PDA

View Full Version : Trying to find a poem



Fen
09-19-2007, 09:57 AM
I'm trying to find a poem that I read awhile ago it's about death it goes do not weep for I am in the next room, something like that. I think the writer was a dean or canon. Could anyone help? Sorry the description is vague

Logos
09-19-2007, 10:31 AM
If you do an "Entire Site Search" for key words like weep there are lots of results :)

http://www.online-literature.com/advancedsearch.php
.
.

Logos
09-19-2007, 10:35 AM
A Wish by Matthew Arnold (1822-1888):


I ask not that my bed of death
From bands of greedy heirs be free;
For these besiege the latest breath
Of fortune's favoured sons, not me.

I ask not each kind soul to keep
Tearless, when of my death he hears;
Let those who will, if any, weep!
There are worse plagues on earth than tears.

I ask but that my death may find
The freedom to my life denied;
Ask but the folly of mankind,
Then, at last, to quit my side.

Spare me the whispering, crowded room,
The friends who come, and gape, and go;
The ceremonious air of gloom--
All which makes death a hideous show!

Nor bring, to see me cease to live,
Some doctor full of phrase and fame,
To shake his sapient head and give
The ill he cannot cure a name.

Nor fetch, to take the accustomed toll
Of the poor sinner bound for death,
His brother doctor of the soul,
To canvass with official breath

The future and its viewless things--
That undiscovered mystery
Which one who feels death's winnowing wings
Must need read clearer, sure, than he!

Bring none of these; but let me be,
While all around in silence lies,
Moved to the window near, and see
Once more before my dying eyes

Bathed in the sacred dew of morn
The wide aerial landscape spread--
The world which was ere I was born,
The world which lasts when I am dead.

Which never was the friend of one,
Nor promised love it could not give,
But lit for all its generous sun,
And lived itself, and made us live.

There let me gaze, till I become
In soul with what I gaze on wed!
To feel the universe my home;
To have before my mind-instead

Of the sick-room, the mortal strife,
The turmoil for a little breath--
The pure eternal course of life,
Not human combatings with death.

Thus feeling, gazing, let me grow
Composed, refreshed, ennobled, clear;
Then willing let my spirit go
To work or wait elsewhere or here!

~

Logos
09-19-2007, 10:37 AM
Ah, this is probably it :D

All Is Well

by Henry Scott Holland (1847-1918)
[Regius Professor of Divinity, U of Oxford, canon of Christ Church, Oxford.]


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.

~

Fen
09-19-2007, 12:33 PM
That's the one I knew it was a canon. Thank you for finding it, I always forget what it's called and have to trawl the net for it:) Thanks for A Wish, always nice to read new things.