May 21, 2007

Gratuitous Literary Posting (TM)

In addition to a Psalm and a passage from Corinthians, one of the readings for Dad's memorial this weekend will be Robert Louis Stevenson's short but touching "Requiem":

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:
Here he lies where he longed to be;
Home is the sailor, home from the sea,
And the hunter home from the hill.

I won't bore you with a long explanation of the fittingness of this piece - in the end, all Dad wanted was to get home and his remains will be placed in the memorial garden of the little seasonal island church up the hill from our house that he came to love.

Instead, I mention the poem because I love it for its simple elegance, the last lines of each stanza in particular always giving me the chills. Stevenson doesn't immediately spring to mind for his poetry these days, but there's no denying that the man had an ear for it.

Posted by Robert at May 21, 2007 04:03 PM | TrackBack
Comments

Very touching. it brought back memories of my own father's death, and the poem that HE always wanted read at HIS memorial, which I managed to just remember in time. For him, it was Tennyson's "Crossing the Bar":

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 though 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 crossed the bar.

Posted by: Boy Named Sous at May 21, 2007 07:34 PM

Very touching. Reminds me of my own father's memorial service, where I remembered just in time the poem HE wanted read, Tennyson's "crossing the Bar":

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 though 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 crossed the bar.

Posted by: Boy Named Sous at May 21, 2007 07:36 PM

Sorry about the double posting, please feel free to remove one.

Posted by: Boy Named Sous at May 21, 2007 07:37 PM

Give all of your world for a good dad. I loved mine. We were fishing buddies, hunting buddies, and we even drank together a few times in his later years. He was a Greatest Generation USAF Flyboy: WW II, Korea, and Viet Nam.

The world just doesn't produce enough men like that, and we sure as hell could use a few gazillion of them right now.

I'd put one of my dads up against a dozen McCains.

Posted by: Hucbald at May 21, 2007 10:00 PM

Thanks for recalling the poem to my memory. It is beautiful. But it has even more resonance when you read about Stevenson's life.

He was sick all his life--tb, I believe--but he didn't let it stop him. He did everything he wanted to do and had lots of adventures and enjoyed life to the max.

Posted by: miriam at May 24, 2007 12:11 PM