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.
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.
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.
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)
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 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 miss my dad,
when I think about him it makes me sad.
Sometimes I wake up at night,
to put his photos out of sight.
He used to drive a motor bike,
he also loved to hike.
I wonder what it would be like to have a dad,
a dad is something I've never had.
It hurts to say his name,
I wish things weren't the same.
he died when I was two,
my mum misses him too,
It makes me mad,
that I never knew my dad.
--Nikki Wheidt. "I have no proffesional background because it would be hard for me to have one because I'm 13."
The memory of my mother stays with me
throughout the years: the way she used to stand
framed in the door when any of her band
of children left... as long as she could see
their forms, she gazed, as if she seemed to be
trying to guard-- to meet some far demand;
and then before she turned to tasks at hand,
she breathed a little prayer inaudibly.
And now, I think, in some far heavenly place,
she watches still, and yet is not distressed,
but rather as one who, after life's long race,
has found contentment in a well-earned rest,
there, in a peaceful dreamlike reverie,
she waits, from earthly cares forever free.
--Margaret Baggerly Bruner (1886-1970)
In the long, sleepless watches of the night,
a gentle face--the face of one long dead--
looks at me from the wall, where round its head
the night-lamp casts a halo of pale light.
Here in this room she died, and soul more white
never through martyrdom of fire was led
to its repose; nor can in books be read
the legend of a life more benedight.*
There is a mountain in the distant West
that, sun-defying, in its deep ravines
displays a cross of snow upon its side.
Such is the cross I wear upon my breast
these eighteen years, through all the changing scenes
and seasons, changeless since the day she died.
--Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807-1882). His beloved wife Frances Appleton had died in 1861 of burns suffered when her dress caught fire. The famous photographer William Henry Jackson took the photo in the mountains of Colorado in 1873; the photo became famous and the mountain was named Mountain of the Holy Cross.
* blessed
