I want you to get outside and have some real fun.’
Her anger now spent, she walked out through the hall
And while Vincent backed slowly against the wall
The room started to swell, to shiver and creak
His horrid insanity had reached its peak
He saw Abercrombie, his zombie slave
And heard his wife call from beyond the grave
She spoke from her coffin and made ghoulish demands
While, through cracking walls, reached skeleton hands
Every horror in his life that had crept through his dreams
Swept his mad laughter to terrified screams!
To escape the madness, he reached for the door
But fell limp and lifeless down on the floor
His voice was soft and very slow
As he quoted ‘The Raven’ from Edgar Allan Poe:
‘and my soul from out that shadow
that lies floating on the floor
shall be lifted?
Nevermore …’
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Funeral BluesPoems at the end of the road
‘You live and learn,’ said the playwright and poet, Noël Coward, before adding tartly, ‘Then, of course, you die and forget it all.’ Death is inevitable. The Grim Reaper is always waiting in the wings. Resistance is futile. As Shakespeare succinctly puts it in Hamlet: ‘All that lives must die, Passing through nature to eternity.’ ‘It’s not that I’m afraid to die,’ said Woody Allen famously, ‘I just don’t want to be there when it happens.’
For a thousand years in thy sight are but as yesterday when it is past, and as a watch in the night.
Thou carriest them away as with a flood; they are as a sleep: in the morning they are like grass which groweth up.
In the morning it flourisheth, and groweth up; in the evening it is cut down, and withereth.
For we are consumed by thine anger, and by thy wrath are we troubled.
Thou hast set our iniquities before thee, our secret sins in the light of thy countenance.
For all our days are passed away in thy wrath: we spend our years as a tale that is told.
The days of our years are threescore years and ten; and if by reason of strength they be fourscore years, yet is their strength labour and sorrow; for it is soon cut off, and we fly away.
Psalm 90, verses 4–10
Now that I have achieved the three-score-years-and-ten promised in the Book of Psalms, I am taking a more personal interest in death. I have to: people keep reminding me how old I am. I have been asked to be the ‘new face’ of the Stannah Stairlift; I have been invited to sponsor home-delivered easy-to-digest ready-meals for ‘senior seniors’; in a TV commercial I am now the voice of the Tena Flex-Plus Supersoft Incontinence Pad. (According to the advertising agency, my voice is exactly what the product requires: it is ‘smooth, mature, absorbent’.)
I take a personal interest in death befitting someone of my age, and I take a professional interest, too. One of my forebears was a Kenyon and, in Britain and around the world, the Kenyons have been leaders in the undertaking business since the 1870s. For some years, I have been the proud host of the annual British Funeral Directors’ Awards saluting the work of the best of the best in the dying trade. (The evening ends with the two big prizes: one is for the Crematorium of the Year – the ‘Crème de la Crem’ award – and the other is the Lifetime Achievement award for ‘Thinking outside the Box’.) I go to a lot of funerals, too. And I have had to organize two or three, as well. It isn’t easy.
Saying goodbye is never easy. A funeral is inevitably a sad event – even when the deceased has been blessed with a long and a good life. When it is the funeral of someone who has died young, it is simply heartbreaking. As we approach our own point of departure, here are some poems of consolation and condolence: poems to help you reflect on those you have liked and loved and lost, poems to learn by heart to speak at a funeral or a memorial gathering.
Death, be not proud
by John Donne
(1572–1631)
Death, be not proud, though some have called thee
Mighty and dreadful, for thou art not so;
For those whom thou thinkst thou dost overthrow
Die not, poor Death, nor yet canst thou kill me;
From rest and sleep, which but thy pictures be,
Much pleasure, then from thee, much more must flow,
And soonest our best men with thee do go,
Rest of their bones, and soul’s delivery.
Thou art 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 swellst thou then?
One short sleep past, we wake eternally,
And death shall be no more: Death, thou shalt die.
Epitaph on a Friend
by Robert Burns
(1759–96)
An honest man here lies at rest,
As e’er God with his image blest:
The friend of man, the friend of truth,
The friend of age, and guide of youth:
Few hearts like his, with virtue warm’d,
Few heads with knowledge so inform’d:
If there’s another world, he lives in bliss;
If there is none, he made the best of this.
Music, when soft voices die
by Percy Bysshe Shelley
(1792–1822)
To——
Music, when soft voices die,
Vibrates in the memory –
Odours, when sweet violets sicken,
Live within the sense they quicken.
Rose leaves, when the rose is dead,
Are heaped for the beloved’s bed;
And so thy thoughts, when thou art gone,
Love itself shall slumber on.
Crossing the Bar
by Alfred, Lord Tennyson
(1809–92)
Sunset and evening star,
And one clear call for me!
And may there be no moaning of the bar,
When I put out to sea,
But such a tide as moving seems asleep,
Too full for sound and foam,
When that which drew from out the boundless deep
Turns again home.
Twilight and evening bell,
And after that the dark!
And may there be no sadness of farewell,
When I embark;
For tho’ from out our bourne of Time and Place
The flood may bear me far,
I hope to see my Pilot face to face
When I have crost the bar.
From ‘Song of Myself’ in Leaves of Grass
by Walt Whitman
(1819–92)
I depart as air, I shake my white locks at the runaway sun,
I effuse my flesh in eddies, and drift it in lacy jags.
I bequeath myself to the dirt to grow from the grass I love,
If you want me again look for me under your boot-soles.
You will hardly know who I am or what I mean,
But I shall be good health to you nevertheless,
And filter and fibre your blood.
Failing to fetch me at first keep encouraged,
Missing me one place search another,
I stop somewhere waiting for you.
Everything passes and vanishes
by William Allingham
(1824–89)
Everything passes and vanishes;
Everything leaves its trace;
And often you see in a footstep
What you could not see in a face.
Song
by Christina Rossetti
(1830–94)
When I am dead, my dearest,
Sing no sad songs for me;
Plant thou no roses at my head,
Nor shady cypress tree:
&n
bsp; Be the green grass above me
With showers and dewdrops wet;
And if thou wilt, remember,
And if thou wilt, forget.
I shall not see the shadows,
I shall not fear the rain;
I shall not hear the nightingale
Sing on, as if in pain:
And dreaming through the twilight
That doth not rise nor set,
Haply I may remember,
And haply may forget.
Death is nothing at all
by Henry Scott Holland
(1847–1918)fn1
Death is nothing at all.
It does not count.
I have only slipped away into the next room.
Nothing has happened.
Everything remains exactly as it was.
I am I, and you are you,
and the old life that we lived so fondly together is untouched, unchanged.
Whatever we were to each other, that we are still.
Call me by the old familiar name.
Speak of me in the easy way which you always used.
Put no difference into your tone.
Wear no forced air of solemnity or sorrow.
Laugh as we always laughed at the little jokes that we enjoyed together.
Play, smile, think of me, pray for me.
Let my name be ever the household word that it always was.
Let it be spoken without an effort, without the ghost of a shadow upon it.
Life means all that it ever meant.
It is the same as it ever was.
There is absolute and unbroken continuity.
What is this death but a negligible accident?
Why should I be out of mind because I am out of sight?
I am but waiting for you, for an interval,
somewhere very near,
just round the corner.
All is well.
Nothing is hurt; nothing is lost.
One brief moment and all will be as it was before.
How we shall laugh at the trouble of parting when we meet again!
Now When the Number of My Years
by Robert Louis Stevenson
(1850–94)
Now when the number of my years
Is all fulfilled, and I
From sedentary life
Shall rouse me up to die,
Bury me low and let me lie
Under the wide and starry sky.
Joying to live, I joyed to die,
Bury me low and let me lie.
Clear was my soul, my deeds were free,
Honour was called my name,
I fell not back from fear
Nor followed after fame.
Bury me low and let me lie
Under the wide and starry sky.
Joying to live, I joyed to die,
Bury me low and let me lie.
Bury me low in valleys green
And where the milder breeze
Blows fresh along the stream,
Sings roundly in the trees –
Bury me low and let me lie
Under the wide and starry sky.
Joying to live, I joyed to die,
Bury me low and let me lie.
Requiescat
by Oscar Wilde
(1854–1900)fn2
Tread lightly, she is near
Under the snow,
Speak gently, she can hear
The daisies grow.
All her bright golden hair
Tarnished with rust,
She that was young and fair
Fallen to dust.
Lily-like, white as snow,
She hardly knew
She was a woman, so
Sweetly she grew.
Coffin-board, heavy stone,
Lie on her breast,
I vex my heart alone,
She is at rest.
Peace, Peace, she cannot hear
Lyre or sonnet,
All my life’s buried here,
Heap earth upon it.
Parta Quies
by A. E. Housman
(1859–1936)
Good-night; ensured release,
Imperishable peace,
Have these for yours,
While sea abides, and land,
And earth’s foundations stand,
and heaven endures.
When earth’s foundations flee,
nor sky nor land nor sea
At all is found
Content you, let them burn:
It is not your concern;
Sleep on, sleep sound.
Idyll
by Sieg fried Sassoon
(1886–1967)
In the grey summer garden I shall find you
With day-break and the morning hills behind you.
There will be rain-wet roses; stir of wings;
And down the wood a thrush that wakes and sings.
Not from the past you’ll come, but from that deep
Where beauty murmurs to the soul asleep:
And I shall know the sense of life re-born
From dreams into the mystery of morn
Where gloom and brightness meet. And standing there
Till that calm song is done, at last we’ll share
The league-spread, quiring symphonies that are
Joy in the world, and peace, and dawn’s one star.
‘You’ll Never Walk Alone’ from Carousel
by Oscar Hammerstein II
(1895–1960)
When you walk through a storm
Hold your head up high
And don’t be afraid of the dark
At the end of a storm
There’s a golden sky
And the sweet silver song of a lark
Walk on through the wind
Walk on through the rain
Though your dreams be tossed and blown
Walk on, walk on
With hope in your heart
And you’ll never walk alone
You’ll never walk alone
Walk on, walk on
With hope in your heart
And you’ll never walk alone
You’ll never walk alone
When I Have Fears
by Noël Coward
(1899–1973)
When I have fears, as Keats had fears,
Of the moment I’ll cease to be
I console myself with vanished years
Remembered laughter, remembered tears,
And the peace of the changing sea.
When I feel sad, as Keats felt sad,
That my life is so nearly done
It gives me comfort to dwell upon
Remembered friends who are dead and gone
And the jokes we had and the fun.
How happy they are I cannot know
But happy I am who loved them so.
Funeral Blues
by W. H. Auden
(1907–73)fn3
Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone,
Prevent the dog from barking with a juicy bone,
Silence the pianos and with muffled drum
Bring out the coffin, let the mourners come.
Let aeroplanes circle moaning overhead
Scribbling on the sky the message He is Dead.
Put crêpe bows round the white necks of the public doves,
Let the traffic policemen wear black cotton gloves.
He was my North, my South, my East and West,
My working week and my Sunday rest,
My noon, my midnight, my talk, my song;
I thought that love would last forever: I was wrong.
The stars are not wanted now: put out every one;
Pack up the moon and dismantle the sun;
Pour away the ocean and sweep up the wood.
For nothing now can ever come to any good.
If I Should Go Before the Rest of You
by Joyce Grenfell
(1910–
79)
If I should go before the rest of you
Break not a flower nor inscribe a stone,
Nor when I’m gone speak in a Sunday voice
But be the usual selves that I have known.
Weep if you must, Parting is hell,
But Life goes on, So sing as well.
Do not go gentle into that good night
by Dylan Thomas
(1914–1953)
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.
On the Death of Harold Wilson
by Mary Wilson
(1916–2018)fn4
My love you have stumbled slowly
On the quiet way to death
And you lie where the wind blows strongly
With a salty spray on its breath
For this men of the island bore you
Down paths where the branches meet
And the only sounds were the crunching grind
Of the gravel beneath their feet
And the sighing slide of the ebbing tide
On the beach where the breakers meet
The Good
by Brendan Kennelly
(born 1936)
The good are vulnerable
Dancing by the Light of the Moon Page 23
