proud empires, pass away; Thy kingdom stands and grows for ever, Till all Thy creatures own Thy sway.
John Ellerton (1826-93)
Dear Lord and Father of mankind
John Greenleaf Whittier never intended these verses from the larger poetic work The Brewing of Soma (1872) to be sung as, being a committed Quaker, he did not approve of the use of music in public worship. The son of a farmer, he considered himself a poet rather than a hymn writer but after his words were matched with Sir Hubert Parry’s tune ‘Repton’ from the oratorio Judith (1888) they became a popular choice with congregations of many different kinds. The ‘soma’ referred to in the title of Whittier’s work was an intoxicating drink used by a Hindu sect in India to drive themselves into an ecstatic frenzy far removed from the poet’s ‘still small voice of calm’.
Dear Lord and Father of mankind,
Forgive our foolish ways! Reclothe us in our rightful mind; In purer lives Thy service find, In deeper reverence, praise.
In simple trust like theirs who heard
Beside the Syrian sea The gracious calling of the Lord, Let us, like them, without a word, Rise up and follow Thee.
O Sabbath rest by Galilee!
O calm of hills above, Where Jesus knelt to share with Thee The silence of eternity Interpreted by love!
With that deep hush subduing all
Our words and works that drown The tender whisper of Thy call, As noiseless let Thy blessing fall As fell Thy manna down.
Drop Thy still dews of quietness,
Till all our strivings cease; Take from our souls the strain and stress, And let out ordered lives confess The beauty of Thy peace.
Breathe through the heats of our desire
Thy coolness and Thy balm; Let sense be dumb, let flesh retire; Speak through the earthquake, wind, and fire, O still small voice of calm!
John Greenleaf Whittier (1807-92)
John Donne’s ‘Death, be not Proud’ ranks among the most familiar of his Holy Sonnets probably written around 1610-11. It is often quoted at funerals as a refutation of death’s triumph over life. Donne himself had no doubt about the certainty of his own eventual resurrection, even having himself painted wearing a shroud and standing upon a funeral urn as he might appear at the Last Judgement.
Death, be not proud, though some have called 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 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 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 (c.1572-1631)
Henry Scott Holland was an English clergyman who served as Canon of St Paul’s Cathedral in the years 1884-1911. Although he also published sermons, various books on faith and a biography of Swedish soprano Jenny Lind, it is for this simple message of comfort to the bereaved that he is usually remembered. It is sometimes encountered in slightly altered form to include the lines ‘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.’
Death is nothing at all,
I have only slipped away into the next room. I am I, and you are you, Whatever we were to each other, that we still are. Call me by my old familiar name, Speak to me in the easy way which you always used. Put no difference in your tone, Wear no forced air of solemnity or sorrow Laugh as we always laughed at the little jokes we enjoyed together. Let my name be ever the household word that it always was, Let it be spoken without effect, Without the trace of a shadow on it. Life means all that it ever meant It is the same as it ever was. There is unbroken continuity. Why should I be out of mind because I am out of sight? I am waiting for you, For an interval, Somewhere very near, Just around the corner All is Well.
Henry Scott Holland (1847-1918)
Do not go gentle into that good night
This fierce protest by Welsh poet Dylan Thomas against placid acceptance of death is often quoted as a spur to those who surrender themselves to complacency and resignation. Thomas himself famously drank himself to death, leaving the world as passionately and recklessly as he had lived.
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 (1914-53)
Do not stand at my grave and weep
Authorship of the following piece, which has become a favourite consolatory reading at funeral services, has been disputed and it has been variously identified as a Native American funeral prayer or an item from a Victorian magazine. It would appear, however, to have been written
