Consolatio

Mark Twain after the death of his wife: I am a man without a country.

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 her brother.

Yeats: Everything alters

I heard the old, old men say,

"Everything alters,

and one by one we drop away."

They had hands like claws, and their knees

were twisted like the old thorn trees

by the waters.

I heard the old, old men say,

"All that's beautiful drifts away

like the waters."

 

       --William Butler Yeats (1865-1939), In the Seven Woods (1903)

F.W.H. Myers: The mountain-climber's grave

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)

Robert Louis Stevenson: "Here he lies where he longed to be"

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.

James Joyce: Sad is his voice that calls me

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

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)

Walt Whitman's nephew died young

In the middle of the room, in its white coffin, lay the dead child, the nephew of the poet. Near it, in a great chair, sat Walt Whitman, surrounded by little ones, and holding a beautiful little girl on his lap. She looked wonderingly at the spectacle of death, and then inquiringly into the old man's face. 'You don't know what it is, do you, my dear?' said he, and added, 'We don't, either.'

         --Mary Mapes Dodge (1831-1905), a friend of poet Walt Whitman's, in the preface to a poem.

To everything there is a season

To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven:

A time to be born, and a time to die; a time to plant, and a time to pluck up that which is planted;

A time to kill, and a time to heal; a time to break down, and a time to build up;

A time to weep, and a time to laugh; a time to mourn, and a time to dance;

A time to cast away stones, and a time to gather stones together; a time to embrace, and a time to refrain from embracing;

A time to get, and a time to lose; a time to keep, and a time to cast away;

A time to rend, and a time to sew; a time to keep silence, and a time to speak;

A time to love, and a time to hate; a time of war, and a time of peace.

What profit hath he that worketh in that wherein he laboureth? I have seen the travail, which God hath given to the sons of men to be exercised in it.

He hath made every thing beautiful in his time: also he hath set the world in their heart, so that no man can find out the work that God maketh from the beginning to the end.

I know that there is no good in them, but for a man to rejoice, and to do good in his life....That which hath been is now; and that which is to be hath already been; and God requireth that which is past....

       --Ecclesiastes 3, The Bible

I am far frae my hame, an' I'm weary aftenwhiles

I am far frae my hame, an’ I’m weary aftenwhiles,
For the langed for hame bringin’, an’ my Father’s welcome smiles;
An’ I’ll ne’er be fu’ content, until mine een do see
The gowden gates o’ Heav’n an’ my ain countrie.

The earth is fleck’d wi’ flowers, mony tinted, fresh an’ gay
The birdies warble blithely, for my Faither made them sae:
But these sights an’ these soun’s will as naething be to me,
When I hear the angels singin’ in my ain countrie.

I’ve His gude word o’ promise that some gladsome day, the King
To His ain royal palace his banished hame will bring;
Wi’een an’ wi’ hert rinnin’ owre, we shall see
The King in His beauty, in oor ain countrie.

Sae little noo I ken, o’ yon blessèd, bonnie place
I only ken it’s Hame, whaur we shall see His face,
It wad surely be eneuch for ever mair to be
In the glory o’ His presence, in oor ain countrie.

He is faithfu’ that hath promised, an He’ll surely come again,
He’ll keep His tryst wi’ me, at what oor I dinna ken;
But He bids me still to wait, an’ ready aye to be,
To gang at ony moment to my ain countrie.

       --Mary Demarest wrote this poem in 1861 when she was 23, after hearing the story of John MacDuff and his wife. The music was written by Ione Hanna.

Thanks to Cyberhymnal.

Emerson: Earth endures, stars abide

Hear what the Earth says:—

Earth-Song

"Mine and yours;
  Mine, not yours.
  Earth endures;
  Stars abide—
  Shine down in the old sea;
  Old are the shores;
  But where are old men?
  I who have seen much,
  Such have I never seen.

"The lawyer's deed
  Ran sure,
  In tail,
  To them, and to their heirs
  Who shall succeed,
  Without fail,
  Forevermore.

"Here is the land,
  Shaggy with wood,
  With its old valley,
  Mound and flood.
  But the heritors?—

"Fled like the flood's foam.
  The lawyer, and the laws,
  And the kingdom,
  Clean swept herefrom.

"They called me theirs,
  Who so controlled me;
  Yet every one
  Wished to stay, and is gone,
  How am I theirs,
  If they cannot hold me,
  But I hold them?"

When I heard the Earth-song
I was no longer brave;
My avarice cooled
Like lust in the chill of the grave.

   --From "Hamatreya," by Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882)