any more,
but think about going soon
to where God has put him through his mercy.
O Death, who vanquished the brother,
come then by your great goodness
to pierce the sister with your lance.
My grief will be beaten by you;
for when I have added up everything
I want to fight you to the death.
Come then, don't delay,
but hurry with very big steps to get here,
I send you my challenge,
since my brother is in your nets.
Take me so that a single solace
gives gladness to both.
--Marguerite d'Angoulême (also known as Marguerite de Navarre) after the death of her beloved brother, French king François Ier , whom she had once rescued from captivity in Spain.
Las ! tant malheureuse je suis,
Que mon malheur dire ne puis,
Sinon qu'il est sans espérance :
Désespoir est déjà à l'huis
Pour me jeter au fond du puits
Où n'a d'en saillir apparence.
Tant de larmes jettent mes yeux
Qu'ils ne voient terre ni cieux,
Telle est de leur pleur abondance.
Ma bouche se plaint en tous lieux,
De mon coeur ne peut saillir mieux
Que soupirs sans nulle allégeance.
Tristesse par ses grands efforts
A rendu si faible mon corps
Qu'il n'a ni vertu ni puissance.
Il est semblable à l'un des morts,
Tant que le voyant par dehors,
L'on perd de lui la connaissance.
Je n'ai plus que la triste voix
De laquelle crier m'en vois,
En lamentant la dure absence.
Las ! de celui pour qui vivais
Que de si bon coeur je voyais,
J'ai perdu l'heureuse présence !
Sûre je suis que son esprit
Règne avec son chef Jésus-Christ,
Contemplant la divine essence.
Combien que son corps soit prescrit,
Les promesses du saint Écrit
Le font vivre au ciel sans doutance.
Tandis qu'il était sain et fort,
La foi était son réconfort,
Son Dieu possédait par créance.
En cette foi vive il est mort,
Qui l'a conduit au très sûr port,
Où il a de Dieu jouissance.
Mais, hélas ! mon corps est banni
Du sien auquel il fut uni
Depuis le temps de notre enfance !
Mon espoir aussi est puni,
Quand il se trouve dégarni
Du sien plein de toute science.
Esprit et corps de deuil sont pleins,
Tant qu'ils sont convertis en plains ;
Seul pleurer est ma contenance.
Je crie par bois et par plains,
Au ciel et terre me complains,
A rien fors à mon deuil ne pense.
Mort, qui m'a fait si mauvais tour
D'abattre ma force et ma tour,
Tout mon refuge et ma défense,
N'as su ruiner mon amour
Que je sens croître nuit et jour,
Qui ma douleur croît et avance.
Mon mal ne se peut révéler,
Et m'est si dur à l'avaler,
Que j'en perds toute patience.
Il ne m'en faut donc plus parler,
Mais penser de bientôt aller,
Où Dieu l'a mis par sa clémence.
Ô Mort, qui le frère a dompté,
Viens donc par ta grande bonté
Transpercer la soeur de ta lance.
Mon deuil par toi soit surmonté ;
Car quand j'ai bien le tout compté,
Combattre te veux à outrance.
Viens doncques, ne retarde pas,
Mais cours la poste à bien grands pas,
Je t'envoie ma défiance.
Puisque mon frère est en tes lacs,
Prends-moi, afin qu'un seul soulas
Donne à tous deux éjouissance.
I am standing upon the seashore. A ship at my side spreads her white
sails to the morning breeze and starts for the blue ocean. She is an
object of beauty and strength. I stand and watch her until at length
she hangs like a speck of white cloud just where the sea and sky come
to mingle with each other.
Then someone at my side says: "There, she is gone."
"Gone where?"
Gone
from my sight. That is all. She is just as large in mast and hull and
spar as she was when she left my side and she is just as able to bear
her load of living freight to her destined port.
Her diminished
size is in me, not in her. And just at the moment when someone at my
side says "There, she is gone," there are other eyes watching her
coming, and other voices ready to take up the glad shout "Here she
comes!"
And that is dying.
--Henry Van Dyke (1852-1933)
If you know the source of this quotation, please let me know.
I am a man without a country. Wherever Livy was, that was my country.
--Samuel Clemens (Mark Twain) (1835-1910), after the death of his wife Olivia Langdon Clemens, in a letter to a her brother.
On a Grave at Grindelwald
Here let us leave him; for his shroud the snow,
for funeral-lamps he has the planets seven,
for a great sign the icy stair shall go
between the heights to heaven.
One moment stood he as the angels stand,
high in the stainless eminence of air;
the next, he was not, to his fatherland
translated unaware.
--Frederick William Henry Myers (1843-1901)
Under the wide and starry sky
Dig the grave and let me lie.
Glad did I live and gladly die,
And I laid me down with a will.
This be the verse you grave for me;
"Here he lies where he longed to be,
Home is the sailor, home from sea,
And the hunter home from the hill."
--This is the epitaph Robert Louis Stevenson (1850-1894) wrote for himself. It is carved on his gravestone at Vailima in Samoa.
Rain on Rahoon falls softly, softly falling,
where my dark lover lies.
Sad is his voice that calls me, sadly calling,
at grey moonrise.
Love, hear thou
how soft, how sad his voice is ever calling,
ever unanswered, and the dark rain falling,
then as now.
Dark to our hearts. O love, shall lie and cold
as his sad heart has lain
under the moongrey nettles, the black mould.
and muttering rain.
--James Joyce (1882-1941). This poem was inspired by the true story of a young man, Michael Bodkin, who courted Joyce's future wife, Nora, before they met. Michael had tuberculosis but "left his house on the rainy night before Nora left Galway to sing beneath her window a song of sorrow and farewell. He died from exposure a short time later and was buried in Rahoon cemetery." [From For the Love of Ireland, ed. Susan Cahill]
Do not stand at my grave and weep.
I am not there.
I do not sleep
I am a thousand winds that swiftly blow.
I am the diamond glint
on newly fallen snow.
I am the sunlight
on ripened grain.
I am the soft and gentle autumn rain
When you wake from sleep in the early morning hush,
I am the swift, uplifting rush
of quiet birds in circling flight.
I am the soft, starlight at night.
Do not stand at my grave and weep.
I am not there.
I do not sleep.
--Attributed to Mary E. Frye (1904-2004)
