Sedulia on Grief

Marguerite d'Angoulême: I think of nothing but my grief

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 I^er , 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.

Henry Van Dyke: Her diminished size is in me, not in her

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.

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 a her brother.

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.

Nikki Wheidt: I miss my Dad

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." 

Netta Wilson: I lost my child today

I lost my child today
People came to weep and cry
as I just sat and stared, dry eyed
They struggled to find words to say
to try and make the pain go away
I walked the floor in disbelief
I lost my child today.

I lost my child last month
Most of the people went away
Some still call and some still stay
I wait to wake up from this dream
This can't be real, I want to scream
Yet everything is locked inside
God, help me, I want to die
I lost my child last month.

I lost my child last year
Now people who had came, have gone
I sit and struggle all day long
to bear the pain so deep inside
And now my friends just question Why?
Why does this mother not move on?
Just sits and sings the same old song
Good heavens, it has been so long
I lost my child last year.

Time has not moved on for me
The numbness it has disappeared
My eyes have now cried many tears
I see the look upon your face
"She must move on and leave this place"
Yet I am trapped right here in time
The song’s the same, as is the rhyme
I lost my child.........today

        --Netta Wilson, written in memory of her daughter Caprice Cara Wilson, who was killed in an auto accident (December 2, 1968 - November 20, 1994). Printed in the newsletter of The Compassionate Friends, Atlanta, May-June 2001

If you know how to reach Netta Wilson, please let me know.

Longfellow: The Cross of Snow

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

John Donne: Death, be not proud

Death, be not proud, though some have callèd thee
mighty and dreadful, for thou art not so:
for those whom thou think'st thou dost overthrow
die not, poor Death; nor yet canst thou kill me.
From Rest and Sleep, which but thy picture be,
much pleasure, then from thee much more must flow;
and soonest our best men with thee do go--
rest of their bones and souls' delivery!
Thou'rt slave to fate, chance, kings, and desperate men,
and dost with poison, war, and sickness dwell;
and poppy or charms can make us sleep as well
and better than thy stroke. Why swell'st thou then?

One short sleep past, we wake eternally,
and Death shall be no more: Death, thou shalt die!

       --John Donne (1572-1831)

Henry Wotton: She tried to live without him

He first deceased; she for a little tried
to live without him, liked it not, and died.

     --Sir Henry Wotton (1568-1639)