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Memorial Verses for Humanists, Atheists, and Agnostics [Secure eReader]
eBook by James de Witt
eBook Category: Spiritual/Religion
eBook Description: Walking to the subway station after the cremation of his long-time colleague Sonia Clements, James de Witt, a partner in London's esteemed Peverell Press in P. D. James' 1994 murder mystery "Original Sin," ruminates on the unsatisfying funeral he has just witnessed. "There should, he thought, be a service designed for those without a religion .... It might be an interesting ... publishing venture, a book of alternative funeral rites for humanists, atheists, and agnostics, a formal ceremony of remembrance, a celebration of the human spirit with no reference to its possible continuing existence. Striding to the station ... he amused himself selecting passages of prose and verse which might be included. De la Mare's 'Look thy last on all things lovely' for a touch of nostalgic melancholy. Perhaps ... Keats' 'Ode to Autumn' ... " This is the slender volume he outlined that pensive September afternoon.
eBook Publisher: InfoStrategist.com/InfoStrategist.com
Fictionwise Release Date: September 2005
 
FARE WELL WHEN I lie where shades of darkness
Shall no more assail mine eyes,
Nor the rain make lamentation
When the wind sighs;
How will fare the world whose wonder
Was the very proof of me?
Memory fades, must the remembered
Perishing be? Oh, when this my dust surrenders
Hand, foot, lip, to dust again,
May those loved and loving faces
Please other men!
May the rusting harvest hedgerow
Still the Traveller's Joy entwine,
And as happy children gather
Posies once mine. Look thy last on all things lovely,
Every hour. Let no night
Seal thy sense in deathly slumber
Till to delight
Thou have paid thy utmost blessing;
Since that all things thou wouldst praise
Beauty took from those who loved them
In other days. Walter de la Mare (1918) NON DOLET OUR friends go with us as we go
Down the long path where Beauty wends,
Where all we love fore-gathers,
So why should we fear to join our friends? Who would survive them to outlast
His children; to outwear his fame,
Left when the Triumph has gone past,
To win from Age, not Time, a name? Then do not shudder at the knife
That Death's indiff'rent hand drives home,
But with the Strivers leave the Strife,
Not, after Caesar, skulk in Rome.
Copyright © 2005
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