https://www.poemhunter.com/poem/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 blow.
I am the diamond glints on snow.
I am the sunlight on ripened grain.
I am the gentle autumn rain.
When you awaken in the morning's hush
I am the swift uplifting rush
Of quiet birds in circled flight.
I am the soft stars that shine at night.
Do not stand at my grave and cry;
I am not there. I did not die.
:-D
I only just now read this poem and it is brilliant.
Feeling particularly sh*t again today and this is the first thing that has made any difference.
Any other philosophical or metaphysical poems that are recommended ?
TWS
I love this from Geoffrey Winthrop Young and want it on my gravestone:
"Then they heaped rocks and boulders mountain high
with stairs of snow up to Orion’s door.
And climbed together singing to the sky
and no one saw them go."
I also love the inscription carved on the slab at High Rocks:
"Infidel! Who, with thy finite wisdom, Would grasp things infinite, and dost become A scoffer of God’s holiest mysteries, Behold this rock, then tremble and rejoice. Tremble, for He who formed the mighty mass Could in this justice crush thee where thou art. Rejoice! that still His mercy spares thee."
It makes me quake with fear!
You might like this, from Willy Tea Taylor, my favourite Americana/Folk singer:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QvD_D2GxScY&list=RDFevXdbgW8IY&inde...
Get better soon!
CB
Since my Dad died, and my own health has deteriorated, I keep coming back to this:
"Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
Though wise men at their end know dark is right,
Because their words had forked no lightning they
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright
Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight,
And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way,
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight
Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
And you, my father, there on the sad height,
Curse, bless, me now with your fierce tears, I pray.
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light."
Dylan Thomas, of course.
If we're on a theme let's not omit Rossetti:
Remember me when I am gone away,
Gone far away into the silent land;
When you can no more hold me by the hand,
Nor I half turn to go yet turning stay.
Remember me when no more day by day
You tell me of our future that you plann'd:
Only remember me; you understand
It will be late to counsel then or pray.
Yet if you should forget me for a while
And afterwards remember, do not grieve:
For if the darkness and corruption leave
A vestige of the thoughts that once I had,
Better by far you should forget and smile
Than that you should remember and be sad.
Love After Love
by Derek Walcott
The time will come
when, with elation
you will greet yourself arriving
at your own door, in your own mirror
and each will smile at the other's welcome,
and say, sit here. Eat.
You will love again the stranger who was your self.
Give wine. Give bread. Give back your heart
to itself, to the stranger who has loved you
all your life, whom you ignored
for another, who knows you by heart.
Take down the love letters from the bookshelf,
the photographs, the desperate notes,
peel your own image from the mirror.
Sit. Feast on your life.
There's Emily Dickinson's Hope is the thing with feathers
'Hope' is the thing with feathers—
That perches in the soul—
And sings the tune without the words—
And never stops—at all—
And sweetest—in the Gale—is heard—
And sore must be the storm—
That could abash the little Bird
That kept so many warm—
I've heard it in the chillest land—
And on the strangest Sea—
Yet, never, in Extremity,
It asked a crumb—of Me.
I walk down the street.
There is a deep hole in the sidewalk.
I fall in.
I am lost... I am helpless.
It isn't my fault.
It takes forever to find a way out.
I walk down the same street.
There is a deep hole in the sidewalk.
I pretend I don't see it.
I fall in again.
I can't believe I am in the same place.
But, it isn't my fault.
It still takes me a long time to get out.
I walk down the same street.
There is a deep hole in the sidewalk.
I see it is there.
I still fall in. It's a habit.
My eyes are open.
I know where I am.
It is my fault. I get out immediately.
walk down the same street.
There is a deep hole in the sidewalk.
I walk around it.
I walk down another street.
Portia Nelson, There's a Hole in My Sidewalk
You might like this one too, tws:
Wild Geese
by Mary Oliver
You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
For a hundred miles through the desert, repenting.
you only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.
Tell me about your despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes,
over the prairies and the deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
are heading home again.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting —
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.
I also enjoyed this poem which was posted here a while back:
These are my riches, that none can take away from me,
Stored as mountain grass is stored in the byre;
These shall shine of an evening when winter befalls me,
Sitting by the fire.
Mine are the torrents and the timeless hills,
The rock face, the heather and the rain,
The summits where the life-wind thrums and thrills,
And, answering, the glad heart sings again:
The good grey rock that loves a grasping hand,
The stress of body and the soul’s rebirth
On the tall peak where gods and men may stand
Breathless above the kingdoms of the earth:
The drowse of summer on the sunlit crags
Lulled in the blue and shimmering air of June,
When Time, the lazy mountain- traveller, lags
To dream with us an endless afternoon:
The ice-wind stealing downwards from the crest
To hush with frost the reedy river’s flow,
When all the mountain land on winter’s breast
Sleeps, in the deathly silence of the snow.
These are my riches, these and the bright remembering
Of ridge and buttress and sky-shouldering spire;
These I shall count, when I am old, of an evening,
Sitting by the fire.
Check out On the Nature of Things by Lucretius. I posted a translation on this site in 2016. Easy to find if you search by Lucretius
One of my favorites;
Young Fellow M'lad
Where are you going young fellow m'lad, on this glittering morn of May?
I'm going to join the colours, dad, they’re looking for men they say.
But your only a boy young fellow m'lad and not obliged to go.
I'm seventeen and quarter dad and ever so strong y'know.
So your off to France young fellow m'lad and your looking so fit and bright.
I'm terribly sorry to leave you dad but I feel I'm doing right.
God bless and keep you young fellow m'lad, your all of my life y'know
Don't worry I'll be back dear dad and I'm awfully proud to go.
Why don't you write young fellow m'lad? I watch for the post each day and I miss you and I'm terribly sad, its months since you've been away
I've had the fire in the parlour lit and I'm keeping it burning bright, till my boy comes home here I sit into the quiet night.
What is the matter young fellow m'lad no letter again today
and why does the postman look so sad and sigh as he turns away?
I've heard them tell we've gained new ground but a terrible price we've paid. God grant my boy your safe and sound but I'm afraid - afraid.
They've told me the truth, young fellow m'lad, you'll never come home again
Oh God the dreams - the dreams I've had and the hopes I've nursed in vain.
You've passed in the night young fellow m'lad and you've proved in the cruel test, of the screaming shell and battle hell that my boy was one of the best.
But you'll live you'll live young fellow m'lad In the gleam of the evening star, in the wood no wild and the laugh of a child and in all sweet things that are.
And no you'll never die my wonderful boy while life is noble and true for all our beauty hopes and joy
We will owe to our lads like you.
I love that!
Requiem by Robert Louis Stevenson
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: 5
Here he lies where he long'd to be;
Home is the sailor, home from the sea,
And the hunter home from the hill.
The OP's poem by Mary Fry was read at my mother's funeral many years ago so has a special resonance for me.
The below (Fern Hill, Dylan Thomas) used to be on the wall at the Vaynol Arms and was one of the first poems I read, as a teenager, of my own volition and thought, "wow".
Now as I was young and easy under the apple boughs
About the lilting house and happy as the grass was green,
The night above the dingle starry,
Time let me hail and climb
Golden in the heydays of his eyes,
And honoured among wagons I was prince of the apple towns
And once below a time I lordly had the trees and leaves
Trail with daisies and barley
Down the rivers of the windfall light.
And as I was green and carefree, famous among the barns
About the happy yard and singing as the farm was home,
In the sun that is young once only,
Time let me play and be
Golden in the mercy of his means,
And green and golden I was huntsman and herdsman, the calves
Sang to my horn, the foxes on the hills barked clear and cold,
And the sabbath rang slowly
In the pebbles of the holy streams.
All the sun long it was running, it was lovely, the hay
Fields high as the house, the tunes from the chimneys, it was air
And playing, lovely and watery
And fire green as grass.
And nightly under the simple stars
As I rode to sleep the owls were bearing the farm away,
All the moon long I heard, blessed among stables, the nightjars
Flying with the ricks, and the horses
Flashing into the dark.
And then to awake, and the farm, like a wanderer white
With the dew, come back, the cock on his shoulder: it was all
Shining, it was Adam and maiden,
The sky gathered again
And the sun grew round that very day.
So it must have been after the birth of the simple light
In the first, spinning place, the spellbound horses walking warm
Out of the whinnying green stable
On to the fields of praise.
And honoured among foxes and pheasants by the gay house
Under the new made clouds and happy as the heart was long,
In the sun born over and over,
I ran my heedless ways,
My wishes raced through the house high hay
And nothing I cared, at my sky blue trades, that time allows
In all his tuneful turning so few and such morning songs
Before the children green and golden
Follow him out of grace,
Nothing I cared, in the lamb white days, that time would take me
Up to the swallow thronged loft by the shadow of my hand,
In the moon that is always rising,
Nor that riding to sleep
I should hear him fly with the high fields
And wake to the farm forever fled from the childless land.
Oh as I was young and easy in the mercy of his means,
Time held me green and dying
Though I sang in my chains like the sea.
Sorry to hear you're having a bad day TWS.
In reply to cb294:
> You might like this, from Willy Tea Taylor, my favourite Americana/Folk singer
That's rather lovely. Reminds me of 'Green Grass' by Tom Waits a little. (That's a wee bit darker of course, it's Tom Waits!
On a similar theme to your Willy Tea Taylor song and the poem from TWS's op, here's a fine song for a secular funeral in a more english folky style by Lady Maisery: youtube.com/watch?v=J5Xw62pK_OU&
Behold the happy moron, He doesn’t give a damn, I wish I was a moron, My God! Perhaps I am?!
I loved that too!
Final segment:-
"And sleep as I in childhood sweetly slept,
Untroubling and untroubled where I lie,
The grass below- above, the vaulted sky."
(At least one of the commas is mine because punctuation was not the writer's strong point.)
I've been asked to read that at my father's funeral next week. Though it's about not being sad, it doesn't seem to be working.
On a slightly brighter note; I didn't know that The Byrds 'Turn! Turn! Turn!' is actually a bible passage: Ecclesiastes 3:1-8. Who knew?
I'm pretty sure Pete Seeger knew.
My twin aunts spent lots of time on Arran in decades past. Descending from Goat Fell, their favourite resting spot was a bench in a graveyard near North Sannox, on which was carved a quote they liked, by Edith Sitwell: "Death is not the end...".
we were on Arran last week, one of the twins now age 90 scattering the ashes of the other. With difficulty, we found the graveyard, and the bench. The quote was very comforting.
Hugs to TWS. My daughter read that poem at my mother's funeral a couple of months ago, and it was good.
Thank you all for some lovely poems - I am stuck on a train this evening and I have enjoyed them.
Blaenllynfi
Come, take my hand and walk
With me the bottom Lane.
Down past the twisting houses, hearth warmed,
Through the Crog loft, cracked, pane.
Leaving traces in the solute waterway rounding
Each washed clean pebble cleared of grain
Once praised for the power to mill in the headlands
Our daily bread in commune to sustain
Retaught the full, flat smooth, rifling flow
Through airs to carry to home the Grebe and greet the Crane.
Afore the chilled hollow, frost dropped
Presences that stir to hackles the heraldic slain,
In each and every field asleep, that soul was lost,
Raised, removed, and or, a course marched from where they had lain
At midnights kiss of the moons alight upon the Newel
Stirs the quiet steam lowing cows, withness to the puffed hooting owls refrain.
Twice high-hedged ramparted bulwark, ridges, the slavishly enclosed singing locked-in land
Bare tapping steps heard back in the heart; in the corridor's beating vein.
To walk, to run, to walk to run; to race, to run, to turn to stand. Throw
Off the steel, leathered, gauntlet and offer out the open hand of ambition's reign.
so I sat down and wrote a poem!
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